Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn

Windsor Terrace is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn and straddles the former border between the City of Brooklyn and the town of Flatbush, which combined in 1894. It is bounded by Prospect Park to the northeast and Green-Wood Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark, to the southwest. Its southeastern boundary is Caton Avenue, while to the northwest it is bounded by Prospect Park West. It lies between the neighborhoods of Park Slope to the northwest and Kensington to the southeast.

The subway arrived in 1933 with the building of the IND South Brooklyn Line, the "Culver Line," which includes the F and G train stops at 15th Street-Prospect Park and Fort Hamilton Parkway.

Largely residential, Windsor Terrace is home to mainly Irish, German-American, Polish-American and Italian-American families, many having settled in its brick rowhouses and small woodframe homes when the neighborhood was first developed at the turn of the 20th century. Windsor Terrace has become increasingly diverse, including Latino, Greek and Hispanic people, in addition to a small minority of Syrians, Maronite Lebanese and Jewish-Americans. More recently, an influx of suburban and Manhattan refugees as a result of "gentrification" has pushed house prices well above average.

The Prospect Expressway, built in the late 1950s, runs through the neighborhood, effectively dividing it in half. Some neighborhood streets, including Greenwood Avenue and Vanderbilt Street, were bisected by the expressway and remain so, while others, including Seeley Street, 11th Avenue/Terrace Place, and Prospect Park West, are bridged over the expressway. Windsor Terrace is served by the NYPD's 72nd Precinct.

Windsor Terrace lays claim to several writers of note, including Pete Hamill and brother Denis Hamill. Paul Auster, perhaps Brooklyn's current favorite laureate, lives nearby. Isaac Asimov lived in Windsor Terrace when his father ran a small candy store on Windsor Place. It is believed Asimov wrote his famous short story Nightfall in his bedroom in the family home across the street.

In film
Most of the 1975 Al Pacino film Dog Day Afternoon was filmed on Prospect Park West between 17th Street and 18th Street in Windsor Terrace. In 1995, director Wayne Wang's sister movies Smoke and Blue in the Face were filmed at the former Postal Service location at the corner of 16th Street and Prospect Park West, in conjunction with well known local writer Paul Auster. 1997's As Good as It Gets shows Oscar winners Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt walking through wonderful streetscapes of Prospect Park West (known as 9th Avenue to locals and people in the know) and past the beautiful row houses that characterize the neighborhood. Farrell's Bar & Grill, also at 16th Street and Prospect Park West, is an old and famous institution (as seen in the film Pollock with Ed Harris), used as a standard bar backdrop in many other film sequences. Scenes from Ragtime (E.L. Doctorow), Brighton Beach Memoirs (Neil Simon), Pete Hamill's The Gift and Denis Hamill's Turk 182 were all shot in Windsor Terrace. The Darren Aronofsky movie π has several subway shots made in the 15th Street-Prospect Park station. The opening scene in the Geena Davis movie Angie was also shot in Windsor Terrace, on Fuller Place (one street up from Howard Place, where Helen Hunt's character lived in As Good as It Gets). Alanis Morissette filmed the music video for Hand In My Pocket from her album Jagged Little Pill on Prospect Park West between Windsor Place and 16th Street during August 1995.