Carroll Gardens is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, USA. The area is named for Charles Carroll, a revolutionary war veteran who was also the only Roman Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence. Carroll Park, a block-long area of playgrounds, walkways and sitting areas between Court and Smith Streets, with Carroll Street as its southern boundary and President Street on the northern side. It was constructed in the late 19th century and is also named for Carroll. The neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community Board 6.
A long-standing Italian-American neighborhood of family-run stores, Carroll Gardens is now sprinkled with cafes, boutiques and antique shops. It shares its northern boundary with Cobble Hill at Degraw Street and Boerum Hill at Warren Street, while extending south to Hamilton Avenue and Red Hook. Prior to the gentrification movement in the mid-1960s, this part of South Brooklyn was considered by residents to be part of Red Hook. In the late 1940s, however, the southern tip of Red Hook was cut off from the rest of the neighborhood by the building of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and Gowanus Expressway, and the area now known as Carroll Gardens took on a separate and distinct character of its own. Today, Carroll Gardens is more middle class, while Red Hook, which had retained its working-class, waterfront ambiance, has only recently begun to feel the effects of gentrification.