[nygirl1]

Moving North into the north west, east river neighborhood of Williamsburg


Williamsburg is a booming, diverse and artsy neighborhood along the East River. What was once part of Bushwick and known as “The shores”, the area thrived as an industrial port. German Industrialists began migrating into Williamsburg early on in the 19th Century and the neighborhood built out from the docks and around the factories. It split with Bushwick in the middle of the 1800’s and became its own city split into three wards; The north side, south side and “Dutchtown”—due to it’s ethnic German community. This didn’t last long as Williamsburg was swallowed up by the city of Brooklyn though the north and south sides are still commonly referred to as such. After the Williamsburg Bridge was completed Jews began moving in from Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The bustling neighborhood briefly rivaled Wall Street as a financial hub. Brooklyn’s financial rivalry didn’t last long as New York City swallowed the smaller city up incorporating it as a borough. Several ethnicities left the slums and tenements of the Lower East Side in an exodus to Williamsburg. During the 1940’s and 1950’s Hasidic Jews from Europe, most escaping or surviving the holocaust began settling in Williamsburg as well as Puerto Ricans fleeing economic hardships. The area lost it’s Industry which fled to the sunbelt and the neighborhood quickly fell to drugs and crime. The neighborhood underwent drastic gentrification for years. The south side of the neighborhood is defined by its Hasidim Community as this Jewish Sect is the dominant culture. The north side is Polish, working class and a bohemian exodus from Manhattan’s East and West Villages the second migration of its kind as artists have been fleeing from the Village in Manhattan to Williamsburg since the 1970’s. The neighborhood is an arts district with galleries and venues. Its also a site for the music scene and nightlife. Williamsburg’s more industrial east side has become “hipster” and “indie” central is on the neighborhoods eastern more industrial half. Groups of Italian, Dominican and Puerto Ricans also live within the east side of Williamsburg.

East side of Williamsburg


























Hasidic Williamsburg and the South side




























The north side