Atlantic Gardens History

Atlantic Gardens is at the east end of the Boerum Hill Neighborhood, close to Fort Greene, Park Slope, and Downtown Brooklyn.

Boerum Hill is named for the colonial farm of the Boerum family that occupied most of the area. Most of the housing consists of three-story row houses built between 1840 and 1870.

This neighborhood was featured in two of Jonathan Lethem's books: The Fortress of Solitude, set primarily on one block in Boerum Hill , and Motherless Brooklyn, which is centered on Bergen Street, between Smith Street and Hoyt Street. In the 1950s, all the neighborhoods south of Atlantic Avenue and west of Hoyt Street were called South Brooklyn, which derived its name from being south of the original town of Brooklyn (now Brooklyn Heights) which had been settled by the Dutch.

Atlantic Avenue has long been a primary commercial corridor in Brooklyn, connecting the cultural district around the Williamsburg Bank building and Brooklyn Academy of Music to the Atlantic Avenue Waterfront, currently undergoing a major redevelopment as a waterfront park, residential development, and recreation area.