Carroll Gardens Historic District

Carroll Gardens Historic District covers about 12 acres in South Brooklyn and includes more than 160 buildings, mostly two- and three-story brownstone rowhouses on Carroll and President Streets between Smith and Hoyt Streets. Built over roughly twenty years from the late 1860s to the early 1880s, the rows reflect the building boom that followed industrial growth in the Red Hook and Gowanus areas. Builders worked to keep setbacks, cornice lines and stoop heights consistent, mostly using late Italianate and neo-Grec designs. The blocks follow an 1846 surveyor's plan that created unusually deep lots, so houses sit behind front yards roughly 25 to 39 feet deep with fenced, landscaped gardens. Both streets are dead ends, which gives the area a secluded feel. Some houses have altered stoops, cornices or facades, and six buildings are considered intrusions, yet the district keeps its nineteenth-century residential character and scale.