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. Then came the neighborhood of Bensonhurst. BoCoCa refers to three Brooklyn neighborhoods – Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, and Carroll Gardens. BoCoCa is an umbrella term for the small region of Brooklyn located south and southwest of Downtown Brooklyn. As I continue I will paste the links for the neighborhoods I have written about below.

Boerum Hill is a small neighborhood in the northwestern part of Brooklyn. It occupies 36 blocks bounded by State Street to the north, 4th Avenue to the east, Smith Street to the west and Warren Street to the south. Commercial strips can be found along Smith Street and Atlantic Avenue.

The Brooklyn High School of the Arts is located on Dean Street and 3rd Avenue and the neighborhood is served by the NYPD’s 84th Precinct.

Boerum Hill is named for the colonial farm of the Boerum family that occupied most of the area. Most of the housing consists of three-story row houses built between 1840 and 1870. The population of the area is middle and upper-middle-class. The neighborhood has been featured in two of Jonathan Lethem’s books:

“The Fortress of Solitude”, is set primarily on one block in Boerum Hill (Dean Street between Nevins Street and Bond Street).

“Motherless Brooklyn” is centered on Bergen Street between Smith Street and Hoyt Street.

There is an amazing house at 108 Wyckoff Street covered in colorful tiles.

State Street has a good example of how new contemporary townhouses mix in with the old buildings.

The neighborhood was also the setting for Spike Lee’s 1995 movie, “Clockers”, which was filmed in the Gowanus Houses. All the neighborhoods south of Atlantic Avenue and west of Hoyt Street were called South Brooklyn in the 1950s. South Brooklyn derived its name from being south of the original town of Brooklyn (now Brooklyn Heights) which had been settled by the Dutch in the 1950s and 1960s.

The north end of Smith Street was the center of New York City’s Mohawk community. Boerum Hill contains the Brooklyn House of Detention at Boerum Place (Adams Street) and Atlantic Avenue, converted industrial spaces, and NYCHA-run housing (Wyckoff Gardens and the Gowanus Houses.

Cobble Hill is bordered by Atlantic Avenue to the north, Hicks Street to the west, Smith Street to the east, and DeGraw Street to the south. Cobble Hill is adjacent to Boerum Hill and Brooklyn Heights with Carroll Gardens to the south. Its area measures approximately twenty-two city blocks. With the establishment of the Landmark Preservation Commission in 1965, charming and historically important neighborhoods like Cobble Hill got a chance to be safeguarded from developers. According to the Landmark Preservation Commission, the Cobble Hill Historic District is an “unusually fine 19th-century residential area” and “retains an aura of the past” with its charming streets and architecture.

Cobble Hill (or Ponkiesbergh as it was first called) was originally settled during the 1640s by Dutch farmers. According to various historical sources the name “Cobble Hill” came from the large amount of cobblestones on the site. The cobblestones were used as ballast on trading ships arriving from Europe. The high elevation point at the corner of present-day Atlantic Avenue and Court Street, where the greatest amount of cobblestones were disposed of, and used as a Fort during both the American War of Independence (1775-1783) and the War of 1812 (1812-1814). Before the establishment of the South Ferry, which connected Atlantic Avenue to Manhattan in 1836 Brooklyn was mostly rural. After 1836 the area developed rapidly. According to the Cobble Hill Historic District Designation Report, the architecture during the 1850s contained Greek Revival, Romanesque Revival, Italianate Style, Gothic Revival, Queen Anne style, French Second Empire, and neo-Grec. The area contained a bank, stores with various services, and several churches. The population at that time was a mix of Native American, Dutch, German, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, and English expats from New England.

A wonderful place to relax is Cobble Hill Park.

The area today is historically Italian and is served by two commercial streets – Court and Smith Streets. Cobble Hill’s main attraction is family-run shops, Italian meat markets, and old-time barber shops mixing in with trendy new restaurants. Smith Street is known as Brooklyn’s “Restaurant Row” because of the large number of eateries and watering holes that opened on the street during the late 1990s and early 2000s. In the late 2000s along came specialized bars and Smith Street became an upscale weekend nightlife destination. Cobble Hill Park at the intersection of Congress and Clinton Streets was reconstructed in 1989 and reflects the brick and stone character of this tree-lined neighborhood. It is also renowned for its private Italianate-style brownstone and brick row houses.

