What're The Borders of Park Slope, Anyway?

Over at Curbed, Keith Williams takes a look at the always changing, always contended,  borders of Park Slope. It’s a nice reminder that this battle for bragging rights and better real estate listings has been raging for over a century. 

My Park Slope was more-or-less the one in the 1981 map that remained relatively unchanged until 1993. I assume that a lot of people who call themselves natives tend to agree. Even though we all wouldn’t call that area the “no-go zone.” We’d just call it sketchy.

 

But anyone who has stuck around has pretty much grown to accept the changes. The “no-go zone” today is far from sketchy in most possible ways. It’s hip enough and still on the physical slope, that you may as well call it “Park Slope.” Or “North Slope.” Or whatever the real estate market wants to call it these days.

If there’s one thing I’m sure of, though, it’s that the Slopers of 1904 would be disgusted at how much of Brooklyn we’ve given the Slope label to. In their day, Park Slope only ran from 5th Ave and 9th Street to Grand Army Plaza and they had to trek through 3 miles of snow without shoes to get to here every day. They didn’t need to change borders or make up neighborhoods because they worked hard for their Park Slope.

VIA CURBED