Wallabout, Brooklyn/Living In - At the Intersection of History and Industry - NYTimes.com Amy Lawday with her son, Oscar, 3, outside their home on Clinton Avenue in Wallabout. SLOPING down from Myrtle Avenue to the walled fortress of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Industrial Park, and bisected by the rumbling equator of the elevated Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the two-block-wide semi-industrial neighborhood of Wallabout would seem to have some unenviable physical challenges. It lacks subways, and although it shares a name with nearby Wallabout Bay, its residents are cut off by the Navy Yard from the tantalizingly close waterfront. But for all of the neighborhood's isolation and industrial grit, and perhaps because of these characteristics, many of its residents describe it with immense pride and fondness. "To live there, you're a little bit of a risk taker and an adventurer, because you're off the grid a little bit," said Gary Hattem, a chairman of the Historic Wallabout Association, who since 1976 has lived on Vanderbilt Avenue in an Italianate 1850s row house with a wooden porch. And there's more of a romantic quality to living there, because the houses are a bit more random. Among outsiders, the area has typically been viewed as simply the northern fringe of Clinton Hill and Fort Greene. But Wallabout has been coming into its own of late, attracting developers and preservation agencies alike. The Wallabout distinction, local preservationists say, is intended to summon up an awareness of the area as something more than just a poorer version of its neighbors. Its history and streetscape are certainly textured. Its name can be traced to the 17th century, when a group of Walloons, French-speaking Protestants from what is now Belgium, settled along the nearby bay, which came to be called "Waal-bogt," or "bend in the harbor." The Navy Yard dates to 1801, and the Wallabout Market operated north of Flushing Avenue from the 1880s until it was gobbled up by the Navy Yard in World War II. The Historic Wallabout Association, a preservation group, defines the neighborhood as the 22 blocks between Classon and Carlton Avenues from Flushing Avenue to Myrtle. Some blocks are mixed-use, but buildings south of the B. Q. E. are generally residential, while those north of it are industrial. Some industrial buildings are honeycombed with artists" studios. Wallabout contains the largest concentration of pre-Civil War wood-frame houses in the city, many with early porches and cornices. This was a big draw for Dina Rosenbloom, a marketing executive. Last year she and her husband, Brice, paid $1.3 million for a two-family 1850s house in the new city historic district on Vanderbilt Avenue. As with many old Wallabout houses, its wood facade had been covered with vinyl siding. But it retained plenty of charm. "It doesn't feel like you're in Brooklyn when you walk in," Ms. Rosenbloom said. You feel transported to an old wood-frame house in a country town. The four-bedroom house had been widened to 25 feet by the enclosure of a side walkway, so that an internal bathroom wall is the former exterior of the house, complete with antique wooden siding. "It's unique, not cookie cutter," she said. Although the city bestowed landmark protection on only one block of Wallabout last year, a wider area between Myrtle and Park Avenues was placed on the state and federal historic registers. These designations could bring tax credits to owners like the Rosenblooms if they restored their facade. The area has long been populated by members of the working and creative classes, joined recently by professionals. The nearby Pratt Institute has brought in artistic types like Jim Morehand, an interior designer turned massage therapist who graduated from Pratt in 1993 and shares a Vanderbilt Avenue row house with Dave Polazzo, a retired teacher. The couple host a salon, Parlor Jazz, out of the house. Census data covering Wallabout, as well as one block to its east and three to its west, showed that the estimated 7,613 residents in 2009 were 43 percent African-American, 35 percent Hispanic and 17 percent white. The proportion of whites rose 6 percent from 2000, as the share of blacks shrank by about the same amount. Mr. Morehand, who is of mixed heritage but says he is perceived as black, said he had sensed resentment among black renters toward white newcomers, "but there haven't been any neighborhood conflicts that I've seen." The area is home to many gay and biracial couples. "We wanted to raise a family in a place where the child sees the differences in people," said Luan Cox, an Internet entrepreneur who in 2009, along with her partner, Eliane Bugod, paid $654,000 for a condo unit in a town house north of the B. Q. E. Navy Green, a 458-unit housing complex, is rising on the site of a former naval prison on Clermont and Flushing Avenues. It will include 4 apartment buildings and 23 town houses, with three-quarters of the units for low- and middle-income tenants. Residents began moving into the first completed building last month. A "supportive housing" building that includes 59 units for the homeless is to open in the spring.