Cobble Hill, Brooklyn : NYC Tourist Guide

Cobble Hill

Cobble Hill is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, USA. Bordered by Atlantic Avenue on the north, Hicks Street to the west, Court Street on the east and Degraw Street to the south, Cobble Hill sits adjacent to Boerum Hill and Brooklyn Heights with Carroll Gardens to the south. The neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community Board 6.

The area was historically Italian and is centered on two main roads - Court and Smith Street. Family-run shops are Cobble Hill's biggest attraction; Italian meat markets (such as Staubitz Meat Market on Court St.) and old time barber shops mixing with trendy new restaurants. Smith Street is known as Brooklyn's "Restaurant Row" due to the large number of eateries and watering holes that opened on the street during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Cobble Hill Park, at the intersection of Congress and Clinton Streets, was reconstructed in 1989 and reflects the brick and stone character of this tree lined neighborhood. Cobble Hill is also renowned for its private Italianate style brownstone and brick row houses. Many of these buildings were remodeled according to regulations dictated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission as the gentrification of the eastern and southern borders of this designated Historic District took hold.

Until the 1970s, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens were, together, known as "South Brooklyn", even though they are in the northwest portion of the modern borough, because they were south of Atlantic Street (now Atlantic Avenue), that being the southern boundary of the City of Brooklyn (now Brooklyn Heights and Downtown Brooklyn) during part of the 19th century. The neighborhood is served by the Bergen Street IND Culver Line (F G) subway station. This station has an unused lower level; it was in full use in the 1970s for express trains, which were common then because the neighborhoods to the south (such as Park Slope) were more populous.