2. Norwayne Court

Norwayne Court consists of nine Tudor-style apartment buildings developed in the 1920s around a cul-de-sac extension of East 22nd Street, located north of Ditmas Avenue. The buildings are 4 and 5 stories tall, with a total of over 160 apartments, and as such it may not seem to have much in common with post-war suburban cul-de-sacs comprised of single-family houses.

However, Norwayne Court was designed and marketed as being child-friendly, one of the hallmarks of suburban cul-de-sac living.

A Brooklyn Daily Eagle article reported that “children will be welcomed, for the builders are setting out to do a thing unique in Brooklyn putting an apartment group in which the interests of the children will be the first consideration.”

The cul-de-sac roadway was touted as being good for kids, similar to later suburban examples.

“Because the court is situated on a private dead-end street it has a minimum of vehicular traffic, it is quiet and attractive to tenants with small children… …in a word, it combines the advantages of suburban life with all the conveniences of city living in a remarkable degree.” Brooklyn Standard Union on Norwayne Court, 7 September 1929

Besides being child-friendly, Norwayne Court apparently also did great work on getting positive press coverage, which any real estate professional, urban or suburban, would envy.

According to the (New York) Sun, Saturday, 17 January 1925: Norwayne Court’s “architectural idea was suggested by an old English print of a street in England in the sixteenth century.”