We then walk up Carroll Street towards Prospect Park and take a crash course in late 19th and early 20th century architectural styles. The north side of this street is as calm, orderly, and disciplined as the south side is picturesque. Nos.864-872 Carroll Street are five Queen Anne style residences constructed around 1887. No.850 Carroll Street is a sophisticated Georgian Revival mansion. At the end of Carroll Street turn right into Prospect Park West.
Next we explore Eighth Avenue, walking south towards Berkeley Place. 64-66 Eighth Avenue, dating from 1889, are two bold sandstone and granite residences by popular architects of that period. They bear carved foliate bas-reliefs worthy of Louis Sullivan. No. 70 Eighth Avenue from the 1890s is a brick pepper pot structure anchoring this corner, nicely renovated to its original condition. Walk back and look at 105 Eighth Avenue - Montessori School a 1916 Regency Revival mansion with a bowed, Corinthian columned entry.
No.119 Eighth Avenue - Thomas Adams, Jr. House and the adjacent matching house at 115 Eighth Avenue, designed by the well known architect C.P.H.Gilbert in 1888, are prime examples of Romanesque Revival. A façade that combines brownstone features on the lower floors with the elegant Roman brick on the upper levels, rounded arched windows and doorways, triangular gables, dormer windows and a corner tower with a conical roof. Note the naturalistic, intertwined carving on the archway above the Carroll Street doorway, a prime example of "Byzantine leafwork". Further down Eighth Avenue is Congregation Beth Elohim Synagogue, constructed around 1908, a domed Beaux Arts building with a chamfered corner to receive the two resident composite columns.
On Eighth Avenue we turn into Montgomery Place, the most extravagant of all Park Slope blocks. Montgomery Place is only one block long, dividing an extra wide, slightly trapezoid, block into two. The shape is the result of two rectangular street grids converging, the one from Flatbush Avenue to Carroll Street meeting with the grid starting at Garfield Place. Harvey Murdock, a real estate developer, started building row houses on Montgomery Place in the 1890s. He hired the famous architect C.P.H.Gilbert to design most of the residences, specifically Nos. 11, 17, 19, 21 and 25 on the north side and No. 14, 16, 18, 36, 38, 40, 42, 44, 46, 48, 50, 54, 56, 58 and 60 on the south side. Take a look at No.11 Montgomery Place, Murdock's own house, an extrawide Romanesque style row house of brownstone and Roman brick with an exuberant Dutch style gable. Note the stained glass transoms on the 1st and 2nd floor windows. Across the street Nos.14, 16 and 18 Montgomery Place, dating from 1887-1888, show three different gabled roofline treatments, each one using different materials. Montgomery Place, being the newest and most posh development in Park Slope, had definitely moved away from the traditional brownstone row house designs employed earlier.
On Eighth Avenue turn left, walk a couple of blocks and explore First and Second Streets. No.527 and 529-535 First Street are five stylish limestone Renaissance Revival row houses with the low-stoop American Front dating from 1910-1915. Take a look at tree-lined Third Street, whose houses on the two blocks between Prospect Park West and Seventh Avenue have unusually deep front yards and wide sidewalks. There are many fine row houses south of Third Street. It is worthwhile to take a look and soak in the wonderful Victorian atmosphere. But the most distinctive blocks are those between Flatbush and Third Street and Prospect Park West and Sixth Avenue.