Cobble Hill, Brooklyn
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Cobble Hill is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, USA. Bordered by Atlantic Avenue on the north, Hicks Street to the west, Smith Street on the east and Degraw Street to the south, Cobble Hill sits adjacent to Boerum Hill and Brooklyn Heights with Carroll Gardens to the south. The neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community Board 6.
The area was historically Italian and is centered on two main roads - Court and Smith Street. Family-run shops are Cobble Hill's biggest attraction; Italian meat markets (such as Staubitz Meat Market on Court St.) and old time barber shops mixing with trendy new restaurants. Smith Street is known as Brooklyn's "Restaurant Row" due to the large number of eateries and watering holes that opened on the street during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Cobble Hill Park, at the intersection of Congress and Clinton Streets, was reconstructed in 1989 and reflects the brick and stone character of this tree lined neighborhood. Cobble Hill is also renowned for its private Italianate style brownstone and brick row houses. Many of these buildings were remodeled according to regulations dictated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission as the gentrification of the eastern and southern borders of this designated Historic District took hold. Until the 1970s, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens were, together, known as "South Brooklyn", even though they are in the northwest portion of the borough, because they were south of the original settlement in what is now Brooklyn Heights and Downtown Brooklyn. The neighborhood is served by the Bergen Street IND Culver Line (F G) subway station. This station has an unused lower level; it was in full use in the 1970s for express trains, which were common then because the neighborhoods to the south (such as Park Slope) were more populous.[citation needed]
[edit] Trivia
The Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn is the birthplace of Winston Churchill's mother. There is a plaque noting this on Henry Street near Kane Street, but the actual birthplace was a few blocks north on Amity Street.
Hannah Miles (Jazz musician) was born on Strong Place.
Cobble Hill was mentioned in the song "Nettie", from Type O Negative's 2003 album Life is Killing Me. The song was written about vocalist Peter Steele's mother, who was a Cobble Hill resident.
Motherless Brooklyn, a novel which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, by Jonathan Lethem, takes place in Cobble Hill.
[edit] Education
There are three schools in Cobble Hill. Public School 29, also known as the John M. Harrigan school, is located on Henry Street and has one of the best records in the city for extracurricular activities. Also, the building which was formerly home to Intermediate School 293 (which closed in 2001 due to poor performance), now containts two 6-12th grade schools with the Brooklyn School for Global Studies occupying the top floor, and the School for International Studies on the bottom floor.
