Who Knows Where the Crown Heights Border Lies?
Who is confused by the border line between Crown Heights and Prospect Heights? Neighborhood old timers know it is Washington Avenue, pictured above, but for real estate agents, newcomers and Yelp, confusion reigns, according to an article in DNAinfo. “The boundaries are simple,” said Atim Oton of Community Board 8. Washington Avenue is the dividing…
Who is confused by the border line between Crown Heights and Prospect Heights? Neighborhood old timers know it is Washington Avenue, pictured above, but for real estate agents, newcomers and Yelp, confusion reigns, according to an article in DNAinfo. “The boundaries are simple,” said Atim Oton of Community Board 8. Washington Avenue is the dividing line, she said. As Crown Heights becomes an increasingly popular place to live, the tendency to call its western edge Prospect Heights is lessening, said Nick Juravich, the I Love Franklin Ave blogger. Earlier this year, Yelp moved its border west to Washington. Yelp’s “boundaries were just wrong before,” said a Yelp spokeswoman. The borders are “arbitrary and dynamic,” city officials and residents quoted in the story agreed. Maybe DNAinfo should look into the border between Boerum Hill and Cobble Hill, which it seems no one agrees on.
Swath of Central Brooklyn Ceded Back in Neighborhood Border War [DNAinfo]
Ah, but rents and property values on Dean and Pacific between Washington and Grand Aves will command the same as rents and property values on Dean and Pacific between Underhill and Vanderbilt Aves. Now, I agree that people stretching the boundaries out to Franklin and Bedford Aves are just taking advantage of the situation, but this is a relatively new phenomenon. Those two blocks on Dean and Pacific east of Washington Ave have been considered part of Prospect Heights before the neighborhood became the “it” place. And those two blocks sell/rent for the same value as everywhere else in Prospect Heights, except the apartments on Eastern Parkway or the brownstones. To understand how much more complex the situation is, take note of the fact that Prospect Heights High School is located on Classon Ave. Everybody and their mother who grew up in that area understood that the high school was, in fact, in Prospect Heights.
I agree with you somewhat, except I’ll point out that the armory on Dean between Grand and Washington was once called “Crown Heights Boxing.” When we start talking about borders/boundary lines, one or two blocks doesn’t really make much of a difference. Prospect Heights High School, which is in an area that everyone who went to the school/goes to the new campuses have always called Prospect Heights, is actually on Classon Ave. When I moved into the area (I live less than four blocks away from the Barclays Center on Dean Street) in 1999, my block was called Prospect Heights. And this was before Prospect Heights took off as a destination . . . if anything, Crown Heights may have been a more desired neighborhood to many at that time, particularly the more residential parts of Crown Heights closer to the PH border (such as Dean and Bedford and Crown and Bedford, etc.). In fact, I would have been just as happy to call my block Crown Heights, but that’s not what anyone marketed it as and is not what our neighbors knew it as. Ultimately, from a home value matter today, whether I live in Prospect Heights or Crown Heights makes little difference to the bottom line, as I’m so close to the action regardless of where some want to peg my location. Still, I call my block Prospect Heights.
zackly76, your in-laws are silly.
check this out: “CHAPTER 515 OF THE LAWS OF 1907: AN ACT To authorize the City of New York to acquire lands on Prospect Heights in the Borough of Brooklyn as sites for public buildings.”