Squared off by four roads
Brooklyn Community Board 18 draws Marine Park with a ruler: the neighborhood "is mostly squared off in area by Gerritsen Avenue, Flatbush Avenue, Avenue U and Kings Highway," lying "between Flatlands and Mill Basin to the east, and Gerritsen Beach, Midwood, and Sheepshead Bay to the south and west." The board calls it "a residential neighborhood of predominantly one and two-family homes." Beyond Avenue U is the park that gives the place its name, with "530 acres of grassland and precious salt marsh, protected as a Forever Wild preserve." The board also records that "Charles Downing Lay won a silver medal in town planning at the 1936 Olympics for the planning of Marine Park."
NYC Parks' own history of the park fills in the numbers. It had grown to 1,822 acres by 1937, and in 1974 the City transferred 1,024 acres to Gateway National Recreation Area, leaving 798 acres of City parkland today.
The Lott House on East 36th Street
At 1940 East 36th Street stands the Hendrick I. Lott House. The Landmarks Preservation Commission's designation report, LP-1705, dates its east wing to 1720 and its main section and west wing to 1800, and calls it "a rare surviving example of a Dutch Colonial house in Brooklyn." It was designated on October 3, 1989.
Mostly 1920s and 1930s, going by City records
No census geography isolates Marine Park, so we did a rough count in the City's tax-lot file (PLUTO) for the core blocks north of the park. Treat it as an estimate: the boundary was approximate and the assessor's construction years are known to be loose. It suggests that about five in six house lots were built on between 1920 and 1939, that one-family houses outnumber two-families roughly five to one, and that the zoning is R4 and R3-2; ZoLa shows the district for any one lot. The wider census areas tell a blurrier story because they reach into other neighborhoods. In ZIP Code Tabulation Area 11234, which also covers Mill Basin, Bergen Beach and Flatlands, 33 percent of units predate 1940; in 11229, which takes in Homecrest and Madison along with the western side of Marine Park, 37 percent do (table B25034 for 11234, for 11229).
What a house of the 1920s or 1930s gets asked
We did not find a public source describing how these particular houses were built, so this is about the era, not the address.
- Electrical. Houses wired before 1940 may retain knob-and-tube circuits, ungrounded two-prong outlets and a service that has been upgraded at the panel but not in the walls.
- Water and waste. Galvanized supply pipe closes up from the inside, showing as weak flow at the top-floor bath. The cast-iron stack and the house trap in the cellar floor are original unless someone can show otherwise; a sewer camera scope is a sensible add-on to ask a plumber for.
- Heat. Many New York City houses of this period began on coal, moved to oil and then to gas. Each change can leave something behind: a sealed coal chute, an abandoned oil tank in the cellar or the yard, a capped fill pipe at the foundation, an unlined chimney now venting a gas appliance.
- Roof and structure. Pitched roofs with a porch or sunroom attached, which is where flashing fails first. In the cellar, the main beam, its posts, and joists notched for a century of plumbing.
A creek that still runs, out of sight
The Parks history notes that Gerritsen Creek "used to extend inland twice as far as it does today. Around 1920, the portion of the creek that lay north of Avenue U was converted into an underground storm drain. Though it is no longer visible, it still supplies the marsh with freshwater from further inland." The page gives no route for the drain, so we cannot tie it to any street or house. Cellar moisture is on the list for every house of this age regardless: efflorescence, a sump pit, a dehumidifier running in April, fresh paint on the lower two feet of a foundation wall.
Avenue U and the State's risk bands
New York State's NY Rising plan for Marine Park, Mill Basin and three neighboring communities (PDF) (Part II, December 2014) puts the upland parts of that wider area in its "moderate" coastal risk band and the houses along Avenue U in its "high" and "extreme" bands. "Moderate" is not reassurance: the plan defines it as the 0.2-percent-annual-chance floodplain, or land inside the 100-year floodplain after three feet of sea-level rise, or land flooded by a Category 3 hurricane. The Avenue U residences, it says, "are fewer than those in Mill Island and Bergen Beach" but "face a similar level of flood risk, particularly for those residences with driveways that ramp down into basements." It lists Shell Bank Creek among Hurricane Sandy's entry points.
None of that is a FEMA determination. Whether a given house north of Avenue U is mapped at all is answered by typing its address into the FEMA Flood Map Service Center; the NYC Flood Hazard Mapper and the City's stormwater flood map add the municipal layers.
Rules that do and do not reach Community District 18
The City's proposed basement-apartment pilot under Local Law 126 of 2024 does not cover Community District 18. The houses the board describes, one- and two-family, sit outside the Local Law 152 gas piping cycle altogether; a covered building in the district is next due in 2029.
The two nearest subway stations
The State plan calls transit access "limited." Its closest stations are Kings Highway on the B and Q lines and Flatbush Avenue–Brooklyn College on the 2 and 5, both outside the area and both in the MTA station dataset.
Marine Park falls within the part of southern Brooklyn we reach from East New York. The inspector walks you through the house in whichever of English or Bangla you prefer and sends the written report that day. Start with the general home inspection outline, then send us the address and your closing timeline.