How Sunset Park got its name
September 22, 2025
Sunset Park offers stunning harbor views and a rich history, evolving from Dutch farmland to a diverse, multicultural Brooklyn neighborhood.
Sunset Park offers stunning harbor views and a rich history, evolving from Dutch farmland to a diverse, multicultural Brooklyn neighborhood.
Manhattan Beach began as farmland and became a Gilded Age seaside resort, later evolving into a quiet Brooklyn neighborhood.
East New York, settled in 1670 as New Lots, grew from farmland to a Brooklyn neighborhood shaped by history and 20th-century development.
Along with iconic New York, Coney Island, a peninsula on the Atlantic Ocean coast of Brooklyn, is a name known around the world.
Sheepshead Bay was named for a fish once common in the area. It now includes Homecrest, Madison, and Plumb Beach, a protected parkland.
Williamsburg evolved from rural Dutch land to a bustling village, later joining Brooklyn and growing with immigration and the 1903 bridge.
Windsor Terrace grew from Dutch farmland into a village by 1851, later shaped by Green-Wood Cemetery and the 1950s Prospect Expressway.
Boerum Hill, named for Simon Boerum, evolved from marshland to Mohawk enclave to a revived, gentrified Brooklyn neighborhood.
Bensonhurst began as part of Dutch New Utrecht, later named for the Benson family. It grew fast after 1915 and lost its gated status.
Bed-Stuy, formed from Bedford and Stuyvesant Heights, has deep Black roots in Weeksville and remains NYC’s largest Black neighborhood.
Bath Beach, named for English spas, lost its beach by the 1950s; it grew from Dutch roots and immigrant waves.
Brooklyn Heights, perhaps the best-known of all the Brooklyn neighborhoods, owes its name to the Dutch, with a tweak from the British.
Bergen Beach was developed as a modest-scale summer resort in comparison to neighboring Coney Island and Rockaway Beach.
Part of the original Dutch town of Flatlands, the Mill Basin area was called Equendito by the indigenous Canarsies, who sold it in 1664.
What many consider the first real Dutch settlement in the land that was to become Brooklyn was at Gowanus.
The origin of the name of this neighborhood may go back eons, when glaciers came down from the north as far south as New York City.
This neighborhood was settled in the 1640s, when Dutch Director-General Peter Stuyvesant began to allow farming north of Red Hook.
When Henry Hudson sailed into the harbor over 400 years ago, he saw Staten Island to his left and land shaped like an owl head on his right.
When Henry Hudson sailed into the harbor over 400 years ago, he saw Staten Island to his left and land shaped like an owl head on his right.