Midwood, Brooklyn: Vitagraph, Fiske Terrace and Avenue J

Vitagraph Studios built what is described as the first modern film studio in the United States here in 1906, on a site whose edges were Locust Avenue, East 15th Street, Elm Avenue and the right-of-way of the BMT Brighton Line. Warner Bros. acquired Vitagraph on April 20, 1925, renamed the site Vitaphone and produced sound shorts there until it closed in 1940. The Landmarks Preservation Commission declined to designate the building in 2008, citing the loss of its original architectural features, and it was demolished in 2015 for apartments. Only the smokestack still stands.

The residential grid has a landmarked piece of its own. The Fiske Terrace-Midwood Park Historic District, designated on March 18, 2008, covers roughly 250 houses developed from 1905 onward by the T. B. Ackerson Company; Wikipedia notes Ackerson personally built about 150 of them. Its boundaries are given as Foster Avenue, Ocean Avenue, the LIRR Bay Ridge Branch right-of-way and the BMT Brighton Line corridor, and it sits on the Midwood and Flatbush line. Ackerson also put up the northbound station house at Avenue H, in 1906, as the sales office for that development.

Two synagogues on the National Register mark the neighborhood's twentieth-century Jewish population. The East Midwood Jewish Center at 1625 Ocean Avenue was founded in 1924 by the dentist Jacob R. Schwartz; its building was completed in 1929 and listed on June 7, 2006 under reference number 06000478. The Kingsway Jewish Center at 2810 Nostrand Avenue was established as a congregation in 1928, and its Art Deco building of 1951, with eighteen windows by the artist Adolph Gottlieb, was listed on February 12, 2010 under reference number 10000010.

Midwood High School's main building at 2839 Bedford Avenue went up in 1940 as a Works Progress Administration project. It is an H-shaped Georgian Revival structure with six Ionic columns and a Georgian cupola, and a science annex opened across the street in 2008, linked to the original building by a glass bridge.

The Yeshivah of Flatbush was founded in 1927, and its elementary campus at 919 East 10th Street is in Midwood despite the name, a neighborhood Wikipedia's account of the school notes is sometimes identified with nearby Flatbush; roughly 2,500 students attend across its divisions. At 1202 East 9th Street, at Avenue L, Landau's Shul was established in 1952 by Rabbi Yechezkel Shraga Landau and moved into its present building around 1970; it picked up the nickname minyan factory after 1980 for running back-to-back minyanim, and Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Landau II leads it now.

The Brooklyn Public Library's Midwood branch, founded in 1912, moved several times before settling at 975 East 16th Street; it was rebuilt in the 1950s and again in 1998, and a public plaza was added in front in 2013. For open ground there is Kolbert Playground on Avenue L, 1.58 acres named for a fallen World War II soldier, and Andries Playground on Nostrand Avenue, just under an acre in city hands since 1947 and sharing its name with Andries Hudde, for whom the nearby junior high school is also named. NYC Parks lists both under Brooklyn Community Board 14, the district that covers Midwood.

Two subway lines run through the neighborhood. On the BMT Brighton Line, Avenue J and Avenue M are Midwood stations served by the Q. Kings Highway, on the border of Midwood and Homecrest, is served by the Q at all times and the B on weekdays. Avenue H, on the border of Midwood and Flatbush near Fiske Terrace, is served by the Q, and its northbound station house is an individual city landmark.

On the IND Culver Line, Avenue I is a Midwood station, bordering Mapleton, served by the F at all times with peak-direction express service. Avenue N, described as spanning Bensonhurst, Mapleton and Midwood, has the same service.

Flatbush Avenue-Brooklyn College, on the IRT Nostrand Avenue Line, sits at The Junction in Flatbush and is described as bordering Midwood to the southwest; it is served by the 2 and the 5.