New York City Rental Guide · Neighborhood History

Park Slope — From Farmland to Gold Coast to Brooklyn Boho at Its Best

I moved to the Slope more than a decade ago, and I still catch myself slowing down on the walk home just to look at the houses. Every stoop, cornice and carved doorway on these blocks has a story, and knowing those stories makes living here even better. So for the first piece in my Neighborhood History series, I’m starting at home. Here’s how Park Slope went from farmland to Brooklyn’s Gold Coast, through some hard years, and into the neighborhood we know today.

Before the Park

Long before brownstones, this hillside was farmland and woods. The Lenape farmed and hunted here, and Dutch settlers carved the land into farms in the 1600s. On August 27, 1776, the slope was part of the battlefield in the Battle of Long Island, one of the first major fights of the Revolution. The Old Stone House on Third Street, a reconstruction of the 1699 Vechte-Cortelyou farmhouse, marks the spot where some of the fiercest fighting took place.

The man who really set Park Slope in motion was Edwin Clark Litchfield, a railroad lawyer and developer who bought up much of the hillside in the mid-1800s. In 1857 he finished his Italianate mansion, Litchfield Villa, at the top of the slope. It still stands today inside Prospect Park.

The Park Arrives, and So Does the Gold Coast

Prospect Park changed everything. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the duo behind Central Park, designed it, and in 1868 the City of Brooklyn bought Litchfield’s estate for about $1.7 million to finish it. Once the Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883, Manhattan was suddenly an easy commute, and Brooklyn’s wealthiest families raced to build with a view of the park. The mansions along Prospect Park West earned it the nickname “the Gold Coast,” and by one popular account, the 1890 census ranked Park Slope as the richest community in the country.

Who lived here: Thomas Adams Jr., whose family fortune came from Chiclets chewing gum and the vending machines that sold it, built a grand double house at 119 Eighth Avenue in 1888. Architect C.P.H. Gilbert designed it, and it’s still considered one of the best Richardsonian Romanesque homes in the city, with carved dragons and stained glass. Nearby, the Hulbert Mansion on Prospect Park West, designed by Montrose Morris, gave it a run for its money. Developer Harvey Murdock teamed up with Gilbert to build almost all of storybook Montgomery Place between 1888 and 1892. The neighborhood’s power players gathered at the Montauk Club on Eighth Avenue, a Venetian Gothic palace that still hosts members today.

What they built: Walk a few blocks and you’ll see the whole architecture textbook. The side streets are lined with Italianate and Neo-Grec brownstone rows, while the bigger corner lots and park blocks got Romanesque Revival mansions with rough-cut stone and deep arches, playful Queen Anne houses with turrets and bay windows, and elegant Renaissance Revival limestones.

Horses, Carriage Houses and the People Downstairs

In the 1880s and ’90s, getting around meant horse and carriage, and a wealthy household kept its own. The horses and carriages lived in a carriage house, a stable with big arched doors, usually tucked onto a side street behind or beside the main house. The coachman typically lived upstairs, near the hayloft. One you can still see is at 860 Union Street: a two-story brick stable filed for in 1882 to serve John and Maria Maxwell’s mansion on the corner of Eighth Avenue. By the 1900 census, the household’s chauffeurs were likely living above it.

The houses themselves were built around a household staff. The kitchen and service rooms sat on the garden level, just below the street. The parlor floor, up the stoop, was for receiving guests and showing off. The family slept on the floors above, and servants’ rooms were tucked under the roof, connected by narrow back stairs so the help could come and go unseen. Today those carriage houses are some of the most coveted homes in Brooklyn. The Maxwell stable became a two-family house back in the 1920s, and a carriage house at 77 Prospect Place is now a sleek modern home with a skylit open loft and a private patio.

The Lean Years

The Gold Coast didn’t last forever. By the 1910s many wealthy families were leaving for the suburbs and Manhattan, and through the Depression and World War II, big single-family houses were carved up into rooming houses and apartments. Some mansions sat empty, and others came down; the Maxwell mansion was demolished in 1922. By the 1950s, Park Slope was a working-class neighborhood, mostly Irish and Italian, and many of its grand houses were badly worn.

The Renaissance

The comeback started quietly. In the late 1960s, young “brownstoners” bought run-down houses for roughly $15,000 to $35,000 and restored them by hand, and in 1973 the city made Park Slope a landmark district. By the late ’90s and early 2000s, the revival had rolled downhill to Fifth Avenue, which only a few years earlier had been full of empty lots and boarded-up storefronts. Independent shops, coffee houses and restaurants moved in, and the old-timers held their ground. Farrell’s Bar & Grill, up on Prospect Park West, has been pouring since 1933. Southpaw became one of Brooklyn’s best-known rock clubs, and the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co., a tutoring center disguised as a cape shop, opened in 2004.

