Greenwood Heights, Brooklyn
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Greenwood Heights is a neighborhood in the
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
borough of
Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
, named partially after the adjacent Green-Wood Cemetery. Greenwood Heights is a part of Brooklyn Community District 7 along with Windsor Terrace, Sunset Park and South Slope. The much-debated borders are roughly the
Prospect Expressway New York State Route 27 (NY 27) is a long state highway that runs east–west from Interstate 278 (I-278) in the New York City borough of Brooklyn to Montauk Point State Park on Long Island, New York. Its two most prominent co ...
to the north, Gowanus Canal and Upper New York Bay to the west, Eighth Avenue to the east, and 39th Street to the south (along the southern boundary of the Green-Wood Cemetery and northern boundary of the
36th-38th Street Yard The New York City Transit Authority operates a total of 24 rail yards for the New York City Subway system, and one for the Staten Island Railway. There are 10 active A Division yards and 11 active B Division yards, two of which are shared betwee ...
and South Brooklyn Railway). Greenwood Heights, originally considered to be located within South Brooklyn, was incorporated into Sunset Park in the 1960s. A separate designation for the neighborhood was created by the 1980s. Today, Greenwood Heights overlaps with both Sunset Park and South Slope. Greenwood Heights is a mixed neighborhood of
Hispanics The term ''Hispanic'' ( es, hispano) refers to people, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or Hispanidad. The term commonly applies to countries with a cultural and historical link to Spain and to viceroyalties former ...
, older
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and Italian families,
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,
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, and Brooklynites who have relocated from other higher-priced neighborhoods.


History

South Brooklyn was one of the sites of the sprawling Battle of Brooklyn ( Battle of Long Island) in August 1776, a pivotal battle in the
American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of t ...
to famous residents of Green-Wood Cemetery. In the 19th through middle 20th centuries the economy was dominated by the working Brooklyn waterfront. During the mid-20th century, what is now Greenwood Heights was also called Bush Terminal. The name applied to what is now the
Industry City Industry City (also Bush Terminal) is a historic intermodal shipping, warehousing, and manufacturing complex on the Upper New York Bay waterfront in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City. The northern portion, commonly cal ...
complex west of
Third Avenue Third Avenue is a north-south thoroughfare on the East Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan, as well as in the center portion of the Bronx. Its southern end is at Astor Place and St. Mark's Place. It transitions into Cooper Square ...
and the Gowanus Expressway. After the area was designated a "poverty area" in 1966, the area from 36th Street to the Prospect Expressway was incorporated into Sunset Park. As early as the late 1980s, the area was called Greenwood Heights. As the gentrification of South Brooklyn accelerated in the 2000s, the area was increasingly
rebranded Rebranding is a marketing strategy in which a new name, term, symbol, design, concept or combination thereof is created for an established brand with the intention of developing a new, differentiated identity in the minds of consumers, investors ...
as Greenwood Heights, or alternatively as South Slope. Recent new real estate development, curbed with the rezoning of the area in November 2005, has brought an influx of luxury condominium apartments into a residential area that was mainly made up of 1- and 2-family homes. Post-rezoning, while new development sites have occurred, there has been a new trend of home renovations, many of them "gut renovations" but others taking neglected c. 1900 wood-frame houses and restoring them to their historical look.


Architecture

Greenwood Heights' architectural mix of
wood frame Framing, in construction, is the fitting together of pieces to give a structure support and shape. Framing materials are usually wood, engineered wood, or structural steel. The alternative to framed construction is generally called ''mass wal ...
, vinyl sided and brick homes gives the area an eclectic look and feel, different from its neighbors Park Slope to the north and Sunset Park to the south.


Education

It has a primary school, PS 172. In 1995,
Al-Noor School Al-Noor School, Arabic alphabet, Arabic: مدرسة النور, is a co-ed gender-separated private school located in the Greenwood Heights, Brooklyn, Greenwood Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City, Brooklyn, NY. It is a school dedicat ...
, a private school teaching Arabic and Islamic culture was established between 20th and 21st streets on 4th Avenue.


Transportation

The neighborhood is served by the 36th Street, 25th Street, and Prospect Avenue stations on the
New York City Subway The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the government of New York City and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, an affiliate agency of the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Opened on October 2 ...
's BMT Fourth Avenue Line, served by the . The buses also serve the neighborhood.


References

{{Authority control Neighborhoods in Brooklyn