Flatbush
Flatbush is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood consists of several subsections in central Brooklyn and is generally bounded by Prospect Park to the north, East Flatbush to the east, Midwood to the south, and Kensington and Parkville to the west. The modern neighborhood includes or borders several institutions of note, including Brooklyn College.
The area was home to the Canarsee people before contact with Europeans; many of the tribe's paths would become important roads through the region. Flatbush was originally chartered as the Dutch Nieuw Nederland colony town of Midwout, also called Vlachte Bos. It was one of the six original European towns on Long Island. The town remained primarily Dutch and rural in character until the latter half of the 19th century, when increasing rail and road connectivity to other parts of New York made it an attractive suburb to Brooklyn and New York City. The town was consolidated into the City of Greater New York in 1898 and was further connected to the rest of the city with the development of the New York City Subway in the early 20th century. Post-World War II, the neighborhood underwent tremendous demographic shifts, becoming home to increasing numbers of immigrants from the Caribbean, Asia, and elsewhere. In the late 20th century and 21st century it has continued to see changes due to gentrification and new immigrants.
Flatbush is part of Brooklyn Community District 14. It is patrolled by the 67th and 70th Precincts of the New York City Police Department. Politically, Flatbush is represented by the New York City Council's 40th and 45th Districts.
History
Colonial period
In the 16th century, western Long Island was inhabited by the Canarsee people, who called it Sewanhacka. The Canarsee and related Lenape tribes lived semi-nomadic lives, moving seasonally to follow food sources. Their crisscrossing trails through the area formed some of the early roads for the modern region. One of their primary settlements was located roughly at the current intersection of Flatbush Avenue and Kings Highway, named Keskachane or "council fire".Henry Hudson is reported to have landed on the island in 1609. Hudson was an Englishman working for the Dutch East India Company, and the Dutch established trading posts and settlements in their new colony of Nieuw Nederland thereafter, buying up land from the Canarsee One of the Dutch settlements was Midwout Dutch for "middle wood". Midwout was established inland, in a forested area bounded by hills to the north and flat open spaces to the south, which had been managed by the natives for cultivation and game purposes. The geography was created by the ancient glacier that once covered the area, leaving behind as it retreated the hills of the terminal moraine and a large outwash plain beyond. Midwout was settled between 1630 and 1636, and received a patent of township by 1652. In the following years it would also be known as Vlachte Bos or Flackebos, and the various names and spellings of the town were used interchangeably for nearly a century.
A church was built in 1654, replaced by another structure in 1698. The early settlement was enclosed by a palisade wall for protection. By 1658, it was the location of the courts and seat of Justice for the county. There were records of schoolmasters in the town from 1659. The north end of Midwout was called Steenraap, the main business center the Dorp, and the south end Rustenburgh or resting-place. Among the early colonists in Midwout who would rise to prominence was Leffert Pietersen Van Haughwout. Van Haughwout's family, later known as the Lefferts, would build a homestead in the 1680s in the north of town, now part of Prospect Lefferts Gardens. Other Dutch families would ultimately lend their names to the streets of the modern city. In its early years, Midwout came into conflict with its neighboring town of New Amersfoort over its borders, as well as with the local natives; in 1670 the Rockaway Indians challenged the Dutch claims, saying the Canarsee had no authority to sell the land. Midwout's leadership bought the land again to avoid trouble. By the end of the century most of the natives in the region were either dead by war or disease, or dispossessed of their ancestral lands; a few remained in Midwout as farmhands or servants for the Dutch.
In 1664, the English captured nearby New Amsterdam, and New Netherland was ceded to the English, remaining permanently in their hands after 1674 as New York. The towns of Long Island were united as Kings County in 1683. The borders of Midwout were fixed in 1685 in a new charter granted by Thomas Dongan, the English governor of New York province. The English "Flatbush" gradually supplanted the Dutch names for the town. The Dutch character of Flatbush remained despite the English takeover; Dutch landowners continued to exert political control, and Dutch remained the dominant language until the latter part of the 18th century. Marriage outside of Dutch social circles was discouraged, which helped retain Dutch culture and kept the inhabitants "clannish", in the words of one historian.
