Myrtle Avenue - in Brooklyn

In Brooklyn

In the neighborhoods of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, the development of Myrtle Avenue was directly related to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, built in 1801.

In 1847 Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn's first park, was built on the south side of western Myrtle Avenue.

During World War II, the Navy Yard employed more than 71,000 people, many of them African American shipbuilders. As a result the demand for housing in the area increased, prompting the New York City Housing Authority to build the Walt Whitman and Raymond Ingersoll public houses on Myrtle Avenue in 1944.

By the early 1970s the vitality of Myrtle Avenue began to decline, mainly because of the decommissioning of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the curtailing of the elevated railway. At its nadir of decline, the street became known to many Brooklynites as "Murder Avenue".

The western end of Myrtle Avenue was closed to create the pedestrian-only MetroTech Center in the 1990s, so cars can no longer take Myrtle to Jay Street.

Today a revitalization movement is in effect by a collaboration of community organizations like the Myrtle Avenue Revitalization Project LDC (MARP), the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Improvement district BID, and the Myrtle Avenue Merchants Association. Some parts of Myrtle Avenue, for example around Pratt Institute, have recently become a main street of commerce with many trendy restaurants and boutique retail shops.

The Brooklyn stretch of Myrtle Avenue is served by the B54 bus line. The M train also runs above Myrtle Avenue through Bushwick and a small stretch through Bedford Stuyvesant.