Hometown New York City Brooklyn

For people living in small to mid-size hometowns it is easy to write about their towns. However, for someone like me who was born and raised in New York City it is rather difficult. Therefore I will look upon the borough of Brooklyn as my small town away from the teeming streets of Manhattan and the other boroughs. If you know about Brooklyn and find a neighborhood missing it is just that I wrote about all the ones I knew and where I have been. I was born in a very quiet corner of Brooklyn called Bay Ridge so I began my tour there. This article is about the neighborhoods Brooklyn Chinatown, Bushwick, Crown Heights, and Ditmas Park As I continue I will paste the links for the neighborhoods I have written about below.

Brooklyn Chinatown located in the Sunset Park area is a rapidly growing neighborhood, Bushwick when first founded was an area for farming and growing tobacco, Crown Heights a neighborhood with row houses, and Ditmas Park a designated Historic District.

Immigrants in this neighborhood mostly come from the Fujian Province in Mainland China and it has become common to call Brooklyn Chinatown the Little Fuzhou of the Western Hemisphere. When rents became high in Manhattan’s Chinatown Chinese immigrants began looking toward Brooklyn. Slowly these Chinese immigrants who moved to Sunset Park along with newly arriving Cantonese immigrants formed Brooklyn Chinatown in the late 1980s. Afterward came the Fuzhou immigrants and soon outnumbered those who were already living there. The latest arrivals here are Wenzhounese immigrants from China’s Zhejiang Province.

Brooklyn Chinatown mostly stretches along 8th Avenue from 42nd to 68th Street. It is believed that the Chinese chose 8th Avenue because in their folklore number eight is lucky for financial matters and therefore 8th Avenue can be looked upon as the “road to wealth”. Another plus for the Chinese immigrants in Sunset Park is that they can get a direct subway line – N/R and D lines to Manhattan’s Chinatown.

Along 8th Avenue one can see all the various Chinese businesses such as grocery stores, restaurants, Buddhist temples, video stores, bakeries, community organizations and a Hong Kong Supermarket. As these businesses and others expand they are starting to stretch over to 7th Avenue and eastward on 9th Avenue.

Bushwick is located in north Brooklyn. Its residents mostly reside in six-family apartment buildings and two to three-family townhouses. Those who live here are of foreign descent such as Latinos from the Caribbean Islands of Puerto Rico and from the Dominican Republic. This neighborhood is the 7th most impoverished neighborhood in New York City. Knickerbocker, Myrtle, Broadway and Wyckoff Avenues are its major commercial streets.

The Dutch West India Company obtained a deed from the local Lenape people in 1638 and the area was chartered in 1661 by Peter Stuyvesant who named it “Boswijck” which means “little town in the wood” or “heavy wood” in 17th century Dutch. At that time the area encompassed not only Bushwick but also the neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Greenpoint. On a plot of land located between the Bushwick and Newtown Creeks a community was settled on February 16, 1660. There were 14 French and Huguenot settlers, Peter Jan De Witt who was a Dutch translator and a black slave called Franciscus the Negro.

The center of their settlement was a church which was located near what are today Bushwick and Metropolitan Avenues. Woodpoint Road was the main thoroughfare which allowed farmers to bring their wares to the town dock. The Dutch referred to the original settlement as Het Dorp which later the British changed to Bushwick Green. Bushwick was made up of four villages, Green Point, Bushwick Shore (later on Williamsburg), Bushwick Green and Bushwick Crossroads at the turn of the 19th century.

As the borough of Brooklyn and New York City itself grew factories were built in Bushwick which manufactured sugar, oil, and chemicals. A glue manufacturing plant was built by inventor Peter Cooper. The Dutch settlers were joined by immigrants from Western Europe. At Metropolitan Avenue and Grand Street on the English Kills Channel The Bushwick Chemical Works was established among other factories. The American Institute awarded The Bushwick Chemical Works the first premium for commercial acids of greatest purity and strength in 1867. In 1869 The Bushwick Glass Company which later became known as Brookfield Glass Company was established. They made a variety of bottles and jars. When the Long Island Rail Road built the Bushwick Branch which terminal was at the intersection of Montrose and Bushwick Avenues it made it easier for passengers and for the moving of raw materials and finished good.

