Windsor Terrace is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is bounded by Prospect Park to the northeast and Green-Wood Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark, to the southwest. Its southeastern boundary is Caton Avenue, while to the northwest it is bordered by Prospect Park West. It is between the neighborhoods of Park Slope to the northwest and Kensington to the southeast.
The subway arrived in 1933 with the building of the IND South Brooklyn Line, the “Culver Line,” which includes the F and G train stops of 15th Street-Prospect Park and Fort Hamilton Parkway.
Largely residential, Windsor Terrace is home to mainly Irish, German-American, Polish-American and Italian-American families, many having settled in its brick rowhouses and small woodframe homes when the neighborhood was first developed at the turn of the Twentieth Century. Over time, Windsor Terrace has become increasingly diverse, including Latino, Greek and Hispanic people, in addition to a small minority of Syrians, Maronite Lebanese and Jewish-Americans. More recently, an influx of suburban and Manhattan refugees as a result of “gentrification” has pushed house prices well above average.
The Prospect Expressway runs through the middle of the neighborhood, effectively separating it into two halves. Some neighborhood streets, such as Greenwood Avenue and Vanderbilt Street, were bisected by the expressway and remain so, while others, such as Seeley Street, 11th Avenue/Terrace Place, and Prospect Park West, are bridged over the highway. Windsor Terrace is patrolled by the NYPD’s 72nd Precinct.
Windsor Terrace lays claim to several writers of note, including Pete Hamill and brother Denis Hamill. Paul Auster, perhaps Brooklyn’s current favorite laureate, lives nearby. Isaac Asimov lived in Windsor Terrace when his father ran a small candy store on Windsor Place. It is believed Asimov wrote his famous short story Nightfall in his bedroom in the family home across the street.
