Carroll Gardens
Neighborhood Intelligence

Carroll Gardens is a South Brooklyn neighborhood known as an Italian-American enclave of brownstones with unusually deep front gardens, which also gave it its name. It was named for Charles Carroll, the only Roman Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence, whose name was already attached to Carroll Street and Carroll Park. The official area covered here, NYC Planning's Carroll Gardens-Cobble Hill-Gowanus-Red Hook, is broader: it also takes in Cobble Hill and its Cobble Hill Historic District, the industrial Gowanus Canal corridor, and the Red Hook waterfront.

Cobble Hill has one of the city's finest collections of nineteenth-century houses. The Gowanus Canal, now a federal Superfund site under cleanup, is lined with industrial buildings, studios, and newer residential projects, and the Coignet Stone Company Building at Third Street is one of its notable historic structures. Red Hook is a waterfront district with the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, the large Red Hook Houses public housing complex, and the arts center Pioneer Works, while Louis J. Valentino Jr. Park and Pier offers harbor views. Court Street and Smith Street are the main commercial corridors.