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http://www.archpaper.com/e-board_rev.asp?News_ID=4322

Behind Closed Gates
Little-known gated communities in NYC draw controversy, lawsuits

3-10-2010

http://www.archpaper.com/uploads/image/SeaGate2.jpg
Sea Gate, one of the oldest private communities in the city, has been sequestered for more than a century.

Quote:

Residents of Edgewater Park have described their southeastern Bronx community as timeless and unspoiled, a waterfront Shangri-La. Next door to them is Silver Beach Gardens, a “white-picket-fence fairytale,” as the Daily News declared last summer. But trouble struck these two communities last month when the Fair Housing Justice Center, an advocacy group, filed a lawsuit against both claiming racial discrimination.

Edgewater Park and Silver Beach Gardens are private cooperatives, with closed-off streets and a single point of entry. They have security guards and signs that forbid loitering, trespassing or soliciting. They also, as the lawsuit points out, have very few black people living within their cloistered confines—less than 1 percent. The suit, filed February 4, has left these Bronx neighborhoods defending their insular, tight-knit ways. And it has left those outside their walls astonished that gated communities exist in New York City.

But they are here, and not just in the Bronx.

Slices of suburbia nestle along coveted waterfronts and isolated pockets of the outer boroughs, fenced off and often guarded from the rest of the city. Some have been around for more than a century. They began as mostly white, middle class enclaves. That is what they mostly remain to this day.

http://www.archpaper.com/uploads/BreezyPoint(1).jpg
The communities of Breezy Point, on the western end of the Rockaway Peninsula, are protected as much by their gates as by their isolation.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/61/22...7de89efe4b.jpg
A fence erected in 1989 to keep Coney Island beach goers from venturing onto Sea Gate property.

Quote:

Gates first went up around the western tip of Coney Island in 1898. To this day, the 830-home Sea Gate maintains its own streets and sewers and even has its own private police force, separate from the NYPD, stocked with guns and squad cars. In 1960, residents at the far end of the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens formed the Breezy Point Cooperative. Silver Beach Gardens finalized its own private co-op in 1973. Edgewater Park followed in 1988. These are the largest and most well known, but it is not uncommon for developers to put up fences around developments new and old, declaring them off-limits to outsiders.

With beaches and mazes of private streets lined with bungalows or detached one-and-two-family homes, these gated communities hardly resemble Manhattan’s premier co-ops like Sutton Place or 740 Park Avenue. Nor do the residents enjoy the haughty, decadent lifestyle on display in Coto de Caza, the gated community where The Real Housewives of Orange County live. And yet these private sanctuaries do exhibit a similar world view.

“Sea Gate is horizontal. Park Avenue is vertical,” said Tom Angotti, a professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College. “Physically the communities are different. Socially, they’re the same. The essential aspect is exclusion.” Gates and private security, Angotti said, send a message to people on the outside of these communities that they are not welcome.

Not all gated communities are co-ops like Edgewater Park or Silver Beach Gardens, however. Nor are their practices seen as nefarious. “We’re a unique seaside community,” said Tami Smorto, manager for the Sea Gate Association. “Nobody knows about us. We’re so quiet about who we are. It’s like a little hidden gem.” She said Sea Gate’s somnolent streets, low crime rate, and relative obscurity attract people.

For the "record," this is my favorite thread on this entire site. SO beautiful, I spend a lot of my free time at the edge of or in water, so this thread reveals a paradise that I didn't really understand existed. Thank You NYguy...

Quote:

Originally Posted by NYguy (Post 4819529)

timhmelev

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3510/...4c659e60_b.jpg
Staten Island

Staten Island

Thats where I want to be, right where that guy is sitting, looks like an awesome place to just sit and contemplate life and watch the world go by. If live in NYC one day, I will for sure be on my kayak all the time just wandering around and seeing what I could see.

^ Glad you like it. The western Staten Island shore should be a good place to explore, supposedly a lot of old, abandoned boats just rotting away.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Centropolis (Post 4821768)

For the "record," this is my favorite thread on this entire site. SO beautiful, I spend a lot of my free time at the edge of or in water,
so this thread reveals a paradise that I didn't really understand existed. Thank You NYguy...

I always like to spend time on the waterfront as well. I think the waterfront is the biggest aspect of New York, even more than skyscrapers. It varies, be it river,
ocean, or creek, but the city is surrounded by water. So I wanted to show this other side to the city.

Here are a few of my own photos from the Coney Island redevelopment thread, probably the city's best known waterfront community.

MAY 1, 2010

1. Steeplechase Pier
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124172782/large.jpg

2.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124172873/large.jpg

3.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124172924/large.jpg

4.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124172782/original.jpg

5.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124172924/original.jpg

6.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124172927/original.jpg

7.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124172939/original.jpg

8.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124172962/original.jpg

9.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124172993/original.jpg

10.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124173027/original.jpg

11.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124173049/original.jpg

12.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124173093/original.jpg

13.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124173187/large.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124173187/original.jpg

14.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124173234/original.jpg

15.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124173319/large.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124173319/original.jpg

16. The icon of Coney Island, the old Parachute Drop...

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124173364/large.jpg

17. The Parachute Drop will be the centerpiece of the new Steeplechase Plaza, scheduled for groundbreaking later this year on this site...

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124173371/large.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124173378/large.jpg

18. Weeds grow and blow, waiting for the winds of change to bring new development to an area that once brought joy to millions...

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124173381/large.jpg

19. Boardwalk restoration continues...

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124173387/large.jpg

20.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124173415/large.jpg

21. More Coney Island classics...

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124173455/original.jpg

22.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124173588/original.jpg

23.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124173655/large.jpg

24.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124173666/large.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124173666/original.jpg

25.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124173698/large.jpg

26.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124173882/large.jpg

27.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124174158/large.jpg

28.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124174216/large.jpg

29.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124174285/large.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124174285/original.jpg

30. Indoor amusements will claim a wide swath of the amusement area, virtually cut in half by the planned "Wonder Wheel Way"...

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124174352/original.jpg

31.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124174389/large.jpg

32.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124174433/large.jpg

33. People seemed to be skeptical that the Luna Park site will be ready by the end of the month...I think it will be though.

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124174657/large.jpg

34.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124174676/large.jpg

35. Future entrance to Luna Park...

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124174763/large.jpg

36. Multiple subway lines help to keep Coney Island one of the city's favorite playgrounds...

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124174494/large.jpg

37.
http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/124174618/large.jpg

___________________________________

Sounds of the Cyclone...

• Video Link

Sounds of the Boardwalk...

• Video Link

NYGuy's threads are always fantastic in terms of theme and content.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MolsonExport (Post 4898209)

NYGuy's threads are always fantastic in terms of theme and content.

Well, thank you sir. I try to keep these threads updated with more photos when I can. The city is full of photographers, and it's great to see the many photos, all of them with a particular take on New York.

There are many photos in this link from the New York Times
of the city's many waterfronts and its people. Nearly 400 pics, worth checking it out...(click the photos and scroll down).