This neighborhood, flanked by Green-Wood Cemetery to the west and Prospect Park to the east, was originally part of the Dutch town of Flatbush.
It was acquired from the Canarsee people by the Dutch, and eventually, a farmer named John Vanderbilt received a land grant for the area. Vanderbilt Street in the neighborhood’s southern half was named for him. Another large farm, in the northern half, was owned by John and Peter Wyckoff.
After John Vanderbilt died, the land was sold in 1849 by Jeremiah Vanderbilt to Robert Bell, a developer who named it Windsor Terrace, after Windsor, the town in England best known as the site of Windsor Castle, one of the official residences of the British royal family.
Bell soon sold it to Edward Belknap, who broke it up into 47 building lots, around which the village of Windsor Terrace was built.
The neighborhood was incorporated as a village in 1851 and started to be developed for housing soon after the completion of neighboring Green-Wood Cemetery, which became something of a tourist attraction.
Row houses were built on and near Prospect Park Southwest in the early 1900s before two-family houses and large apartment buildings were constructed.
The Prospect Expressway, built in the 1950s, runs right through the middle of the neighborhood.
