Flatbush, Brooklyn: Midwout, Erasmus Hall and Kings Theatre

Flatbush Avenue began as a Native American trail that Dutch settlers widened into a ferry road in the seventeenth century. It operated as a toll plank road for much of the nineteenth century and was straightened to its current alignment in the late 1920s. During the 1776 Battle of Long Island, American forces tried to check the British advance at a site now known as Battle Pass, inside what is today Prospect Park.

The Town of Flatbush stayed an independent municipality until it was annexed into the City of Brooklyn in 1894, shortly before Brooklyn itself joined New York City. Erasmus Hall Academy, founded in 1786 by Rev. John H. Livingston and Senator John Vanderbilt, became a public school in 1896; the city closed it as a single high school in 1994 after years of poor results and converted the buildings at 899-925 Flatbush Avenue into the Erasmus Hall Educational Campus, housing several small schools.

The neighborhood changed quickly after 1970, from about 89 percent white to about 30 percent a decade later, driven in part by blockbusting that pushed white residents to sell and leave. Stores along Flatbush Avenue and Church Avenue were looted during the citywide blackout of 1977. In 1997, officers from Flatbush's 70th Precinct sexually assaulted Abner Louima, a case of police brutality that resulted in what was then the largest individual payment, $8.7 million, in an NYPD brutality case.

Haitian immigrants began settling the Nostrand Avenue corridor in the 1960s and 1970s. The city officially designated the area from East 16th Street to Brooklyn Avenue 'Little Haiti' in 2018, and in 2021 the Newkirk Avenue subway station was renamed Newkirk Avenue-Little Haiti in recognition of the community.

Flatbush's boundaries are not fixed or official. The area is understood to encompass distinct sub-sections, and sources disagree about exactly where Flatbush ends and neighbouring East Flatbush, Midwood, Flatlands and Kensington begin.

Ditmas Park, one of those sub-sections, was built primarily between 1902 and 1914 on former farmland owned by the Ditmas family, developed in part by Lewis H. Pounds; it was designated a New York City historic district in 1981 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. Prospect Lefferts Gardens, a residential section within Flatbush, traces to 1893, when James Lefferts subdivided his family's estate into roughly 600 building lots with deed restrictions requiring detached single-family brick or stone houses of at least two storeys. Its current name, coined in 1968, combines references to Prospect Park, Lefferts Manor and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

This guide covers those sections in their own pages rather than folding them in here, which is the same treatment the sources give them: sometimes part of Flatbush, sometimes not.

The BMT Brighton Line runs the length of the neighborhood. Church Avenue, at Church Avenue and East 18th Street, is a Flatbush station served by the Q at all times and the B on weekdays. Beverley Road, in the Ditmas Park section, is served by the Q at all times; the B runs past without stopping. Newkirk Plaza, which sits across Flatbush and Ditmas Park, is served by the Q and the B. Avenue H, at Avenue H and East 16th Street, sits on the Midwood and Flatbush border and is served by the Q. Prospect Park, at Empire Boulevard and Flatbush Avenue near the Crown Heights border and next to Prospect Lefferts Gardens, is served by the Q at all times, the B on weekdays and the Franklin Avenue Shuttle at all times.

On the IRT Nostrand Avenue Line, Newkirk Avenue-Little Haiti at Newkirk and Nostrand Avenues is served by the 2 and the 5. Beverly Road, at Beverley Road and Nostrand Avenue, straddles East Flatbush and Flatbush and is served by the 2 at all times and the 5 on weekdays. Flatbush Avenue-Brooklyn College sits at the corner known as The Junction, bordering East Flatbush, Flatlands and Midwood, and is served by the 2 and the 5.