At the turn of the century, Crown Heights was one of the most desirable areas to live in New York City. Many of the mansions built between 1880 and 1920 remain, some in unlikely places. For those old enough to remember, Crown Heights is the scene of street violence between Hasidic Jews and Caribbean immigrants. The riots began on August 19, 1991 after the child of two Guyanese immigrants was accidentally struck and killed by an automobile in the motorcade of a prominent Hasidic rabbi. These tensions have receded over the years. The main thoroughfare through the neighborhood is Eastern Parkway, a tree-lined boulevard designed by Frederick Law Olmsted to complement Prospect Park.
There is an 1889 Victorian "fortress" that extends along much of the block on #920 Park Place (between New York and Brooklyn avenues), formerly the Brooklyn Methodist Church Home. At what was at one time a very prestigious address, St. Marks Ave. has some exceptional mansions, especially the Montrose Morris-designed 1892 eclectic brick and limestone Romanesque Revival mansion (#855-857) with the corner tower capped with a belled cupola. That cupola, phallic as can be, has spectacular surround inset windows, all four members of that block are splendid. A few doors down, opposite the Brooklyn Children's Museum, Russell Sturgis (art and architecture critic) designed the brownstone Romanesque Revival villa (#839) on the corner of St. Marks Ave. and Brooklyn Ave. Some cute whitewashed houses, looking very Dutch are on Prospect Place, next to the museum. The Museum had a $43 million expansion in 2007 and is an anchor to the neighborhood. Perhaps the most interesting mansion is on the corner of Brooklyn Ave. and Dean St., in need of TLC. It was built by the Parfitt Bros. in 1887 for the business man John Truslow. The brownstone design is punctuated by these little whimsical "pop-out" corner gables (see green gables in photo).
Notable former residents include Clyde Davis and Beverly Sills.
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