Early Dutch settlement of the area had focused on farming, which proved lucrative as nearby New York City grew. The need for labor spurred the importation of African slaves, making New York one of the largest slaveholding regions in the northern English colonies. Dutch slavery was less rigid and repressive than that of the Southern Colonies, but as the English assumed control of the region, harsher legal codes came into effect. The slave population swelled through the 18th century. In 1738, 29% of Flatbush's recorded population of 539 were slaves, jumping to 41% by 1790. The enslaved labor pool was also supplemented by indentured servants from the British Isles or Germany.
During the American Revolution, Flatbush demonstrated conflicting loyalties to either the loyalist or patriot causes. Patriot troops burned houses and farmland early in war to deny the British the resources. Landowners in Brooklyn were concerned that a full conflict between the Colonies and the British would result in loss of their critical source of slave labor. Parts of the Battle of Long Island took place in Flatbush; the patriots checked the British advance north at what is now known as Battle Pass, until they were surprised by a flanking attack. The town of Flatbush was occupied by the British for seven years, with British troops and American prisoners of war billeted in area homes. Some Flatbush residents maintained their loyalist sympathies: the King's Arms, for example, appeared in the town's inn for a half-century after the conclusion of the conflict.
For several decades after the Revolution, New York merchants and farmers continued to engage in the slave trade. The Gradual Emancipation Law of 1799 emancipated people of African descent born after July 4, 1799. Men and women escaping enslavement often went to Manhattan, where they could live within the community of free blacks. Slavery was fully abolished in 1827, though many former slaves continued to work as sharecroppers under their former owners.
19th century
Into the 19th century, Flatbush remained a slow-growing farming community. The opening of the Erie Canal shifted cultivation away from grains and towards market produce, with Kings County being the second-largest largest provider of produce in the country until the end of the century after Queens County. It remained isolated from the growing Brooklyn by open country. Prospect Park was developed from land partially in Flatbush, though it was wholly claimed by Brooklyn. The rural character of the town, however, would not last. In the second quarter of the century, a street grid was laid out, and the main north–south road was established as Flatbush Avenue. A stream of Irish and some German immigrants arrived in the area, comprising the majority of the rural labor force by 1860. Though Flatbush and Kings County did not support Abraham Lincoln's presidency in 1860, after the American Civil War broke out, Flatbush residents raised funds and soldiers for the war effort. Blacks fleeing the violence of the New York City draft riots found refuge in Flatbush and nearby Weeksville.Flatbush built a Town Hall in 1875, a few years after Flatbush and the other towns of Kings County avoided annexation by Brooklyn. The Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island Railway, established 1878, connected Flatbush to the pleasure spots at Coney Island and the Atlantic Coast to the south, and downtown Brooklyn and Manhattan to the north. The railways and the opening of bridges connecting Brooklyn to Manhattan began transforming Flatbush into a suburb. Towards the end of the century, the land was worth more if used for real estate than farming, and large landowners began selling off plots. John Lefferts divided his family's Flatbush homestead into 516 parcels, restricted by covenant to only be developed into single-family housing. These formed Lefferts Manor, containing possibly the neighborhood's earliest row houses. Another early development was Vanderveer Park, formed from 65 acres of the Vanderveer family's holdings. Like Lefferts Manor, Vanderveer Park traded on the Dutch history of the region to attract buyers. The developers of the new housing pitched Flatbush as a country oasis offering respite from the "cliff-dwelling" vertical living of Manhattan. Much of the development focused on the areas immediately south and east of Prospect Park, with the farther-flung areas remaining mostly rural and dotted with wood-framed houses.
Amid the construction of houses and the infrastructure to support them, Flatbush's population tripled in the decades before 1900. In the face of increasing urbanization, some community leaders wished for Flatbush and the outlying Kings County towns to retain their rural character. Resident and amateur historian Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbilt, writing in 1881, correctly predicted a coming merger with Brooklyn, and lamented that the Dutch character of the town was gone. The only remaining signs of its presence to her were "the reminiscences and traditions, while the old family names mark the localities still, as the projecting peaks mark the submerged rock."
In 1894, Flatbush was successfully annexed into Brooklyn. A reception hosting Brooklyn mayor Charles A. Schieren was held at the Midwood Club House, where Schieren called the former town "the prettiest and most fascinating suburban village of Kings County." Brooklyn itself was merged into New York City in 1898, a move opposed by many in Brooklyn and passed by just 277 votes.