Park Slope takes its name from the ground. The land falls away from Prospect Park down to , and the side streets run across the slope.
Prospect Park was finished in the 1860s, and builders filled the blocks above it with brownstone and limestone rowhouses through the 1880s and 1890s. The largest went up along for the views, and the 1890 census found this the richest community in the country.
Most of that work is still standing. The Park Slope Historic District covers about forty blocks and 2,575 buildings, the largest landmarked neighborhood in New York. A side street will hold four and five storey houses from corner to corner, with very little newer construction on it.
and are where the shops are, low buildings with storefronts under the apartments. between them is mostly houses, with a storefront at the odd corner. at the bottom of the slope is wide and lined with newer apartment buildings.
The stands on Third Street between Fourth and s. It is a 1930 rebuild of the Dutch farmhouse that was on the Gowanus battlefield in 1776. The ball field beside it is the ground the Brooklyn Atlantics played on from 1879 until the park burned in 1889.
At the southern edge the runs below street level in a concrete trench. crosses it on a bridge, with rowhouses along the top of the retaining walls.
