We head east of the park now into the immediate neighborhood of Prospect Lefferts Gardens
Lefferts Gardens is a quiet residential community snuggled up between Empire Boulevard and Prospect Park, it was originally settled by a wealthy Dutch planter, James Lefferts as a manor. For generations the family ran the estate before selling it to developers for profit. The neighborhood had strict codes that each lot be planned large enough for a single family dwelling made of either brick or stone and at least 2 stories in height. Today the neighborhood is a diverse Afro-Caribbean working class community.
North and east of Leffert Gardens is the neighborhood of Crown Heights
Crown Heights- Crown Heights is a large residential neighborhood in central Brooklyn. The region is defined by its large and varied housing stock…a row house jungle. The neighborhood developed as an upscale bedroom community for middle-upper classes and in some cases the top of Brooklyn high society. A garden-like community developed along Eastern Parkway and quickly became a popular commuter town. West Indians like our Jamaican community and the Hatian-Creole, Guyanese, Trinidadian and Barbadians are not new to this area and have been settling the dense urban node since the roaring 20’s. Jews began to move into the community post world war 2 dividing the neighborhood by choice. There had been, for many years horrible tension between the sections African American and Hasidic communities, most notably stemming from a 1990’s incident involving a Hasidic rabbi striking a Guyanese father of two with his truck which sparked riots in the Dinkins, early Guiliani years. Nestled up next to the iconic Prospect Park the neighborhood has undergone what some call a renaissance in recent years. The racial tension, which for years had been a black eye on the neighborhood has since simmered though hasn’t entirely healed.
We now move deeper into the eastern part of the borough towards the neighborhoods of East New York and its sub-sections as well as Brownsville
East New York, it’s subsections and Brownsville are often referred to as Brooklyn’s and sometimes New York City’s most dangerous neighborhoods. The areas which are neighboring communities are depressed and neglected with high crime rates and significant poverty levels. There is an uneasy presence of police foot patrol in the neighborhoods which is not as common outside of Manhattan and major retail cores. East New York built up during the later half of the 19th century as a rail town, businesses popped up and the population grew as the neighborhood became part of then Brooklyn, the city. As Black and Puerto Rican families began moving into the neighborhood during the 1940’s the industrial jobs they came for were moving out to Long Island and other growing suburbs. The neighborhood is then left with an unemployment dilemma. The city built up low income housing projects on freed up lots. A mortgage scandal left the neighborhood an urban wasteland and crime ridden until recent years it has seen urban renewal begin to slowly transform the neighborhood.
Subsection of New Lots
East NY subsection- Starret City and Spring Creek-
Brownsville has been a notoriously bad area for over 100 years dating back to the early 20th century when it was heavily Jewish and politically radical. It developed into a breeding ground for gangs and is the home of the notorious Murder Inc. of the depression era. During white flight the predominantly Jewish American community began fleeing to the new suburbs as African Americans began moving into the neighborhood. Long time neighborhood businesses left also and what developed was an urban waste land by every definition, a ghetto or slum. By the late 1960’s the neighborhood was strewn with vacant lots, shells of pre-war apartment complexes with boarded up storefronts along its empty and ominous main boulevards. The neighborhood suffered race riots, high crime, poverty, gangs, drug abuse and arson. During the 1970’s widespread waves of arsons were committed in the neighborhood and during the 1980’s the crack epidemic hit the hood and with it, the violence of the ‘crack wars’. It has since been slightly rehabilitated. Low income housing projects were erected where large apartment residential blocks, pre-war duplexes and single family walk up and high steps once stood. Pitken Avenue still has this ghostly and grim vibe to it. As of today it appears that much of the social disorder has yet to be addressed and lies firmly underneath the project houses erected here after the first neighborhoods were destroyed.
