For 125 years, Holy Name Church has stood sentinel over Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn as the community has grown from a poor hillside community dotted with farms and orchards, stables and small frame houses to the thriving and desirable residential neighborhood of 16,000 we know today.
Ancient History
This part of New York has a very long history. What is now Windsor Terrace came into existence some 12,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age. During the Pleistocene era 1.5 million years ago, a great iceberg called the Wisconsin ice sheet covered all of New York City. During its formation, this ice sheet pushed along rocks and boulders, forming a high ridge where it stopped advancing. This ridge is called a terminal moraine, and it forms the backbone of Long Island, as well as the high elevation of Eastern Parkway and Park Slope--and Windsor Terrace--straight through Bay Ridge and across the Narrows, where it rises to meet its high point in Todt Hill, Staten Island. As it warmed up, the iceberg retreated, gouging valleys into the earth; at the same time, torrents of melting ice and dislodged rocks poured down its sides, forming not just the slope but the expansive outwash plain that stretches from 9th Avenue down and out to the ocean. Even the clay-like soil of our neighborhood is attributable to this ancient geological event. Simply walking through Green-wood Cemetery, with its many hills and valleys, can show what the resulting terrain was like before it was graded for farming and development.
First Settlers
Shortly after the ice sheet retreated, humans began arriving in this region. These ancient people relied on hunting to feed themselves and so may have been nomadic. Over the centuries, as the region continued to warm, thick pine forests sprang up, and people began settling throughout what is now New York City. These early Americans, who were part of the larger Delaware tribe, called themselves Lenape, meaning "people" in their language. The Lenape were divided into many groups that were identified by the names for the areas where they settled. Thus the original inhabitants of Windsor Terrace were known as the Gowanus and Werpos Indians.
Dutch Uncles
By the mid-1630s, Dutch farmers began settling in Brooklyn, which they called New Netherland. The forests that studded the outwash plain inspired the Dutch to call this area vlacke bos, or wooded plain, and remained in parts of the area for centuries. In fact, a last section of Brooklyn’s original forest still stands in Prospect Park, as does the Lefferts house, an old Dutch dwelling. Among the early arrivals was John Vanderbilt, who received a land grant from the Dutch West Indies Company for most of the property that would eventually become the lower, or southern part of Windsor Terrace. Following his death, his huge estate was divided among his heirs but it continued to be farmed by his descendents for nearly two centuries. In addition to farmland, sections of primeval forest remained between Seeley Street and 10th Avenue well into the 1940s. The higher part of what we now call Windsor Terrace was part of another large farm that was owned by John and Peter Wyckoff and stretched from Vanderbilt’s property down to Gowanus Bay. In the course of the Battle of Long Island during the Revolutionary War, Washington’s Army crossed these fields—maybe even passing through where your house is now! The paths originally beaten by Native Americans were followed and maintained by these European settlers. Old footpaths through the valley were numbered from west to east. There was a First Woods Road (still used and now known as McDonald Avenue), a Second Woods Road (Prospect Avenue today) and a Third Woods Road (which became the Coney Island Plank Road in 1849 and is now Coney Island Avenue, blacktop having long ago replaced the wooden planks that kept it usable in wet weather).
In the early part of the nineteenth century, the then-unnamed hilly rural community seemed very far away from the rapidly urbanizing island of Manhattan and its main suburb, Brooklyn Heights. When Green-Wood Cemetery was commissioned in 1838 as meditative green gardens, this undeveloped area, with its scenic overlook of the harbor and the city, was deemed the perfect locale. Within a few years—and especially after Governor DeWitt Clinton was buried there in 1844—the cemetery became a popular destination not only for burials but also for carriage rides and picnicking. The city leaders of Brooklyn took note of this popularity and began planning a city park to rival Green-Wood as an attraction. As a result of all this tourist traffic and rumors of development, the value of the surrounding farmland escalated dramatically and houses began springing up along the only paved road, Prospect Park Southwest, still known then as the Coney Island Plank Road.
	HOME