Fifth Avenue also became the heart of one of New York’s most visible lesbian and gay communities. By the 1990s, the neighborhood was affectionately nicknamed “Dyke Slope.” The lesbian-owned Rising Cafe at 186 Fifth Avenue, open from 1996 to 2003, was a coffee shop, pub and community hub that hosted poetry nights, sports teams and the committee that organized Brooklyn’s very first Pride March. That march set off from Washington Park on June 14, 1997. Ginger’s Bar, which opened around the same time, is still pouring today as one of the few lesbian bars left in the country, and the Lesbian Herstory Archives keep the world’s largest collection of lesbian history in a Park Slope brownstone. Put it all together and you get the Park Slope vibe I fell for: a little bohemian, very welcoming, artsy and proudly itself.

Park Slope Today

Park Slope works hard to protect what makes it special. The Park Slope Historic District is now the largest landmark neighborhood in New York City, about 2,575 buildings over roughly 40 blocks, after the city expanded it in 2012 and again in 2016. Groups like the Park Slope Civic Council keep neighbors organized, and the Fifth Avenue business district supports more than 500 merchants from Dean Street to 18th Street.

Change is still coming, though. A 2003 rezoning of Fourth Avenue opened the door to taller buildings, and the avenue is now lined with new condo and rental towers. Locals worry about chain stores creeping onto Fifth Avenue, and some beloved shops have closed as rents rose. This summer the Fifth Avenue Record Shop shut its doors after nearly six decades. The new buildings bring new neighbors and modern apartments, and the neighborhood’s job is to welcome them without losing its soul. So far, I think it’s doing a pretty good job.

And there’s so much to love. Gallery Players, which has been putting on shows in Park Slope since the 1960s, is one of the small, scrappy theaters that keep the neighborhood’s stages busy. The Old Stone House hosts concerts and readings, small galleries like Ground Floor Gallery on Fifth Street showcase emerging artists, and the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music has been teaching here since 1897. Then there’s dinner: handmade pasta at Al Di La, brunch at Stone Park Cafe, and Israeli comfort food at Miriam. After dark there’s live music at Union Hall, the vintage living-room lounge at Skylark, and dancing and drag at Good Judy and Ginger’s.

Nothing sums up old and new Park Slope better than two of my favorite places to meet up with friends. At one end of the neighborhood is Farrell’s, the classic no-frills pub that has been serving Brooklyn since 1933, where the regulars have known each other for decades. I don’t drink alcohol, so when I’m there you’ll find me with an NA beer, catching up with friends. A short walk away on Seventh Avenue is Mockingbird, which opened in January 2025 as Park Slope’s first zero-proof cocktail bar. It’s a stylish, midcentury-modern lounge where every cocktail is alcohol-free, with trivia nights, live music and drag bingo on the calendar, and its housemade mocktails are some of the best in the city. One has nearly a century of history, the other is brand new, and both are exactly what a good neighborhood bar should be: a place where everyone feels at home.

Why I Call It Home

After more than ten years here, Park Slope still feels like a small town that happens to sit inside the greatest city in the world. I know my neighbors, I know the shop owners on my block, and I’m never more than a few minutes from the park, a great meal or a show. That mix of history, beauty and community is what I look for when I help clients find their next home.

Sources include the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, Brownstoner, Forgotten New York, Hoodline, BK Reader and amNY. Historical details come from published accounts; where sources disagree, we’ve noted it or kept to what’s widely documented.

About Jason Mezydlo

Jason Mezydlo is Managing Sales Partner at Gordon Realty Partners and has worked in New York City real estate since 2012. A graduate of the Harrington College of Design with a BFA in interior design, he brings a designer’s eye to every search, helping clients see what a space can become before they sign. Jason began his career in commercial leasing, guiding small business owners through site selection, lease negotiation and space planning, before moving into Manhattan’s luxury rental market and home sales across Manhattan and Brooklyn. A longtime Brooklyn resident, he pairs market expertise with a deep love for the city’s history, art and architecture.

347.286.5797 · jason@gordonrealtypartners.com · JasonMezydlo.com · @JasonMezydlo
Gordon Realty Partners · 622 3rd Avenue, New York, NY · NYS Licensed Real Estate Salesperson

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