Ah, the view.
From atop a hill in Sunset Park, there are marvelous vistas of the harbor, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the Manhattan skyline and the setting sun.
This is the park, built in the 1890s, that gave its name to its surrounding neighborhood on Gowanus Bay in the west of Brooklyn, originally home to the Lenape people who farmed the area before the Europeans came in the 1600s.
The Dutch found the fertile soil and the waterways to their liking, acquired the land from the Canarsees and began farming along the waterfront.
It became more of an urban community after Brooklyn was incorporated as a city in 1834 and developed further with the construction of horsecar lines and factories in the area.
The neighborhood grew dramatically after Irving T. Bush purchased oceanfront property in 1895 and built Bush Terminal, a complex of piers, warehouses and factory lofts that made Brooklyn a major shipping port and Sunset Park into a bustling waterfront area.
The first documented use of the name “Sunset Park” for the neighborhood appears in a 1909 issue of the Brooklyn Eagle, which refers to it as Sunset Park Slope.
Indeed, Sunset Park is a prime example of how Brooklyn neighborhoods change ethnically as well as geographically.
It was settled by the Irish escaping the potato famine around 1845. Then, Scandinavians settled in sections that became known as Finntown and Little Norway. Hispanics came to the neighborhood, too. And now it is primarily known as the home of Brooklyn’s Chinatown.
The neighborhood has Greenwood Heights to its north, Borough Park to the east, Bay Ridge to the south, and the Upper New York Bay to the west.
