All hail the stoop, a handsome chunk of stone carved into an accordion of steps, uniformly arranged as though plucked from a Nora Ephron set. Gazing out from a Brooklyn stoop – the borough considered the capital of this century-old tradition – the world feels on intimate, haphazard display, a hearty buffet for people watchers where public spats, romantic strolls, and adolescent drama are all on offer. As a 1987 New York Times article aptly stated, Brooklyn’s stoops are ringside seats on urban drama.
Until a few years ago, the stoop’s significance was lost on me, save for the occasional cheeky sit on those few glorious stoops not tucked behind a criminalizing fence. But as a proud beneficiary of a stoop fronting my 19th-century Park Slope brownstone rental, the veil has been lifted, and I can now see the sense of bliss and belonging a stoop sit provides. These elegant home entrances are woven into a neighborhood’s tapestry, an architectural totem of culture and community that bridges the divide between resident and neighbor in a way that the porch (or worse – terrace) simply cannot.
Stoops undoubtedly provide a focal point for socializing. (I once saw them described as neighborhood amphitheaters – brilliant!) But they’ve also historically been a resource for neighborhood safety, as it’s much easier to keep a watchful eye from the vantage point of a high step.
The Dutch are responsible for New York’s stoops. The name comes from the Dutch “stoep” (roughly translating to step or porch) and was brought over in the early 17th century. “Raised houses were common in the Netherlands due to the constant threat of flooding, requiring a stoep to reach the front door,” explains New York City historian Keith Taillon. “They brought that architectural sensibility to North America, but since there was less of a flood risk here, stoops were viewed as more of an ornamental feature at first.” Stoops also concealed service entrances that were typically located in the front of the townhome in lieu of a service alleyway. “There was an added benefit in that stoops lifted a home’s choicest rooms above the filth, noise, and stench of increasingly crowded, horse-clogged streets,” adds Taillon.
But around the 1880s, a period the historian describes as the “apex” of high stoops, they began to fall out of fashion, signaling a shift towards the new American basement houses of the 1890s, then modernization efforts of the early 20th century, and finally, the push to carve single-family homes up into apartments. “This all meant that by the 1950s, thousands of stoops had vanished from the streetscape,” he explains.
However, this is not where the story ends. In the 1960s, a novel idea snowballed into action: historic districts. “They were created as part of a reaction to what was viewed as over-modernization and excessive demolition in the city (see: Penn Station),” says Taillon. Old was new, and the stoop was back in favor at long last. In fact, he notes that buyer’s guides from the 1970s often included instructions on how to properly rebuild a missing stoop. If it weren’t for these conservationists, the stoop as we know it may have been swallowed up into the ether of time.
From that period on, the sanctity of the stoop has only grown, bolstered in large part by popular culture. Spike Lee’s depiction of Brooklyn stoops certainly comes to mind, whether the film poster for his 1994 film Crooklyn or, of course, Do the Right Thing, which was shot in Bedford-Stuyvesant; sacred ground for stoop-lovers. There’s also HBO’s Girls, (Hannah, Marnie, Shoshanna, and Jessa assembled on a Greenpoint stoop is a vignette etched into my memory). Even the steps at 123 Sesame Street are an immortalized visual—anchored by the almighty NYC stoop.
New Yorker Maddy Boardman tied the knot on her Brooklyn stoop in 2022, beside iron railings encircled with what she calls fluffy clouds of baby’s breath. “My husband and I moved into that apartment in 2019, got engaged in 2020, and were married in 2022, so we spent a lot of time at home, specifically on the stoop,” she says. In fact, one of her neighbors officiated the ceremony; a testament to the stoop’s liaison-like effects.
But the community feel of NYC’s stoops was perhaps most palpable during the pandemic. Marija Abney, the founder and executive director of The Soapbox Presents, says her team started activating on the streets of NYC in June 2020. “It was a time of panic and devastation. It was also a time of social unrest. My community needed something, I needed something,” she says. In 2021, The Soapbox Presents introduced its Stoop Sessions, a sort of pop-up block party for celebrating Black and brown cultures through live music and dancing. “We created a space for us to commune, resist, be rejuvenated and revived as we celebrate the brilliance of Black and brown people through art.”
As Pollyannaish as it may sound, for me, the stoop is the embodiment of human connection. Most of my days end with at least a few minutes on the stoop. I shake out my red gingham blanket, pour a glass of wine, and ease into the evening, watching the nearby gas lamps flicker, the neighborhood’s resident black squirrel makes its leaps from branch to branch, and my fellow stoop’ers untangle from their day. The world slows down, the light begins to dip behind the crown of the brownstones across the street—and for at least a few moments, there is no world outside of the stoop’s magical enclave.
