Neighbor News
The History of Ebbets Field Apartments Complex
The history of the housing complex, home to 1300 residents, located at the ballpark in Pigtown where the Brooklyn Dodgers made their name.
The modest site located between Brooklyn’s Crown Heights and Prospect Lefferts Gardens neighborhoods, before it was a gigantic apartment complex, it was the proud home of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Before that, it served as a home to generations of families, and thousands of pigs.
This part of the district was known as Pigtown in the period from the late 19th century and the early 20th century. It was a poor neighborhood, which was a home of Irish and Italian immigrants. Shanties, ash dumps, garbage piles, and, of course, pig farms with their associated stench were the characteristics of this neighborhood.
Charles Ebbets, Brooklyn Dodgers owner, bought a plot of land in Pigtown in 1912, for a new field to be bounded by Bedford Avenue on the East and Sullivan Place on the South. This marked the beginning of this neighborhood as a developed, urban neighborhood.
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Ebbets Field was sold to a local real estate developer for more than $1 million ($9 million in today’s dollars) in 1956.
The baseball park was demolished in February, 1960. Ebbets Field Apartments complex was was completed two years later. It was the largest state-subsidized housing complex in the five boroughs at that time. The complex served as a home to 1,317 families.
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At 1980, the company Fieldbridge Associates LLC bought the housing complex and has done some significant improvements to the building.
Nowadays, this housing complex provides has 1, 2 & 3 Bedroom apartments along with large studios.
Most of the Ebbets Field Apartments units have balcony, spacious rooms, and great closet space, with gas and lights included. The west site-located units offer views of Prospect Park, the statue of liberty and the Manhattan skyline.
A small plaque read, “This is the former site of Ebbets Field”.
“Many residents had no idea of their home’s historic significance, as time went on,” says Shalom Drizin, Ebbets Field Apartments current landlorld.
Know Before You Go
Accessible off the Prospect Park Subway Station B/Q/S or the Franklin Ave 2/3/4/5/S or a short walk from Prospect Park.
