Visit Cobble Hill in Brooklyn

Cobble Hill has such a variety of spots to eat, drink, shop and photograph, elegant arrivals like the Chocolate Room have invigorated Court Street. Smith Street’s restaurant row, with boutiques like Bird, offers an eclectic nightlife.

You can get there from Lower Manhattan is three stops on the F train from the Bergen Street subway station on Smith Street; the ride from Midtown takes about 25 minutes.

Cobble Hill was settled by Italians from Naples and Sicily. In Carroll Gardens, Court Street between 3rd and 4th. Like Brooklyn Heights, its more storied neighbor to the north, Cobble Hill is one of the borough’s oldest neighborhoods and most of its blocks lie within a historic district. Yet it has few high-rises and little of the workday crush one encounters on commercial blocks north of Atlantic Avenue.

Although architecturally cohesive, Cobble Hill is far from homogeneous. Interspersed with the brownstones are various beguiling 19th-century structures, like Victorian schoolhouses and Gothic Revival churches.

A short subway ride from Wall Street and occupying some 21 blocks, Cobble Hill has in recent years sustained an influx of buyers from Manhattan. Since few such houses come on the market, buyers have taken to acquiring and reconfiguring multifamily brownstones.

Image by Vivienne Gucwa