Most of the immigrants in the neighborhood in the 1840s and 1850s were of German descent and Bushwick moved into the brewing industry. Along “Brewer’s Row” there were 14 breweries which operated in a 14-block area by 1890. At this time Bushwick was named the “beer capital of the Northeast”. It was in 1976 that the last brewery closed its doors.

It was in 1885 that the first elevated railway opened in Brooklyn. It was known as the Lexington Avenue Elevated and its eastern terminal as on the edge of Bushwick at Gates Avenue and Broadway. The Broadway Elevated and the Myrtle Avenue Elevated came along by the end of 1889 spurring residential development in Bushwick. During this time brewery owners and doctors settled down in mansions which lined Bushwick and Irving Avenues just at the turn of the 20th century.

The homes in Bushwick at this time were designed in Italianate, Neo Greco, Romanesque, Revival and Queen Anne styles. The neighborhood had become the center of culture as it had several Vaudeville era playhouses as well as the Amphion Theatre which was the nation’s first theatre to have electric lighting. Slowly but surely Italian immigrants began moving into Bushwick and by 1950 it had become one of New York City’s largest Italian-American neighborhoods.

Unfortunately for Bushwick by the late 1960s and early 1970s the neighborhood had its share of abandoned buildings, empty lots, drugs and arson. During the 1980s, it declined into poverty and criminal activity. At this time Knickerbocker Avenue became known as “The Well” because it had a never ending supply of drugs and the area had become a most dangerous place to live by the 1990s. Revitalization came in the 2000s and as real estate prices rose in Manhattan young professionals and artists moved into Bushwick to live in converted warehouse lofts, brownstones, limestone-brick townhouses and other buildings which had been renovated.

The main thoroughfare of Crown Heights is Eastern Parkway which is a tree-lined boulevard designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. The neighborhood is bounded to the west by Prospect Heights, to the south by Flatbush, to the southeast by Brownsville and to the north by Bedford-Stuyvesant.

The Lenape lived in this area in bark or grass-covered wigwams. Here they fished, harvested shellfish, and trapped animals. The Lenape grew corn, tobacco, and beans among other crops and gathered wild fruit and vegetables. The first European to encounter the Lenape was Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524. Afterward came Henry Hudson in 1609. The first European settlements around the Crown Heights area began about 1661/1662.

In the early 1900s, upper-class residences were built along Eastern Parkway and Crown Heights became one of New York City’s premier neighborhoods. It had tree-lined streets, cultural institutions, parks and many fraternal, social and community organizations. In the 1920s immigrants arrived from Jamaica and the West Indies. African Americans came from the south. Middle class Jewish people lived in Crown Heights during the 40s, 50s and 60s. At which time there were 34 large synagogues and 3 prominent Yeshiva elementary schools in the neighborhood.

Today the neighborhood of Crown Heights is a vast contrast between lovely architecture and vacant buildings. The residents are a mix of Hasidim who have beards and wear dark suits and colorfully dressed Afro-Caribbean people. The neighborhood is known for its annual West Indian Carnival and it also is home to the Worldwide Headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic Jewish movement.

Ditmas Park has many large Victorian style houses which were built in the 1900s. The neighborhoods main commercial streets are Newkirk Avenue, Coney Island Avenue, and Cortelyou Road. Founded in 1908 The Ditmas Park Association hosts social events, publishes a newsletter and a home improvement directory as well as working on numerous civic issues. An annual Victorian Flatbush House Tour is hosted by The Flatbush Development Corporation. In 1983 The Ditmas Park Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Wealthy families bought the large Victorian homes in Ditmas Park during the 1980s and early 1990s. Later on young people and artists were attracted to the neighborhood because of the lower rents.

Courtelyou Road has many delis, bars, coffee shops, restaurants and the Flatbush Food Coop. There are also some upscale restaurants such as The Farm which offers a bar, patio seating and during the summer a weekly movie night. Important events and openings in the area are documented by the DitmasParkBlog. It also offers discussions and inquiries about the neighborhood. Time Out New York named DItmas Park as one of the best neighborhoods for food in New York City in October of 2009.

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