Early settlement Though modern-day Brooklyn is coextensive with Kings County, this was not always the case.
South Brooklyn, an area in central Kings County extending to the former
Brooklyn city line near
Green-Wood Cemetery's southern border, was originally settled by the
Canarsee, one of several indigenous
Lenape peoples who farmed and hunted on the land. The Canarsee had several routes that crossed Brooklyn, including a path from
Fulton Ferry along the
East River that extended southward to
Gowanus Creek, South Brooklyn (present-day Sunset Park), and Bay Ridge. The Canarsee traded with other indigenous peoples, and by the early 17th century, also with Dutch and English settlers. The first European settlement occurred in 1636 when Willem Adriaenszen Bennett and Jacques Bentyn purchased between 28th and 60th Streets, in what is now Sunset Park. However, after the land was purchased in the 1640s by Dutch settlers who laid out their farms along the waterfront, the Canarsee were soon displaced, and had left Brooklyn by the 18th century. The area comprising modern Sunset Park was divided between two Dutch towns: Brooklyn to the northwest and
New Utrecht to the southeast, divided by a boundary that ran diagonally from Seventh Avenue/60th Street to Ninth Avenue/37th Street. The Dutch created long, narrow farms in the area. When
New Netherland was conveyed to the English in 1664, the latter improved the waterfront pathway in the town of Brooklyn as part of a Gowanus (Coast) Road, which ran southwest to an east–west trail called Martense's Lane, then southward to the boundary with New Utrecht. These roads would be used during the
American Revolutionary War in the
Battle of Long Island. During the
American Revolution, the area was mostly owned by the descendants of
Hans Hansen Bergen, an early immigrant from Norway. They owned two homesteads, the DeHart-Bergen House close to 37th Street and the Johannes Bergen House around 55th Street; the former was used by the British during the Revolution. In addition, the Bergens owned several slaves, as indicated in the
1800 United States census, where 19 slaves and 8 free non-whites were recorded living at the two Bergen houses. After New York abolished slavery in 1827, there were 55 African Americans living in the area. Similar to Dutch farms, the farms in modern Sunset Park occupied long, narrow plots.
19th century Early growth and transit hub Brooklyn became urbanized in the 19th century, with many people choosing to live in Brooklyn and commute to Manhattan, and residential development started spreading outward from
Brooklyn Heights. Present-day Sunset Park, several miles away from Brooklyn Heights, was still primarily agricultural in the 1830s and remained that way until the middle of the 19th century. Among the few houses in the region was the Kent Castle, a
Gothic Revival villa on present-day 59th Street. After Brooklyn was incorporated as a city in 1834, the
Commissioners' Plan of 1839 was devised, a street plan that extended to South Brooklyn. What would become Sunset Park was incorporated into the Eighth Ward of the city of Brooklyn, which at the time was the city's least populous
ward. Sunset Park did not have its own name until the 20th century; rather, the neighborhoods in southern Brooklyn, including
Bay Ridge,
Dyker Heights,
Bensonhurst, and
Bath Beach, were collectively referred to as a single area. The first major development in the region was Green-Wood Cemetery, which opened in 1840 near the boundary of South Brooklyn and Bay Ridge, and quickly became popular as a tourist attraction. By 1870, the first frame row houses were constructed in the Eighth Ward, ultimately replacing the detached wooden houses in the area. Transit to South Brooklyn started with the 1846 establishment of a ferry service to the cemetery. The
Brooklyn City Railroad, founded in 1853, started offering stagecoach service from Fulton Ferry to destinations such as Bay Ridge. Afterward, several excursion railroads were built from South Brooklyn to the resort areas of
Coney Island,
Brighton Beach, and
Manhattan Beach. These included the
Brooklyn, Bath and Coney Island Rail Road; the
New York, Bay Ridge and Jamaica Railroad; and the
New York and Sea Beach Railroad. A ferry pier and railroad terminal, popular as a transfer point for those traveling to Coney Island, was built in the 1870s. Following the establishment of the ferry, the Eighth Ward finally became a desirable place to live.
