Brooklyn Heights Historic District

As the first historic district to be designated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, Brooklyn Heights represents the outcome of a pivotal grassroots struggle to legally protect the character of a historic neighborhood from the threats of urban renewal. To this day, it remains one of the best-preserved and attractive nineteenth-century historic districts.

Originally named Clover Hill and settled by the Dutch as farmland, the elevated plateau, with its sweeping harbor views, was a strategic location during the Revolutionary War. By the turn of the nineteenth century, the Heights had begun to take on an increasingly residential character. Hezekiah Beers Pierrepont bought part of the Phillip Livingston estate in 1802 and, anticipating the development of the area, created streets on the property using the names of prominent local residents, such as Montague, Remsen and Joralemon. Brooklyn Heights functioned as a prosperous suburb to New York City, composed, as it still is today, of dignified brownstones, brick houses and stately churches.

Within the district there are fine buildings in the Federal, Greek Revival, Gothic Revival and Anglo-Italianate styles. It is especially rich in Greek Revival architecture: there are more than 400 examples of the style, including buildings by prominent architects Richard Upjohn and Minard Lafever. Ecclesiastical buildings of note include Lafever's First Unitarian Church, and the Plymouth Congregational Church, where clergyman and reformer Henry Ward Beecher once preached.

By the Depression, many of Brooklyn Height's founding families had fled, leaving behind a declining building stock and former single-family residences transformed into boardinghouses. The neighborhood became a haven for artists and writers. Poet W.H. Auden and novelist Thomas Wolfe once resided at the still-intact 1-13 Montague Terrace, and, in the early 1940s, the since demolished house at 7 Middagh Street, nicknamed “February House” by author Anais Nin, became a “commune” for intellectuals including writer Carson McCullers, Auden, composer Benjamin Britten, and performer Gypsy Rose Lee. Writer Truman Capote lived at 70 Willow Place while he worked on Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood in the early 1950s.

Since its designation, Brooklyn Heights has regained its status as a fashionable and elegant residential area. It retains numerous intact and interesting blocks, such as Sydney Place, and includes exquisite architectural examples of nineteenth century construction, among them the Alexander M. White House and Abiel Abbot Low House at 2-3 Pierrepont Place, designed by Frederick A. Peterson in 1857, two of the finest brownstones in all of New York City. ©2014