Seven secrets of Park Slope, Brooklyn (2024)

The grand Park Slope Armory was built for the 14th Regiment of the New York State Militia in the 1890s and still exists todayas the area's YMCA facility. The 14th Regiment, nicknamed the "Fighting Fourteenth" and the "Red-Legged Devils," was known for its battles in the Civil War. Eventually, it would be used as a temporary homeless shelter during the Great Depression in the 1930s and became a women's homeless shelter in 1986.The militarycontinued to operate there until 1992 and it finally became the YMCA as we know it today after a major renovation in 2007 and its opening in 2010. The building has a lot of cool history you can still see today—there's a multi-level shooting gallery below the building and there used to be a tunnel that ran between the Armory and Prospect Park, according to untappedcities.com. The Brooklyn Dodgers practicedin its drill hall and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade used to store its balloons here, too.

It's hard to believe a plane crashed into Park Slope, but on December 16, 1960, a United Airlines DC-8 and a TWA Super Constellation collided in midair above New York City. While the TWA plane crashed on the coast of Staten Island, killing all 44 passengers and crew, the United airliner veered to the East,crashingright at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Sterling Place, according to The Brooklyn Historical Society. The crash dug a huge trench down Sterling Place and set fire to 10 homes, the Pillar of Fire Church, the McCaddin Funeral Home, a laundromat, and a deli. Six people on the ground were killed, as well as 83 of the 84 passengers and crew.A boy initially survivedbutdied the next day in the hospital of pneumonia. You can still find evidence of the crash—the first 12 row of bricks that top 123 Sterling Place are a lighter color because they replaced the part hit by the crash. There's also a small memorial to the boy, Stephen Lambert Baltz, and the other crash victims, in the chapel of the Methodist Hospital. Untapped New York says there are even metal pieces from the plane in the backyard of one of the homes there—pieces of chair and a gasket.

This mysterious shop—where you can buy such novelties as capes, X-ray goggles and gallon tins of immortality—is actually a front (and money-earner) for the nonprofit 826NYC, a kids’ writing, tutoring and publishing center (a chapter of the San Francisco outfit founded by novelist Dave Eggers), hidden behind a concealed door. There, you can purchase fun capes, masks and other superhero garb for your little ones.

Built during the glamorous Gilded Age, theMontauk Club on Eighth Avenue and Lincoln Place was aVenetian palazzo-inspired private men's club that actually wassomewhat inclusive for its time, its website says. Women used the club for various events and early members wereProtestants, Catholic, Jewish, Democrat and Republican. It's still a club that has regular events so it hasn't really been open to the public much, but its interiors can be seen inBillions,Boardwalk EmpireandThe Knick, which filmed there. Presidents includingJohn F. Kennedy, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Grover Cleveland, and William McKinley even walked its halls over the years.

On Prospect Park West and Fifth Avenue, Litchfield Villa or "Grace Hill" has stood proud there since 1855, when it was constructed for railroad and real estate developer Edwin C. Litchfield. The Italianate-style villa, which was landmarked in 1966 and used by theBrooklyn Park Commission, currently houses the Prospect Park Alliance. (Prospect Park wasn't even around when the mansion was built.) Today, you can see its ornate towers and cupolas, from outside during regular park hours.