Block Research

History At the neighborhood level, we researched individual buildings as well as broader patterns of development. Beginning with a thorough understanding of the early history of the study area, we created a timeline of significant events and trends in order to guide our more indepth analysis of the study area’s character-defining features. We refined building dates of construction from the rapid field survey using land conveyance records and real estate publications, and we also examined historic atlases to enhance our understanding of the commercial storefront development along Atlantic Avenue in particular. We concluded that the history of the study area exists not only in its architecture, but in the documented experiences of the people who built and used this historic fabric.

Planning At the city and neighborhood level we performed in-person interviews with various members of the community, including members of the Boerum Hill Association, the Atlantic Avenue BID, as well as other individuals. We created and send out online community surveys to determine the community's perpective on the impacts of historic districts on property values, the character of the neighbhorhood, supporting businesses, promoting tourism, etc.

Additionally we performed demographic research, collaborating with the history group to track the change in demographics from past to present using census records as well as surveys of the community to determine present demographics. Using further policy research we created geospatial analyses (by mapping the data we accumulated) to understand how the neighborhoods changed over time.

Conservation

At the block level we chose case study blocks throughout the study area, selecting a series of blocks that fell inside and outside of the study area

We began our analysis by selecting a few case study blocks in the study area. We decided to study a small sample within the greater study area because the time and effort necessary to gather the data and conduct the historic photo analysis for the entire study area would have been prohibitive within the time constraints of this studio. We developed a methodology for data collection with respect to conservation, and we limited our choices according to the availability of early tax photos. For the selection of case study blocks, we used the overall conditions map that was produced using the initial raw data from the initial survey as our starting point. Based on the map, we looked for blocks that exhibited some distinctive characteristics both within and outside the historic districts of Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill. We chose the following eighteen case study blocks: Wood houses in Cobble Hill Source: student photographs