DailyHeights

Susan says: “Crow Hill is really Crown Heights, but I’ve come to love the name and I probably sound a little pretentious calling it that. 🙂 Crow Hill was its pre-prohibition name. My book (The Neighborhoods of Brooklyn) tells me that when it was Dutch farmland, it was believed to have been called Crow Hill after its tallest hill, whose trees were always filled with crows.”

“The book also says that the name could have come from the mid-1800’s when there were African and African American settlements there, and the whites called them ‘crows’. A third story has it that the ‘crows’ were inmates in the Kings County Penitentiary that was there from 1846 to 1907.”

From the WPA Guide to New York City(1939) WPA Guide to New York City: “Crown Heights, for the most part a lower middle-class residential area, lies on both sides of the ridge of Eastern Parkway. The section was known as Crow Hill until 1916, when Crown Street was cut through.”

PHOTO: The Black Lady Theatre / Black Star Recording Studio, Nostrand Ave., Crown Heights [Bridge and Tunnel Club]

LINK: PH Trivia Because I Am Bored [Daily Heights Forums]