Increasing residential development After the establishment of transport to the Eighth Ward, the region began to quickly develop as a residential neighborhood, with the first
speculatively-developed houses being built in the mid-1880s. In 1888, landowners delivered "a petition for local improvements" to be effected upon some 7,500 lots located from Third to Ninth Avenues between 39th and 65th Streets, which were estimated to be worth about $1 million (). The landowners requested that sewers be installed, and that the streets be paved and opened. The bill was passed the next year with minor changes. By August 1890, the Brooklyn commissioners were opening several streets in South Brooklyn. This was followed by the provision of funding for water mains in October 1890, and a similar act for gas mains in 1892. South Brooklyn's development was also helped by the conversion of the Third Avenue stagecoach line to a steam-powered route. The conversion occurred in spite of several opponents, who argued that steam engines would spook horses. Most of the initial housing stock was centered around Fourth and Fifth Avenues. Further development was hindered by the area's steep and irregular topography, which resulted in some lots being higher than the streets they were located on. This could be seen in the proposed southward expansion of the Fifth Avenue elevated, which faced elevation changes of up to 90 feet if it was to continue southward along the same elevation. This would be remedied by rerouting the elevated to Third Avenue south of 38th Street. The
Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote in 1893 that one could "find lands that are now vacant covered with dwellings and factories, broken and uneven and uninviting paths transformed into broad avenues lined with stores and people in them. Buildings are going up with great rapidity—not singly or rarely so, but by blocks." The extension of the Fifth Avenue elevated opened to a
65th Street terminal on Third Avenue (with connections to Bay Ridge streetcar lines) on October 1, 1893. Development in South Brooklyn continued even though the
Panic of 1893 had resulted in the stoppage of nearly all developments in the rest of Brooklyn. Due to the large number of residential developments being built in South Brooklyn, in 1893 the Brooklyn city government banned the erection of wood-framed structures between Fourth and Fifth Avenues south of 39th Street. By 1895, the
Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted, "Probably no ward in the city has been built up as rapidly as the Eighth Ward." Two-story on basement row houses were the most common building class to be erected in modern-day Sunset Park in the 1900s and 1910s due to their wide appeal, with the majority of these being two-family homes. On the avenues, row houses were built with commercial space on the ground floor, and the residential units were located above. The
Eagle said in 1901 that two-family houses were "particularly attractive to people who desire comparatively small apartments, but who object to living in flats, and they appeal to this class on account of their being more quiet, and possibly, more exclusive." A notable exception to this was the group of single-family homes in central Sunset Park, though these were also easy to build.
Major projects , the park after which the neighborhood is named|alt=Sunset Park, the park after which the neighborhood is named The growth of the Eighth Ward was helped by the development of
Sunset Park, a public park initially bounded by Fifth and Seventh Avenues between 41st and 43rd Streets. The city of Brooklyn acquired the land in 1891 as part of its plan to build several parks citywide. nevertheless it became a popular gathering place for Bay Ridge and South Brooklyn residents. Residential construction boomed in the late 19th and early 20th century amid real estate speculation initiated by the construction of the park and the Fifth Avenue elevated line. and the immediate surrounding area became known as "Sunset Park" as well. Growth of the neighborhood also came with the development of the South Brooklyn waterfront. At the time, it was sparsely developed; there had only been one warehouse on the waterfront in 1890. The land contained an oil refinery belonging to the Bush & Denslow company of
Rufus T. Bush.
Standard Oil bought this refinery in the 1880s and dismantled it, but after Rufus T. Bush's death in 1890, his son
Irving T. Bush bought the land back. Irving Bush built six warehouses on the site between 1895 and 1897, but soon observed their inefficiency, and instead devised plans for
Bush Terminal, a combined shipping/warehousing complex between 32nd and 51st Streets. Construction began in 1902, and was completed in stages between 1911 and 1926. It was dubbed "Bush's Folly" at the time of its construction, as people had a hard time believing it could compete with the port of Manhattan.
Early 20th century Subway construction , one of the stations on the
Fourth Avenue subway that is located within Sunset Park. The line and station opened in 1915. A building boom in South Brooklyn started in about 1902 and 1903, and thousands of people started coming to the area from Manhattan and from other places. The first definite plans for a
Fourth Avenue subway (today's ) were proposed by Rapid Transit Commission engineer
William Barclay Parsons in 1903, and two years later, a citizens' committee was created to aid the creation of the subway line. The announcement of the subway line resulted in the immediate development of row houses in Sunset Park and Bay Ridge. In 1905 and 1906 realty values increased by about 100 percent, and land values increased due to the promise of improved transportation access. The subway itself faced delays. In 1905, the Rapid Transit Commission adopted the Fourth Avenue route to Fort Hamilton; following approval by the
Board of Estimate and
mayor of New York City, the route was approved by the
Appellate Division of the Supreme Court. Groundbreaking for the first section of the subway, between
DeKalb Avenue and 43rd Street, took place in 1909. Not long after the contracts were awarded, the PSC started negotiating with the
Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company and the
Interborough Rapid Transit Company in the execution of the
Dual Contracts, which were signed in 1913. except the
45th Street and
53rd Street stations, which opened on September 22, 1915. A
Real Estate Record and Guide article from the time said: "All along the line of the railroads there are plainly visible the result of the advertising of the contracts for the construction of the 4th av subway."