Carroll Gardens was named for Charles Carroll, a Revolutionary War veteran who was also the only Roman Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence. Carroll Park is a block-long area of playgrounds, walkways, and sitting areas between Court and Smith Streets with Carroll Street as its southern boundary. It was constructed in the late 19th century and is also named for Carroll. A long-time Italian-American neighborhood of family-run stores, Carroll Gardens now has cafes, boutiques, and antique shops. South Brooklyn was once considered by residents to be part of Red Hook. But in the late 1940s, the southern tip of Red Hook was cut off from the rest of the neighborhood by the building of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and Gowanus Expressway. Today Carroll Gardens is more middle class.

St. Mary Star of the Sea Church on Church Street is where mobster Al Capone married Mae Josephine Coughlin in 1918.

Before Italian-Americans settled in the area, Carroll Gardens was settled by Irish Americans in the early 19th century and in the mid-19th century, by Norwegian Americans who founded the Norwegian Seamans’ Church, an imposing brownstone structure that was once visited by the King of Norway during an official visit to the US. This structure still stands today but is now a condominium.

In 1846 Richard Butt created the “front gardens” of the famous brownstone houses in the oldest section of the neighborhood. The brownstones are set back from the street by 30-40 feet to create atypical (for Brooklyn) large front gardens.

The large thoroughfare that bounds these neighborhoods is Atlantic Avenue. Atlantic Avenue is an important street in the N.Y.C. boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. It stretches from the Brooklyn waterfront along the East River all the way to the Van Wyck Expressway in Jamaica, Queens. It runs parallel to Fulton Street for much of its course through Brooklyn where it serves as a border between the neighborhoods of Prospect Heights and Fort Greene and between Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights. Atlantic Avenue is the sole east-west through truck route across Brooklyn.

The area of Atlantic nearest to the South Ferry waterfront in Brooklyn has long been known for its antique shops and its notable Arab community, including mosques, specialty shops, and restaurants specializing in Middle Eastern food. As it stretches east toward Flatbush Avenue, Atlantic passes through the rapidly changing neighborhoods of Brooklyn Heights, Boerum Hill, and Downtown Brooklyn.

This section of Atlantic Avenue is the site of the Atlantic Antic, an annual street fair involving local and visiting merchants and artists, held in early October.

Furman Street runs along the Brooklyn waterfront from Atlantic Avenue to Old Fulton Street. Furman Street may become the site of a renaissance as new residences and possibly Brooklyn Bridge Park are set to be built. What was once 55 Atlantic Avenue is now the northbound entrance to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. In 1883 an Irish immigrant named Benjamin Moore opened a paint factory here. At present the factory is located in Montvale, N.J. Until February 20, 1949, the B32 trolley line ran along 5th and Atlantic Avenues to its terminus at the East River.

At First Place, every Halloween, Christmas, and Easter residents have holiday displays that people come to see from far and wide. This is Halloween.

Carroll Park is a lovely space between President and Carroll Streets with playgrounds, bocce and basketball courts, the Soldier and Sailors World War I Monument, and cast iron gates.

On Smith Street for a taste of the neighborhood stop by HBH Gourmet Sandwiches and Smoked Meats shop.

Maglia Rosa at Fourth Place and Henry Stree is a fine coffee shop that also sells custom-made bicycles.

At 73 Atlantic Avenue, one will find the Montero Bar and Grill which first opened its doors at a different location in 1940 and moved to its present location in 1947. The place is full of gifts that sailors and seamen brought to the original owner Joseph Montero since 1947. Among them are 34 ship models, dozens of shipping prints, and family albums of the Montero family hang from the walls and pack the alcoves.

Bay Ridge

https://vocal.media/wander/hometown-new-york-city-brooklyn?utm

Bensonhurst

https://vocal.media/wander/hometown-new-york-city-brooklyn-fm1ed01hx?utm