Day: October 5, 2026

In 1963, at least a dozen banks refused to lend $32,500 on a brownstone at 272 Berkeley Place in Park Slope, Brooklyn. In 2025, a townhouse a few minutes’ walk away sold for $13.9 million. This documentary tells how Brooklyn’s unwanted brownstones became million-dollar homes, and how saving them changed who could afford to live there.

We follow Park Slope from the Battle of Long Island in 1776 at the Old Stone House, through Edwin Clarke Litchfield’s land purchases in the 1850s and Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s Prospect Park (1867). The Brooklyn Bridge (1883), the Fifth Avenue El (1889) and the Fourth Avenue subway (1915) turned farmland into a brownstone streetcar suburb. The video covers the Gilded Age Gold Coast on Prospect Park West, the Montauk Club designed by Francis H. Kimball, the 14th Regiment Armory, and Washington Park, where Brooklyn played baseball before Charles Ebbets moved the team to Ebbets Field.

Then the slow slide: wealthy families leaving for Flatbush, Westchester, Nassau County and New Jersey, brownstones divided into rooming houses, and the Fifth Avenue El closing in 1940. On December 16, 1960, United Airlines Flight 826 came down at Seventh Avenue and Sterling Place, and the missing cornice at 126 Sterling Place still marks the spot.

The comeback is the Brownstone Revival. Everett and Evelyn Ortner, Robert Mackla and the Park Slope Civic Council, Joe Ferris, the Brooklyn Union Gas “Cinderella” brownstone at 211 Berkeley Place, the Brownstone Fairs, Chase Manhattan’s $100 million lending commitment, the 1973 Park Slope Historic District, the Park Slope Food Coop and the Fifth Avenue Committee. Finally, modern Park Slope: record townhouse sales at 53 Prospect Park West and 535 First Street, the 2003 Fourth Avenue rezoning, the South Slope, and the old Fifth Avenue shop signs still hanging on.

If you remember old Brooklyn, brownstone Brooklyn, or Park Slope in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, this is the story of how the houses nobody wanted became the houses nobody can afford.

Sources:
The New York Times, Everett Ortner obituary (2012)
Brooklyn Eagle, Everett Ortner obituary (2012) and Park Slope plane crash anniversary article (2019)
Brownstoner, Brownstone Revival history by Suzanne Spellen (2024), redlining history by Suzanne Spellen (2016), and historic house articles
Park Slope Civic Council, Everett Ortner remembrances (2012)
NYU Center for Brooklyn History, Everett and Evelyn Ortner Papers finding aid
New York Preservation Archive Project, Everett Ortner oral history
NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, Park Slope Historic District Extension report (2012) and 14th Regiment Armory designation report (1998)
NYC Department of City Planning, Park Slope rezoning (2003)
WPA Guide to New York City (1939)
nycsubway.org, Fourth Avenue subway history
Wikipedia: Park Slope; 1960 New York mid-air collision; Montauk Club; Francis H. Kimball; 14th Regiment Armory; Fifth Avenue Line stations; Park Slope Historic District; Park Slope Food Coop; Park Slope Village; Francine Justa
Untapped New York, Park Slope plane crash
Brooklyn Public Library, “The 1960 Plane Crash That Rocked Park Slope” (2020) and Joe Holtz program (2025)
Roundabout Theatre Company, Park Slope plane crash article
NYC Urbanism, Park Slope plane crash (2019)
Scouting NY, “Pocket Change”
Forgotten New York, Fifth Avenue Park Slope and Conservation Plumbing articles by Kevin Walsh
One More Folded Sunset, Park Slope 1978 and Pete Hamill
Atlantic Yards Report (2007)
DNAinfo, Park Slope urban renewal site and Historic District coverage (2016)
NYU Wagner, Fifth Avenue Committee case study
Macaulay Honors College (CUNY), The Peopling of NYC: Park Slope
Brooklyn Ink, “The Costs of Rezoning” (2016)
Bklyner, Park Slope rezoning study coverage (2019)
Streetsblog NYC, Fourth Avenue rezoning (2011)
The Real Deal, Park Slope townhouse record sales (2023, 2025) and Fourth Avenue rezoning
6sqft, 272 Berkeley Place sale and Park Slope record sales
PropertyShark, Park Slope market trends (Q2 2026)
Milton Coste, Park Slope market report (2025)

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