Greenwood Heights is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn that takes part of its name from the neighborhood proximity to the Green-Wood Cemetery. The much-debated borders are, roughly, the Prospect Expressway to the north, Gowanus Canal to the west, Eighth Avenue to the east, and 39th Street to the south (southern boundary of the Green-Wood Cemetery and northern boundary of the 36th-38th Street Yard and South Brooklyn Railway).
Greenwood Heights is a mixed neighborhood of Hispanics, older Polish American and Italian American families, Chinese, Black, and middle class Brooklynites who have relocated from other higher-priced neighborhoods.
Greenwood Heights’ architectural mix of wood fame, vinyl sided and brick homes gives the area an eclectic look and feel, different from its neighbors Park Slope to the north and Sunset Park to the south.
Recent new real estate development, curbed with the rezoning of the area in November 2005, has brought an influx of luxury condominium apartments into a residential area that was mainly made up of 1- and 2-family homes. Post-rezoning, while new development sites have occurred, there has been a new trend of home renovations (many of them “gut renovations”), taking many of the neglected c. 1900 wood frame homes and restoring them to their turn of the 20th century historical look.
The neighborhood is served by the 36th street 25th street, and Prospect Ave stations on the New York City Subway’s BMT 4th Ave line, served by theD N R trains, and has a primary school, Public School 172.
It was one of the sites of the sprawling Battle of Brooklyn (Battle of Long Island) in August 1776, a pivotal battle in the American Revolutionary War to famous residents of Green-Wood Cemetery. In the 19th through middle 20th centuries the economy was dominated by the working Brooklyn waterfront.
