The neighborhood that is known today as East New York started out as Ostwout, Dutch for East Woods. It was settled in 1670 by a group of Dutch farmers who came from the Old Lots section of what is now Flatbush, and they renamed it New Lots.
The Schenk family was among the early settlers. Johannes Schenk built a stone house there in 1705, and his descendants lived there until 1906.
During the Revolutionary War, the Battle of Brooklyn in 1776, invading British forces came upon Howard’s Halfway House at Atlantic and Alabama avenues. It was so named because it was halfway for travelers headed to Long Island…