Park Slope
Neighborhood Intelligence

Park Slope takes its name from its position on the western slope of Prospect Park. The land was mostly farms and woods until the early nineteenth century, and after Prospect Park was completed, mansions and rowhouses rose in the eastern section in the 1880s. The neighborhood is commonly divided into the North, Center, and South Slope, and Fifth and Seventh Avenues are its primary commercial streets, while the side streets are lined with brownstones and apartment buildings. Much of the neighborhood falls within the Park Slope Historic District, which is both a national and a New York City landmark district.

The Old Stone House, a 1933 reconstruction of the Vechte-Cortelyou House that figured in the 1776 Battle of Long Island, sits in J.J. Byrne Park. The Montauk Club on Eighth Avenue, built in 1889-91 in Venetian Gothic style, stands near Grand Army Plaza, and Congregation Beth Elohim, one of Brooklyn's largest Reform congregations, stands at Garfield Place and Eighth Avenue. The Park Slope Armory on 15th Street, the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, and NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital are among its institutions, and Grand Army Plaza and its Soldiers' and Sailors' Arch mark the northeast corner.