My Life In Brooklyn

Westbury Court is a short street, a dead end overlooking the subway tracks (Q & B). The building in the image is situated at the southwest corner of Flatbush Ave (684 Flatbush is the primary address). Quite often there are groups of young men and SUVs hanging around, not necessarily in front of this building, but definitely on the street giving it a somewhat ominous appearance.

We nearly moved to a similar dead-end street in this neighborhood when we were house hunting and now rejoice in the fact we didn’t. The local precinct commander once told a group -– when he was asked about dead-end streets and criminal activity -– whether we ever considered why cowboys in old westerns liked to take refuge in canyons. Simply put, it is a means to advantageously use the natural configuration of the land to observe all activity: who enters, departs, etc. I guess the theory has some logic to it.

Anyway, this building is dated 1929 and PropertyShark reports 95 residential units and 10 commercial units. I keep trying to imagine what it would have looked like in 1929. It has a certain charm to it, even with this paint.

When I started walking about Alvord’s development, I began researching it as well.  I know John Aitken landscaped much of that area originally.  This interested me for genealogical reasons that I will not detail here except to say he was a Scot with an impressive list of credentials from the Glasgow area.  As an example, this tidbit was in the 06 May 1900 edition of the Brooklyn Eagle.

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Brownstoner published a post today that talks about Victorian Flatbush.

I’ve been walking around Victorian Flatbush once a week for a while now. It made me want to sell our house and move to that neighborhood the first time I walked along Buckingham Road. I love the sense of suburban enclave in the midst of the city. The houses are drop dead gorgeous. Most anyway, some of the streets have some significantly newer homes that just do not fit in. Plus the appeal of a larger yard is always a huge draw for me because I love gardening. In fact yesterday my husband and I drove around that area just looking — he was tired of hearing me talk about it and wanted to see the place.

I do wonder what it is like actually living there. Having lived in the suburbs of western Massachusetts for many, many years, moving to Brooklyn—albeit from Manhattan—has been an interesting experience. People walk here. They walk past your house, sometimes everyday, and get on the subway or bus to work. They walk to stores. They walk to the park. And most of them say hello at least, and sometimes they stop to chat for a few minutes. After a while you learn their names and the names of their kids. There is a sense of connectivity. The houses here are significantly closer to the sidewalk than those in Victorian Flatbush and ultimately—like it or not—you get to know your neighbors.

In all honesty I know more people on my street now than I knew on the street where I lived for 10 plus years in Massachusetts. And that goes for Manhattan too, though I did know a group of alternate side parking regulars who were a friendly, entertaining group.

Some closer levels of community and neighborhood are not for everyone and I get that, but I have never felt the level of familiarity here something that was suffocating in any way. Still I cannot help but wonder what it is like to live in Victorian Flatbush in terms of community and the day-to-day familiarity. I could be wrong, but it just seems the physical layout of the place might not be conducive to interacting with neighbors in the same way people do here. Despite the fact so many homes have the Great American Front Porch. Of course if you it could be perfect for you, but as someone who has mostly lived in suburbia it isn’t something I am ready for again. Not yet. Though I won’t lie to you — there are occasions where I would have happily traded neighborhoods for even the suggestion of quiet.

At any rate, I would love to hear what it is actually like living there, not in the houses, but the community.