Bensonhurst, Brooklyn

Coordinates: 40°36′12″N 74°0′7″W / 40.60333°N 74.00194°W / 40.60333; -74.00194

Bensonhurst is a large, multiethnic neighborhood in the southwestern part of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, in the United States. It is surrounded by Dyker Heights, Borough Park, Flatbush, Midwood, Gravesend, and Bath Beach to the northwest, north, northeast, east, southeast, and southwest, respectively. It was well known as a Little Italy of Brooklyn due to its once large Italian-American population. Bensonhurst is also home to Brooklyn's second Chinatown.

Etymology

Bensonhurst derives its name from Arthur W. Benson, the former president of Brooklyn Gas, who in 1835 began buying farmland that formerly belonged to the Polhemus family. Between 1835 and 1850 Benson divided the farmland into generous lots that were sold in the following decades as part of the newly created suburb of Bensonhurst by the Sea (current day Bath Beach section), which was annexed into the 30th Ward of Brooklyn in the 1890s.