Bushwick is a large neighborhood in the northern section of Brooklyn, today it is the boroughs center for Latin American life. The neighborhood sits under the elevated line served by the L, J, M lines and used to be a streetcar suburb when Brooklyn was an independent city. The neighborhood had long been settled by planters growing everything from tobacco to cabbage. It grew as an industrial neighborhood taking on many German and Scandanavian immigrants throughout the 19th century. The neighborhood became the city of Brooklyn’s largest German dominated region and was dubbed
“Brewers Row” as it developed into a major brewing district. The neighborhood became very affluent, it continued to take on immigrants but the area quickly adapted and conformed. Mansions were built by those who made their wealth off of the Brewing industry and in the 19th century the neighborhood also developed a sizeable theater district. Around the 1920’s Italians replaced Germans as the dominant culture. Middle class African Americans began moving into the industrial neighborhood by the 1950’s. This decade also saw some of the largest arrivals of Puerto Rican migration and many came to settle in Bushwick. The brewery companies by this time were already starting to move out of the neighborhood for factories elsewhere. Bushwick suffered the same fate East New York suffered-white flight-loss of industry-rapid shift in demographics-unemployment-poverty-crime. The neighborhood deteriorated rapidly and experienced rioting, looting and arsons during the black out of 1977. Townhouses and apartment buildings were burned down, businesses were looted and destroyed. The riots left Bushwick with a huge loss in business and dwellings. This once thriving Industrial Brooklyn power house deteriorated into a bombed out breeding ground for crime. The area remained that way for quite some time. In the earliest years of the 21st Century the Bushwick Initiative was introduced and redevelopment and restoration helped bring the community back from the dead. Crime steadily reduced and business came back. The neighborhood, today home to large Dominican and Puerto Rican communities is a success story.
Best of Brooklyn: Bedford Stuyvesant and Weeksville
Now we head south and back into the center of the borough with the neighborhoods of Weeksville and Bed-Stuy
The long time cultural center for Brooklyn’s Black population is the Bedford-Stuyvesant section. This neighborhood is what I would consider the buckle of the Brooklyn Brownstone Belt. The neighborhood attracted the mass migrating southern African Americans seeking new livelihoods and opportunities from industrial New York City. The area was Brooklyn’s answer to Harlem during the Jazz age. The neighborhood degenerated and became a focal point during the 60’s and 70’s when “white-flight” was at it’s highest point, social unrest was reaching boiling points, industry was leaving the city. Riots erupted during the 1977 Black-out further alienating this Brooklyn neighborhood and painting its decades-long dangerous image. Bed-Stuy took pride in its ‘rough image’ and glorified it through its many contributing hip hop artists, most famous—The Notorious B.I.G. The neighborhood had been a favorite of director Spike Lee (Do the right thing, Crooklyn, etc., etc.) for showcasing on the silver screen.
Today it has undergone rampant gentrification. Many residential blocks have seen dramatic restorations and the neighborhood retains its cultural heritage, attracting young entrepreneurial African Americans performing and leading in many of the city’s industries, again, much like Harlem.
The Weeksville Section- A historic Brooklyn neighborhood in the Bedford-Stuyvesant vicinity was established by freedmen fleeing the slave plantations of the South
We move west now back towards downtown Brooklyn into the neighborhood of Fort Greene
Fort Greene is a cozy neighborhood just outside out Brooklyn’s downtown. The area has a superb housing stock, a neighborhood in the Brooklyn Brooklyn brownstone belt it features Italianate and Eastlake styles surrounding a small and shady park. The neighborhood is next door to the Atlantic Yards terminal and houses the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Paul Robeson theater, the MoCADA, Brooklyn Technical Highschool and in neighboring Clinton Hill the Pratt Institute. Fort Greene has become the sophisticated, modern cultural center Brooklyn needed near downtown. Fort Greene is home to Walt Whitman, one of America’s best known literary figures. African Americans arrived here early on in the 19th century and were a major contribution to the success of the neighborhood, historically significant to New York’s African American community as it was the site of the first African American school. The neighborhood also boasts the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church built by Abolitionists and hosted often by Harriet Tubman and Fredrick Douglass. Stage coach lines were built through the area mid century and any remaining land was soon built up as brownstone row house residential blocks. This section of Brooklyn was always popular first by the Black community and then the Irish poor from Manhattan who transformed it into a “young Dublin” due to its proximity to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The neighborhood peaked in the roaring 20’s and featured the Paramount and Brooklyn Fox theaters. Fort Greene declines during the 1960’s-80’s. Throughout the 90’s Black professionals began to resettle and restore the area and then gentrification made its way. Today this middle-upper class neighborhood is among Brooklyn’s trendiest, both economically and racially diverse.
