Driving Downtown Streets - Myrtle Avenue - Brooklyn New York City NY USA - Episode 24. Starting Point: Myrtle Avenue - https://goo.gl/maps/HBEGaVUEstD2 . Myrtle Avenue is a 8.0-mile-long (12.9 km) street that runs from the Flatbush Avenue Extension in Downtown Brooklyn to Jamaica Avenue in Richmond Hill, Queens, in New York City, New York, United States. In the neighborhoods of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, the development of Myrtle Avenue was directly related to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, built in 1801. In 1847 Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn's first park, was built on the south side of western Myrtle Avenue. During World War II, the Navy Yard employed more than 71,000 people, many of them African American shipbuilders. As a result the demand for housing in the area increased, prompting the New York City Housing Authority to build the Walt Whitman and Raymond Ingersoll public houses on Myrtle Avenue in 1944. By the early 1970s the vitality of Myrtle Avenue began to decline, mainly because of the decommissioning of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the curtailing of the elevated railway. At its nadir of decline, the street became known to many Brooklynites as "Murder Avenue".[3] In the 1990s the western end of Myrtle Avenue was closed from Jay Street to Flatbush Avenue Extension to create the pedestrian-only MetroTech Center. Adding to the MetroTech Center's revitalization of the neighborhood, a modern revitalization movement is in effect by a collaboration of community organizations like the Myrtle Avenue Revitalization Project LDC (MARP), the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Improvement district BID, and the Myrtle Avenue Merchants Association. Some parts of Myrtle Avenue, for example around Pratt Institute, have recently become a main street of commerce with many trendy restaurants and boutique retail shops.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrtle_Avenue Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with a Census-estimated 2,636,735 residents in 2015.[1] It is geographically adjacent to the borough of Queens at the southwestern end of Long Island. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, the most populous county in the U.S. state of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, after the county of New York (which is coextensive with the borough of Manhattan).[2] With a land area of 71 square miles (180 km2) and water area of 26 square miles (67 km2), Kings County is New York's fourth-smallest county by land area and third-smallest by total area, though it is the second-largest among the city's five boroughs.[3] Today, if each of the five boroughs was a separate city, Brooklyn would rank as the third most populous city in the U.S., behind Los Angeles and Chicago. Brooklyn was an independent incorporated city (and previously an authorized village and town within the provisions of the New York State Constitution), until January 1, 1898, when, after a long political campaign and public relations battle during the 1890s, according to the new Municipal Charter of "Greater New York," Brooklyn was consolidated with the other cities, boroughs, and counties to form the modern "City of New York" surrounding the Upper New York Bay with five constituent boroughs. The borough continues, however, to maintain a distinct culture. Many Brooklyn neighborhoods are ethnic enclaves. Brooklyn's official motto, displayed on the Borough seal and flag, is Eendraght Maeckt Maght, which translates from early modern Dutch to "Unity makes strength". In the first decades of the 21st century, Brooklyn has experienced a renaissance as an avant garde destination for hipsters,[4] with concomitant gentrification, dramatic house price increases, and a decrease in housing affordability.[5] Since 2010, Brooklyn has evolved into a thriving hub of entrepreneurship and high technology startup firms,[6][7] and of postmodern art[8] and design.[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn http://www.nycgo.com/b...