This article provides details of the lettered avenues in the flat south central portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Improved public transport brought urban sprawl to this area in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, after the hilly areas to its west and north had already been developed. The avenues are oriented east to west and unless specified have two traffic lanes, carrying two-way traffic. Route descriptions are given west to east.
Much of Brooklyn has only named streets, but in this portion of Brooklyn, lettered avenues (like Avenue M) east of Dahill Road run east and west, forming a perpendicular grid with numbered streets that have the prefix "East". South of Avenue O, related perpendicular numbered streets west of Dahill Road use the "West" designation. This set of numbered streets ranges from West 37th Street to East 108th Street, and the avenues range from A-Z with names substituted for some of them in some neighborhoods, notably Albemarle Road, Beverley Road, Cortelyou Road, Dorchester Road, Ditmas Avenue, Foster Avenue, Farragut Road, Glenwood Road and Quentin Road.
These are less than a mile long, in northern Canarsie. In 1897, at the request of developers, the City of Brooklyn renamed several streets in what is now known as Prospect Park South. Among these are Avenues A and B, and five numbered streets which cross them. Avenue A was renamed Albemarle Road, and a portion of Avenue B between Coney Island Avenue and Flatbush Avenue was renamed Beverley Road.
After Brooklyn was annexed into the City of New York, three more segments of Avenue B, namely between Church Avenue and Coney Island Avenue, between Flatbush Avenue and Brooklyn Avenue, and between Schenectady Avenue and Ralph Avenue, were renamed with an Americanized spelling: Beverly Road. This explains the spelling discrepancy between the two subway stations along what was once known as Avenue B: the Beverley Road station on the BMT Brighton Line, and the Beverly Road station on the IRT Nostrand Avenue line.