South Brooklyn



South Brooklyn is a region or composite neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, encompassing areas of Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Red Hook, Gowanus, Park Slope, and Boerum Hill. Thus it is roughly encompassed by Brooklyn Community Board 6, which in turn approximates the southern half of the 18th century Town of Brooklyn. The portion of the IND Culver Line that runs along Smith Street in South Brooklyn was originally known as the South Brooklyn Line. The New York City Police Department's 76th Precinct on Union Street serves South Brooklyn.

It is named for its location, south of the original City of Brooklyn. In the early 19th century all the area south of Atlantic Street, now Atlantic Avenue, was farmland and called Red Hook, and the portion south of the later Hamilton Avenue, now a southern part of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, was Red Hook Point. The part of the township south of Atlantic Street was annexed as southern part of the City in the middle 19th century, and is northwest of the center of the much larger modern borough. The somewhat historic name of South Brookyn has been revived in recent years to foster a closer connection among the constituent communities, though the name has always been popular nomenclature for the neighborhood's locals. The revived term was less often applied to Park Slope and Sunset Park, which had come to regard themselves as distinct. Since the early 50's, some kids growing up in the areas that make up South Brooklyn have affiliated under the name South Brooklyn Boys.

This hilly area is not to be confused with the actual southern region of the modern borough of Brooklyn, usually called "southern Brooklyn" or "the southern tier", which spans the neighborhoods of Sheepshead Bay and Coney Island, for example.