Crown Heights is a neighborhood in the central portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Crown Heights is bounded by Washington Avenue to the west, Atlantic Avenue to the north, Ralph Avenue to the east, and Empire Boulevard to the south. It is about one mile (1.6 km) wide and two miles (3.2 km) long. Neighborhoods bordering Crown Heights include Prospect Heights to the west, Flatbush, Prospect Lefferts Gardens and East Flatbush to the south, Brownsville to the east, and Bedford–Stuyvesant to the north.

The main thoroughfare through this neighborhood is Eastern Parkway, a tree-lined boulevard designed by Frederick Law Olmsted in the late-1800s, extending two miles (3.2 km) east–west. Earlier, the area was sometimes known as Crow Hill, with a succession of ridges running east and west from Utica Avenue to Washington Avenue, and south to Empire Boulevard and East New York Avenue. When Crown Street was cut through in 1916, the area became known as the heights.

The northern half of Crown Heights is part of Brooklyn Community District 8 and is patrolled by the 77th Precinct of the New York City Police Department (NYPD). The southern half is part of Brooklyn Community District 9 and is patrolled by the 71st Precinct of the NYPD. Crown Heights's primary ZIP Codes are 11213, 11216, 11225, 11233, and 11238. Politically, it is represented by the New York City Council's 35th, 36th, and 41st Districts.

Although no known physical evidence remains in the Crown Heights vicinity, large portions of what is now called Long Island including present-day Brooklyn were occupied by the Lenape Native Americans. The Lenape lived in communities of bark- or grass-covered wigwams, and in their larger settlements—typically located on high ground adjacent to fresh water, and occupied in the fall, winter, and spring—they fished, harvested shellfish, trapped animals, gathered wild fruits and vegetables, and cultivated corn, tobacco, beans, and other crops.

The first recorded contact between the indigenous people of the New York City region and Europeans was with the Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524 in the service of France when he anchored at the approximate location where the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge touches down in Brooklyn today. There he was visited by a canoe party of Lenape. The next contact was in 1609 when the explorer Henry Hudson arrived in what is now New York Harbor aboard a Dutch East India Company ship, the Halve Maen (Half Moon) commissioned by the Dutch Republic.

European habitation in the New York City area began in earnest with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement, later called "Nieuw Amsterdam" (New Amsterdam), on the southern tip of Manhattan in 1614. By 1630, Dutch and English colonists started moving into the western end of Long Island. In 1637, Joris Jansen de Rapalje purchased about 335 acres (1.36 km²) around Wallabout Bay and over the following two years, director Kieft of the Dutch West India Company purchased title to nearly all the land in what is now Kings County and Queens County from the indigenous inhabitants.

Finally, the areas around present-day Crown Heights saw its first European settlements starting in about 1661/1662 when several men each received, from Governor Peter Stuyvesant and the directors of the Dutch West India Company what was described as "a parcel of free (unoccupied) woodland there" on the condition that they situate their houses "within one of the other concentration, which would suit them best, but not to make a hamlet."

In the 19th century, the area was rural. The Crow Hill penitentiary and various orphanages were located in the area at the time. In 1884, Alexander Jefferson was killed during a prolonged hanging after being convicted of the Crow Hill Murders. Appeals seeking to overturn his death sentence documented the significant poverty in the area at the time.