Middle-class residents Though many row house districts in New York City housed wealthy professionals and businesspeople, Sunset Park was developed as a middle-class area, with most residents being either mid-level professionals (such as clerks and bookkeepers) or skilled tradespeople, including carpenters and plumbers. At the time, row houses were falling out of favor with the upper class, which had started gravitating toward detached single-family homes in more suburban areas, notably exemplified by the
garden city movement and the
Prospect Park South and
Ditmas Park developments in nearby
Flatbush. With many examples clad in brownstone (a style that had largely become old-fashioned by the late 1890s) to evoke the grandeur of earlier neighborhoods, the row houses in Sunset Park were a viable option for middle-class families who could not afford to move to the suburbs or into single-family houses. The
Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote that "the general tendency seems to be to develop Greater South Brooklyn in such a way that families possessed of moderate incomes may there establish themselves...under conditions which will not put too heavy a strain on the purse". Portions of the neighborhood became known as "Finntown" and "Little Norway". The Finns brought with them the concept of
cooperative housing, and the
Alku and Alku Toinen apartment house at 816 43rd Street is said to be the first
cooperative apartment building in New York City. The Norwegian community in Bay Ridge, the largest in the city, stretched between Fourth and Eighth Avenues south of 45th Street at its peak in
World War II. During the peak periods of construction in Sunset Park, hundreds of developers were involved with constructing row houses in the neighborhood; many were neighborhood residents or had offices in the area, and most were not formally trained as architects. Reflecting a longstanding builder-oriented business culture in Brooklyn, these developers often reused building designs that were easy to erect and advertise. The most prolific developer was Thomas Bennett, who lived in Sunset Park and designed at least 600 structures in the neighborhood. Alongside tenements and apartment houses stemming from the nationally prosperous 1914–1929 era, the area was characterized by "limestones and brownstones, as well and brick and wood rowhouses". During the conflict, the adjacent
Brooklyn Army Terminal (situated between 58th and 65th Streets) employed more than 10,000 civilians, handled of cargo, and was the point of departure for 3.5 million soldiers.
Decline Slumlike conditions proliferated in the vicinity of First and Second Avenues as early as
World War I, These ratings were, on the most part, unscientific and motivated by racial and ethnic discrimination. The HOLC contended that the brownstones and the newly built Sunset Park Play Center were positive attributes of the neighborhood, but that the overall rating of the area was revised downward due to its industrial uses and the high numbers of Italian immigrants east of Seventh Avenue. A 1943 demographic study of New York City (co-published by four local newspapers as the
New York City Market Analysis) assigned the Sunset Park moniker to an area largely corresponding to the neighborhood's contemporary boundaries, possibly marking its first use in a more generalized context beyond the residential area surrounding the park. While denoting the redlining-induced socioeconomic decline of the waterfront, it revealed that the uphill section was more affluent than other residential,
white ethnic-dominated areas adjacent to the city's industrial and maritime economies. However, the rapid development of Sunset Park had forestalled the emergence of
upper middle class apartment houses that took root in comparable neighborhoods throughout the early 20th century; coupled with the impact of the waterfront, Sunset Park's aggregate average and median household expenditures were more analogous to the redlined
working class neighborhoods that had arisen in once-affluent areas following Brooklyn's consolidation into the City of Greater New York. The area also remained considerably poorer than adjacent districts with detached housing stock and the semi-suburban belt of south-central and southeastern Brooklyn neighborhoods primarily developed after consolidation. Nevertheless, because of the historical prominence of owner-occupied housing in the area prior to the widespread emergence of
cooperative housing in apartment-oriented neighborhoods, Sunset Park's homeownership rate was at least as high as some of the city's wealthiest communities. The elevated
Gowanus Parkway was constructed on the structure of the elevated
BMT Third Avenue Line in 1941, despite protests by 500 residents. This resulted in the downfall of one of the neighborhood's main commercial arteries. With the rise of truck-based freight shipping and ports in
New Jersey, as well as the
decreasing importance of
heavy industry in the
northeastern United States, Sunset Park's shipping sector entered a period of decline after World War II. In 1945, Third Avenue was widened to ten lanes at the surface level to accommodate truck traffic to and from the
Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel. This widening necessitated the removal of all industrial buildings and housing on the east side of the avenue, destroying the rest of the business district built around the Third Avenue Line. The four-lane Gowanus Parkway was replaced in the 1960s with a
six-lane expressway of the same name to carry truck and car traffic to and from the
Verrazzano–Narrows Bridge, which opened in 1964. During this period, Fourth Avenue's sidewalks were narrowed by roughly eight feet to further accommodate vehicular traffic. Third Avenue and the waterfront district soon evolved into a haven for prostitution and drug use, a milieu evoked by
