Flatbush is a neighborhood of the Borough of Brooklyn, a part of New York City. It is contained within Kings County, New York State, which is coterminous with Brooklyn Borough. It is located in the far southwestern part of Long Island.

Flatbush is centrally located within the Borough and County. The Flatbush Post Office is assigned postal zone (ZIP Code) 11226, but the area understood as included in Flatbush is rather larger than the postal zone. Well-known institutions within Flatbush include Erasmus Hall High School, the Dutch Reformed Church, and Ebbets Field, last Brooklyn home of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team, long since demolished. Flatbush includes the southernmost portion of Prospect Park.

The name Flatbush is an Anglicization of the Dutch language Vladbos (approximately wooded land).

History

Flatbush was originally chartered as the Dutch Nieuw Nederland colony town of Midwout in 1651. Both names were used in the Dutch era and Midwood was an alternative name for Flatbush into the early 20th century. Midwood now describes the area immediately south of Flatbush.

Flatbush and the other towns of what was to become Kings County were surrendered to the English in 1664. The influence of Dutch merchant and farming families remained strong in the area until after consolidation into the City of Greater New York in 1898, after which the development of Flatbush as a suburb, and then an integral part of the larger city, proceeded apace.

Before it was incorporated into Brooklyn City in 1894, Flatbush described both the Town of Flatbush, incorporating a large swath of central Kings County extending east to the Queens County border, and the Village of Flatbush, formerly the heart of the current community.