Bensonhurst, Brooklyn: The 1677 Church and Bensonhurst-by-the-Sea

The burial ground beside the New Utrecht Reformed Church was consecrated in 1654, two years after Werckhoven took over the land, and about 1,300 people are interred in it. Standing among the stones is the Liberty Pole, the sixth on the site of the present church, raised in 1783 at the end of the Revolutionary War to harass departing British troops.

The congregation itself was established in 1677 and its present sanctuary was built in 1828, on 18th Avenue between 83rd and 84th Streets. The building was designated a New York City landmark on March 15, 1966, with the designation extended on January 13, 1998 to cover the parish house and the cemetery, and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 9, 1980, with a boundary increase in 2001.

The farmland that became Bensonhurst belonged to Egbert Benson. His descendants sold it to James D. Lynch, whose first lot sale under the name Bensonhurst-by-the-Sea was advertised in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on July 24, 1888. What followed was an Italian and Jewish neighborhood through the middle of the twentieth century. Beginning around 1989, Chinese and Russian and Ukrainian immigrants arrived in large numbers, and by 2000, according to the city's Department of City Planning, just over half of Bensonhurst's residents had been born in another country.

Congregation Magen David, at 2017 67th Street, was erected in 1920 and 1921 to designs by Maurice Courland. It was designated a New York City landmark on April 24, 2001 and added to the National Register on April 15, 2004, and it remains in use for daily and Shabbat prayers.

New Utrecht High School opened in 1915 and moved to its present building at 1601 80th Street in November 1924. Its alumni include Frank Sinatra, the boxer Paulie Malignaggi, the sports executive Art Modell, the opera singer Robert Merrill, the producer Tony Visconti, the psychologist Walter Mischel and David Geffen, and the building appeared in the 1947 film It Happened in Brooklyn and in the television series Welcome Back, Kotter.

Seth Low Playground covers five acres bounded by Stillwell Avenue, Bay Parkway, West 12th Street and Avenue P, on the former site of Indian Pond, which was filled with incinerator ash in 1896. The city acquired the ground in 1924 and named it for the former mayor in 1987; Bealin Square within it was dedicated on July 5, 1927, and a renovation between 2013 and 2017 replaced asphalt ball fields with turf.

Once a year, in late August or early September, the Festa di Santa Rosalia fills 18th Avenue between Bay Ridge Parkway and 66th Street.

Bensonhurst is well supplied with stations. On the BMT West End Line the D calls at 71st Street, 79th Street and 18th Avenue, all in Bensonhurst; at 20th Avenue, on the border of Bensonhurst and Bath Beach; and at Bay Parkway, recorded in Bensonhurst, Bath Beach and Gravesend, where one southbound R and two southbound W trains also terminate on weekday mornings.

On the BMT Sea Beach Line, the N serves Bay Parkway at West 7th Street in Bensonhurst at all times, with the W on selected rush-hour trips. The 62nd Street and New Utrecht Avenue complex, on the border of Borough Park and Bensonhurst, is served by the D and N at all times, with the W on rush-hour trips and one southbound R terminating there in the rush.

On the IND Culver Line, Avenue N sits at the junction of Bensonhurst, Mapleton and Midwood and is served by the F at all times, with express service in the peak direction during rush hours.