Park Slope Brownstones – 9th Street, Brooklyn, New York

Park Slope is a neighborhood in northwest Brooklyn, New York City. The neighbourhood takes its name from its location on the western slope of nearby Prospect Park. Fifth Avenue and Seventh Avenue are its primary commercial streets, while its east-west side streets are lined with brownstones and apartment buildings.

In the 1850s, a local lawyer and railroad developer named Edwin Clarke Litchfield (1815–1885) purchased large tracts of what was then farmland. Through the American Civil War era, he sold off much of his land to residential developers. With the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883, Park Slope continued to boom and subsequent brick and brownstone structures pushed the neighbourhood’s borders farther. The 1890 census showed Park Slope to be the richest community in the United States.

By the 1950s, many of the wealthy and middle-class families fled for the suburban life and Park Slope became a rougher, more working-class neighborhood. It was mostly Italian and Irish in the 1950s and 1960s, though this changed in the 1960s and 1970s as the black and Latino population of the Slope increased and many of the Italian and Irish population began to relocate. This white flight was epitomized in the 1970 film The Landlord. Gentrification began to take off throughout the 1970s. The area saw an influx of young professional couples. Gentrification accelerated during the 1980s and 1990s as working-class families were generally replaced by upper-middle-class people being priced out of Manhattan or Brooklyn Heights.

Park Slope is now considered one of New York City’s most desirable neighbourhoods. In 2010, it was ranked number 1 in New York by New York magazine. Park Slope features historic buildings, top-rated restaurants, bars, and shops, as well as proximity to Prospect Park, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the Brooklyn Museum, the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, and the Central Library as well as the Park Slope branch of the Brooklyn Public Library system.