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Brooklyn, NY - Twenty-five years ago this month, statistics showed that the Brooklyn neighborhood of Borough Park was one of the fastest-growing areas in the city. It's today home to one of the largest Orthodox Jewish populations in the world outside of Israel.

Borough Park's growth began to pick up steam in the late '70s as more Orthodox Jews, who often have large families, migrated to the area from the city's other traditionally Jewish enclaves such as the Lower East Side and Williamsburg.

Between 1978 and 1982, the Jewish population of Borough Park expanded by 25 percent, and Orthodox residents numbered roughly 65,000 of the neighborhood's 100,000 residents.

Property values were soaring along with the influx of people, and neighborhood boundaries were being redrawn to include what had formerly been considered sections of Midwood and Flatbush.

Lawrence Rezak, a developer who was building housing in Borough Park, said he thought it was the most exciting residential market in the Northeast. Land prices in the area fetched a premium because there was a dearth of available plots: 40-foot plots were going for around $180,000, and 60-foot plots were selling for around $250,000, which city brokers said were the highest prices being paid for low-rise development sites outside of Manhattan.

In 1982, a spokesperson for the local hospital, Maimonides Medical Center, said 5,000 babies were being born there a year, which was approximately double the rate of any other hospital in the city. Today, the neighborhood's birth rate continues to be among the highest in the city. [therealdeal]