Pest Control in Gravesend, Brooklyn
Gravesend covers a broad swath of southern Brooklyn between Bensonhurst and Sheepshead Bay, reaching down toward Coney Island. Kings Highway, Avenue U and McDonald Avenue are key commercial streets, and the F train runs above McDonald Avenue while the N and D lines also cross the area. Ocean Parkway, with its landscaped malls and bike path, cuts through the neighborhood. Gravesend is a quiet, largely residential area of detached and semi-detached homes and apartment buildings, and it is home to a large Syrian and Sephardic Jewish community around Ocean Parkway, alongside Italian American, Russian, Chinese, Turkish and Central Asian families. Historic Gravesend Cemetery sits near the old town center.
Also known as: Old Gravesend.
About Gravesend
Gravesend is one of the original six towns of Kings County and was founded in 1645 by Lady Deborah Moody, an English Anabaptist who received a patent guaranteeing religious freedom, making her one of the first women to found a settlement in colonial America. Its original town square layout, around Gravesend Neck Road and McDonald Avenue, is still visible in the street grid. The area remained farmland and racetracks into the late 1800s, then filled with houses and apartments as rail and subway lines arrived.
Common Pest Problems in Gravesend
Gravesend has a lot of older detached and semi-detached frame houses, many with wood porches, garages and backyard sheds sitting on the sandy, moisture-prone soils of southern Brooklyn. That combination makes it one of the Brooklyn neighborhoods where subterranean termite swarms in spring are not unusual. Carpenter and pavement ants also invade kitchens from yards and cracked patios during warm months. Wood fences, raised garden beds and aging porch posts are frequent points of attack, and damage can progress for years before homeowners notice sagging or hollow-sounding boards.
Mice are the most common complaint in houses and apartment buildings alike, and they tend to move indoors in large numbers each fall. Rats forage around the commercial strips of Avenue U and Kings Highway and along the elevated F line on McDonald Avenue, where trash, restaurant waste and shaded lots offer food and cover. German cockroaches persist in apartment buildings with shared compactor rooms and in older mixed-use buildings above shops.