Hubert Selby Jr. in
Last Exit to Brooklyn (1964). According to longtime resident and community activist Tony Giordano, the Scandinavian population coexisted with upwardly mobile Irish and Italians who had moved from less desirable parts of South Brooklyn, such as Gowanus and western Park Slope. While this influx would influence the community's businesses and religious institutions for decades, many of these residents proved to be transient amid redlining-driven
white flight to adjoining areas (including Bay Ridge, Staten Island, and
inner suburbs in the
New York metropolitan area), leading to the increasing prominence of the neighborhood's
Puerto Rican community. Though Sunset Park had a small Puerto Rican community centered around the maritime trades as early as the 1920s, it grew rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s when urban renewal projects in Manhattan pushed them away from longstanding enclaves on the
Upper West Side,
East Harlem and the
Lower East Side. The neighborhood was particularly desirable because it still retained a large number of industrial jobs on the waterfront, to the west of Third Avenue. However, the closure of the Brooklyn Army Terminal in 1966 and general downsizing at Bush Terminal would negatively affect the nascent community. Collectively, over 30,000 jobs were eliminated as a result of industrial closures in Sunset Park between the 1950s and the 1970s. (2015) As families who had lived in the area for decades began moving out, the housing stock lost value. Most of the housing inventory in the waterfront district failed to comply with a 1961 zoning resolution that subjected 2,000 residences to "rigid prohibitions against reconstruction [...], improvements [or] certain kinds of repairs"; this rapidly hastened predatory
blockbusting practices. In
The Power Broker, the 1974 biography of urban planner
Robert Moses, author
Robert Caro noted that elements of blight extended to the comparatively affluent, brownstone-dominated tracts between Fourth and Sixth Avenues by the 1960s. neighborhood to be somewhat distinct from their community, often characterizing the district as "Lower Bay Ridge", while many residents of Sunset Park "wished they lived in the richer Bay Ridge and enjoyed using the name on their own". Following a 1966 petition drive, Sunset Park was formally designated as a poverty area under the aegis of the
Office of Economic Opportunity. As part of this process, it received its current moniker and boundaries. With aid from federal, state, and local agencies, Sunset Park slowly began redeveloping. Major factors included the purchase of Bush Terminal by new investors in 1963 and its conversion into an industrial park; the gradual loosening of the 1961 zoning regulations; and the expansion of Lutheran Medical Center to the waterfront
American Machine and Foundry factory in the 1970s. However, due to collusion between the banking and real estate industries and actors in the
Federal Housing Administration against the Puerto Rican community, hundreds of housing units were soon lost to abandonment. According to writer David Ment, beginning in the late 1960s, "real estate speculators often used [blockbusting] tactics to purchase homes, then obtained inflated appraisals and mortgage insurance from the [...] FHA." According to Louis Winnick, over "200 small properties and 40 apartment buildings" remained abandoned as late as 1977, while "the blocks below (and often above) Fourth Avenue were defaced by the stigmata of dereliction." The Sunset Park Redevelopment Committee, founded in 1969 to help the expansion of Lutheran Medical Center, By the early 1980s, people were willing to move to Sunset Park due to its high number of affordable units. At that point, the Sunset Park Redevelopment Committee had renovated about 200 units and had federal funds for 333 more. Another factor in the redevelopment of Sunset Park was the
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which removed racially-based restrictions on immigration to the United States, causing the area to be developed by new immigrants from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. By the 1980s, other Latin American immigrants (including
Dominican,
Ecuadorian and
Mexican Americans) had started populating Sunset Park. These new residents started improving formerly decrepit properties in Sunset Park. and renovated it for manufacturing use; the first industrial tenants signed leases for space in the terminal in 1987.
21st century Following the 1966 poverty area designation, the area from 36th Street to the Prospect Expressway was incorporated into Sunset Park. As the gentrification of South Brooklyn accelerated in the 2000s, this area was
rebranded as
Greenwood Heights, or as
South Slope. The 2000s and 2010s brought new development to Sunset Park. In February 2016, Sunset Park West was one of four neighborhoods featured in an article in
The New York Times about "New York's Next Hot Neighborhoods". Factors cited in the article included redevelopment along the waterfront in Industry City and Bush Terminal, the 2014 opening of Bush Terminal Park, and the use of warehouses as party and event spaces. According to real-estate sources, all of these business- and office-related activities will "drive residential momentum" in the western part of Sunset Park. Some in the neighborhood have expressed fears of the gentrification that could follow in the wake of these developments. Industry City's owners announced a $1 billion renovation plan in March 2015, while a "Made in NY" industrial campus was announced for Bush Terminal in 2017. == Demographics ==