Photos for a book: "Above Ground Level, Park Slope"
Architectural Photo Poster, Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York
(This will be the book's cover)
After I had seen a book about London that showed architectural details of buildings, it occurred to me that many people never look up as they walk the streets of our cities and towns. They never notice how builders and architects have ornamented their creations, and I’m as guilty of this as the next person.
I have tried to show some of the many instances of artistic embellishment found on residential, public and commercial buildings in my neighborhood--Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York. For the most part, the architectural ornamentation in the photos are from typical buildings in Park Slope--those built for workers, as well as the better documented buildings built for the wealthy and elite.
Park Slope is an oddly shaped parcel of real estate bordering Prospect Park on the East, Flatbush Avenue on the North from Fourth Avenue to Grand Army Plaza, either Third or Fourth Avenue on the West (depending upon whom you ask), and Fifteenth Street, Prospect Avenue or the Prospect Expressway on the South (again, depending upon whom you ask). The land that forms Park Slope slopes downward from Prospect Park to the Gowanus Canal on the West and was partially the site of the Battle of Brooklyn during the Revolutionary War.
In the 1850s the land was purchased by the Litchfield family and a mansion was built just inside what is now Prospect Park at Fifth Street. The Litchfield Mansion still exists and is the Brooklyn headquarters of the New York City Parks and Recreation Department. In the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century the land was subdivided into streets and parcels and developed after the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge brought many new residents to Brooklyn from Manhattan. The more luxurious residences were built facing Prospect Park or on the streets immediately leading up to the park. Working class housing was built lower down the “Slope” and to the South of Ninth Street. There are two main commercial districts in Park Slope: Fifth and Seventh Avenues from Flatbush Avenue to about Prospect Avenue.
In 1973 part of Park Slope became a landmarked, New York City Historic District, thus preserving a large number of late Victorian brownstone, limestone and brick houses. Expansions of the historic district took place in 2012 and, again, in 2018.
(The photos for this book are no longer available online. I hope to correct that soon.)
© 2008-2012 by Michael Padwee. All rights reserved.