Ever wondered why the houses near the corner of Prospect Place and Underhill Avenue don’t adhere to the block’s right-angled grid? So did Prospect Heights resident (and Built Environment blogger) Josh Jackson, who got obsessed enough with the topic to start researching the block’s history:

One of my first theories was inspired by the High Line, an abandoned freight line on Manhattan’s West Side. At the turn of the century, the Vanderbilt railyard (now better known as the Atlantic Yards) was ringed by Brooklyn’s meatpacking industry. To facilitate the movement and loading of freight, the Armour Packing company built an elevated freight line to cross Atlantic Avenue.Perhaps, I imagined, the freight line cut southeast through Prospect Heights to the rotated block.

Was his initial hunch right? Nope. The answer lay, as he chronicles in the most recent issue of Lost Magazine, with the evolution of the Flatbush turnpike. Click on through for the play-by-play.
323 Prospect Place [Lost Magazine]