Flatbush Mansions & more • Brooklyn, NY • 8/14/23

For this video I went to document Victorian Flatbush in Brooklyn, NY, which is full of beautiful historic homes, stately mansions and cool landmarks. There’s more to Flatbush, like Brooklyn College, The Junction, Kings Theater, etc, but I stayed in the Victorian zone to focus on these houses. I drifted into Ditmas Park a little also, since the cool houses just keep going, but that's still Flatbush. This area is basically Ocean Avenue on the east, Coney Island Avenue on the west, Church Avenue on the north and Avenue H on the south. The Q local subway train stops at Beverley Road and Cortelyou Road, where as the Q local and the B express both stop at Newkirk Plaza. These stations are right in the middle of this neighborhood. A few blocks east of Ocean Avenue is Flatbush Avenue, which runs all the way from the Manhattan Bridge out to the Marine Parkway Bridge, which takes you to the ocean and places like Riis Beach, Breezy Point and The Rockaways. The detached houses built here were designed in fashionable styles including Victorian, Queen Anne, shingle style, colonial revival, neo-Tudor, Spanish Mission and Georgian, with porches and columns, and in many cases bay windows, turrets, and stained glass. The area resembles other parts of the US more than it does the rest of New York. It is one of the largest collections of Victorian houses in the country. Flatbush’s architectural splendor can be attributed to the development boom it experienced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At that time, a slew of real estate developers bought up farmland in the Flatbush area of Brooklyn and constructed residential suburban neighborhoods. This boom was spurred by many factors, including new transportation lines that connected the borough to Manhattan, the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883, and the opening of Prospect Park in 1867. Developers who descended upon Flatbush wanted to create neighborhoods within the urban context that felt like they were in the country. The country within the city neighborhoods adopted the format of grid pattern streets lined with single-family homes. Prospect Park South is one of the earliest examples of this type of development and influenced other developments in the area. Be on the lookout for a few amazing structures such as: The Japanese House, The Tara of Prospect Park, The Grandest Colonial Revival, The Sophie's Choice House and The Bed and Breakfast. Lots of amazing architecture, designs and landscaping making this a truly unique area, especially in the large, diverse NYC borough of Brooklyn. Enjoy the tour! FEATURES: 0:00 Cortelyou Rd 0:48 Marlborough Rd 4:00 Ditmas Ave 6:09 E17th St 11:15 Ditmas Ave 12:20 E18th St 17:23 Ditmas Ave 18:18 E19th St 25:35 Glenwood Rd 26:18 Ditmas Ave 27:23 Ocean Ave 30:17 E19th St 30:47 Cortelyou Rd 31:40 Rugby Rd 32:37 Bed & Breakfast 36:03 Albemarle Rd 36:52 Argyle Rd 37:48 Albemarle Rd 38:13 Westminster Rd 39:37 Albemarle Rd 41:01 Mega Mansion 41:37 Rugby Rd 42:43 Sophie's Choice 43:53 Marlborough Rd 46:21 Buckingham Rd 48:48 The Fortress 49:42 Japanese House 50:18 Blue Bklyn Temple 51:09 Beverley Rd 52:08 Stratford Rd 53:24 Albemarle Rd