As six-story Art Deco apartment houses and more affordable four-story walk-up buildings were developed on Ocean Avenue and throughout its periphery, Flatbush nurtured a socioeconomically diverse population of Irish Americans, Italian Americans and American Jews; according to anthropologist Ansley Hamid, occupants ranged from "merchants professionals" to "skilled [and manual laborers." Although the Victorian Flatbush neighborhood associations endured and grew to encompass succeeding waves of new residents, urbanization and the increasing prevalence of automobiles compelled the remaining vestiges of the neighborhood's "Anglo-Dutch elite" to " in droves for the upscale suburbs of Westchester, Long Island and New Jersey" by the late 1920s.