Fort Greene, Brooklyn: A Neighborhood With Many Faces

Amid New York’s variegated urban landscape, Fort Greene has been known since the 19th century for its low-rise human habitat: intimately scaled, tree-lined blocks of brownstones, brick rowhouses and occasional frame houses. But a lofty new habitat is emerging on the neighborhood’s western edge, as a forest of mixed-use towers rises in the Brooklyn Cultural District around the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Peter Jay Sharp Building on Lafayette Avenue. Incorporating more than 1,200 new apartments into a kind of high-rise Lincoln Center, the district will be home in the next few years to more than 400,000 square feet of cultural space, including performance, rehearsal and studio facilities.

“The idea was always concentrating great culture together in a small area to spur economic development and provide the people of this area with great cultural options,” said Andrew Kalish, the director of cultural development for the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, a public-private local development corporation.