Stuyvesant Heights, Brooklyn: A 577-Building Historic District Inside Bed-Stuy

Most of the neighborhood's rowhouses and apartment buildings with ground-floor storefronts were built between about 1870 and 1920, with development accelerating sharply between 1895 and 1900.

The Stuyvesant Heights Historic District covers 577 contributing residential buildings from roughly 1870 to 1900, mostly two- and three-story high-basement rowhouses in Italianate, Second Empire and Queen Anne Revival styles, on streets including MacDonough, Decatur, Chauncey, Lewis and Stuyvesant. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 4, 1975, with the listed boundary expanded on November 15, 1996. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated an Expanded Stuyvesant Heights Historic District on April 16, 2013, extending the locally landmarked area north to Jefferson Avenue, east to Malcolm X Boulevard and west to Tompkins Avenue.

Three churches stand within the district and are named as its landmarks: Our Lady of Victory Catholic Church, Mount Lebanon Baptist Church and St. Phillip's Episcopal Church. Our Lady of Victory's parish was established in 1868, and its church of dark Manhattan schist trimmed in white limestone, at Throop Avenue and MacDonough Street, was built between 1891 and 1895 to designs by the architect Thomas F. Houghton.

Herbert Von King Park lies immediately west. Its eastern edge runs along Tompkins Avenue, the same street the Landmarks Preservation Commission uses as the historic district's western boundary, so sources describe the park as being in Bedford-Stuyvesant generally rather than in Stuyvesant Heights.

No subway station is recorded as sitting inside Stuyvesant Heights itself, so the useful stations are the Bedford-Stuyvesant ones on either side of it, and the buses that run along the historic district's boundary streets.

The IND Fulton Street Line runs beneath Fulton Street, the historic district's southern boundary street. Utica Avenue, at Utica Avenue and Fulton Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, is served by the A at all times, express by day and local late nights, and by the C at all times except late nights. Kingston-Throop Avenues, on Fulton Street between Kingston and Throop Avenues in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Ralph Avenue, at Ralph Avenue and Fulton Street, are each served by the C at all times except late nights and the A late nights only; the Ralph Avenue source names both Bedford-Stuyvesant and Ocean Hill.

On the elevated BMT Jamaica Line to the north, Halsey Street is served by the J at all times, and Gates Avenue and Chauncey Street each by the J at all times except peak-direction rush hours and the Z during peak-direction rush hours only. Sources place Halsey Street and Gates Avenue at the border of Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick, and Chauncey Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick; none of the three is assigned to Stuyvesant Heights.

Buses reach the district more directly. The B25 runs mainly along Fulton Street, the historic district's southern boundary street, stopping at Tompkins, Lewis and Stuyvesant Avenues. The B46, local and Select Bus Service, runs along Malcolm X Boulevard, the district's eastern boundary street. The B15 runs south from Woodhull Medical Center on Marcus Garvey Boulevard southbound and Lewis Avenue northbound, and Lewis Avenue runs through the district's interior. The B26 reaches Halsey Street by way of Fulton Street, Putnam Avenue and the Nostrand and Bedford Avenue corridor.