East New York

Understanding East New York

The early nineteenth-century New Lots Reformed Church predates the area’s major industrial and housing development. Its timber construction and small scale are a surviving link to the earlier farming community. The later neighborhood cannot be understood through that church alone.

Manufacturing helped shape twentieth-century New Lots. Later migration brought African American residents from the South and Puerto Rican residents, while discrimination and disinvestment damaged housing and commerce. Residents and local organizations rebuilt through community institutions and gardens. This is one part of the broader East New York map area.

Places to explore

• New Lots Avenue commercial corridor

  New Lots Avenue, with Livonia and Sutter nearby

  The three corridors have different relationships to housing and transit. Use the commercial street as a place to observe everyday neighborhood life, then verify any individual shop directly. The assessment is not a current tenant directory.

• New Lots Library and surrounding commemoration

  Schenck Avenue near New Lots Avenue

  Community Board 5 places the library near Sankofa Playground and African Burial Ground Square. The institution and surrounding places of remembrance are distinct; current library admission and facilities are not established here.

• African Burial Ground Square and Sankofa Playground context

  New Lots Avenue, Schenck Avenue, Barbey Street and Livonia Avenue area

  Community Board 5 identifies this area with an African burial ground and commemoration. Approach it as a place of memory rather than assuming visible graves, an archaeological exhibit or a currently open interpretive facility.

• New Lots Reformed Church exterior

  630 New Lots Avenue

  The small clapboard church preserves a much earlier rural building form beside later streets. Look for pointed wood arches above the doors and windows and the octagonal belfry. The historical designation does not provide a current interior-visit schedule.

Planning a visit

The church’s landmark designation does not establish a current interior visit. No checked accessible route through the burial-ground context area or between the commercial corridors is offered.