Photograph by George Steinmetz @geosteinmetz / @thephotosociety Brooklyn’s Prospect-Lefferts Gardens was originally a Dutch farmstead in northern Flatbush Village. James Lefferts divided a portion of his property into 600 building lots in 1893, at a time of rapid urbanization, when Brooklyn was the third largest city in the U.S. By the time most of the houses were built, it had become part of the City of Greater New York (1896) and the subway had reached this section of Brooklyn (1905). #Lefferts insisted on deed restrictions that required the new houses to be brick or stone single-family residences, at least two stories with a cellar, selling for more than five thousand dollars.
