Clinton Hill blog labels Crown Heights Stuyvesant Heig

I left a comment that they'll probably never read.

I just discovered, on the Wikipedia entry for "Crown Heights," that they label the borders kind of strangely (by my estimation):

Crown Heights is bounded by Washington Avenue (to the west), Park Place (to the north), Ralph Avenue (to the east) and Clarkson Avenue (to the south).

I mean, the Crown/Prospect Heights border has already been discussed to death, but "Park Place (to the north)" seems awfully south of where the border should be, yes? I mean, certainly Prospect, St, Marks, and Bergen are Crown Heights, too?

cccc wrote: These are the official borders of the two districts that encompass Crown Heights. One can look at all the districts in the city by looking at the NYC site for District Planning:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/lucds/cdstart.shtml
(Brooklyn District 8 and 9 include Crown Heights)

Does this mean that I'm actually a resident of Bed-Stuy because I'm on the north side of Park Place?

There is a book about Brooklyn neighborhoods that I skimmed through recently and it put the border of Crown Heights at Park Place as well. Seemed like a pretty glaring error so I didn't even bother picking the book up.

However, from conversations that I have had with at least one of the old timers in the neighborhood (the woman who I am thinking of lives on Bergen), apparently the northern border of Crown Heights was not always Atlantic. She told me that back when she was growing up, where she lived on Bergen was considered Bed Stuy. She said that at the time, Crown Heights had a much nicer reputation than Bed Stuy. She was so ashamed to admit that she lived in Bed Stuy that she would tell people that she lived in Crown Heights. She said she was thrilled when later in life the border changed to include her street and she could rightfully claim Crown Heights.

Other than her story, I've never heard about the old borders of Crown Heights. I have noticed that the names of some of the buildings further north have "Bedford" or "Stuyvesant" in their names. That's the only connection that I have seen to her story. Anybody know about or can verify the history of the Crown Heights borders?

I think a lot of this has to do with the creation of planning boards or, as they are now known, community boards in the 50's. The original Crown Heights community board extended from Atlantic to Empire and was generically known as Crown Heights. It was sliced into two pieces to provide for an Hasidic section (CB 9) and a non-Hasidic section ( CB 8 or North Crown Heights) many years ago.
Prior to planning boards, there were only zip codes and the zip code 11216 encompasses much of northern Crown Heights and Bed-Stuy. This might be why Bed-Stuy and northern CH got lumped together as they shared a common zip code.