Dyker Heights

Dyker Heights occupies a quiet stretch of southwestern Brooklyn between Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge, and it reads as one of the more suburban corners of the borough. Where much of surrounding Brooklyn is built up in attached rowhouses, Dyker Heights is known for detached and semi-detached single-family houses on comparatively generous lots, many with driveways, garages, front lawns, and side yards. The architecture ranges from brick and stone Colonials and Tudors to substantial custom-built and rebuilt homes, and the larger, well-set-back properties on the neighborhood's most prominent blocks sit at the upper end of the local market. Attached rowhouses and a modest number of two-family homes fill in the more affordable side streets, but the detached single-family house is the neighborhood's signature.

Dyker Heights has no subway line running through its core, which is part of what keeps it residential and calm. Commuters typically walk or take a short bus ride to the D and N trains along the eastern edge in adjacent Bensonhurst, or to the R train in Bay Ridge to the west; express buses to Manhattan run along the avenues, and the nearby Belt Parkway and Gowanus Expressway (I-278) give drivers quick access to the rest of Brooklyn, Staten Island via the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, and beyond. Eleventh through Thirteenth Avenues carry much of the local shopping and dining.

The neighborhood's signature open space is Dyker Beach Park and its 18-hole Dyker Beach Golf Course, one of the city's public courses, set along the Belt Parkway shoreline with ball fields, courts, and waterfront paths. Dyker Heights is best known citywide, though, for its extraordinary Christmas-light displays: each December, homeowners — especially along the blocks around 84th Street and 11th to 13th Avenues — mount elaborate, professionally installed light-and-figure displays that draw large crowds and bus tours from across the region. Schools fall within NYC Community School District 20.