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.
Ending our 'Best of Brooklyn' tour now heading north into the far north west neighborhood of Greenpoint
Greenpoint is an industrial/residential northern neighborhood in Brooklyn. Foundries, glasswork, printing and ship building originally built this neighborhood up from farm land. A ferry was established between the large city of New York and Brooklyns Industrial fringe suburb. In the latest decades of the 19th century Germans, Polish and Irish swarmed into the neighborhood. Ship building and the maritime industry continued to propel Greenpoint. Industries dwindled, however, as with much of the city but Greenpoint continued to be an immigrant magnet and strong working class community. The most dominant group here are the Polish and Greenpoint is often referred to as “Little Poland” though a northern African and Indian population has multiplied in recent years. The area is known locally for it’s “hot spots” for filming and recording for shows, movies, music videos.
Thank you. More on the way...and yes, I agree with you. Though Brooklyn's density is more continuous. The built up environment in Brooklyn does remind me (from my own personal experience) to the north side of Chicago...neighborhoods like Lakeview, Wicker Park, the Ukrainian village. However, I'd say the identity of much of Brooklyn is more like the south side of chicago. The growth and loss of industry, the rapid demographic shifts and response and results of white flight to the area. Chicago is similar in more ways to New York than it would like to admit which is why I've always held the city in such high regard. There are of course vast differences but I always like to compare the two and their contrasts.
Oooooo sure =) sometimes I like to throw in a history lesson here and there so they know what their looking at
And Thank You for doing that. It really makes this thread unique and a lot more enjoyable in my opinion .
(And on a side note, because of your section on SSC, I'll be moving to ny later this year! If it wasn't for that type of insight I would have never had a desire to become a developer (hopefully). Thank you.)
Totally. I think people who haven't been over to that section of SSC (which doesn't have descriptions; demographic, economic, historic) will be shocked at some of my neighborhood selections for the other outer boroughs, Long Island, Westchester and Jersey at how far and continuous the urban fabric of New York really reaches.
Having been all the top tier Canadian and American cities I can confidently say there's nowhere remotely close to it. I understand too, that that's not for everyone but for us urban enthusiasts NY is a real gem (as homerish as it sounds, worthy of its pedestal) though that takes absolutely nothing away from other great cities--please keep that in mind. Each should be appreciated for exactly what it is, was and can become which is what I do with New York.
Cool glad your coming out to the Big Apple. Where abouts?
Epic photographs, once again. NYGirl1 photo essays are amongst the very best on SSP.
__________________
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."-President Lyndon B. Johnson Donald Trump is a poor man's idea of a rich man, a weak man's idea of a strong man, and a stupid man's idea of a smart man. Am I an Asseau?
I second everyone here: thanks a ton for putting the time and effort in to both the photo selection and more importantly the history lessons. I learn something every time you update this thread!
one of the best threads ever thanks NYgirl, ill be spending a day in Brooklyn in a couple weeks. I'm trying to figure out which neighborhood. maybe Carroll Gardens/Red Hook
Prev
. 
thanks NYgirl, ill be spending a day in Brooklyn in a couple weeks. I'm trying to figure out which neighborhood. maybe Carroll Gardens/Red Hook
Linear Mode
