Brighton Beach
New York City map with Brighton Beach marked.
Brighton Beach is an oceanside neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. As of 2000, it has a population of 75,692 with a total of 31,228 households.[1]
Location
Brighton Beach is bounded by Coney Island at Ocean Parkway to the west, Manhattan Beach at Corbin Place to the east, Gravesend at the Belt Parkway to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the south (at the Riegelmann Boardwalk/beachfront).[2] It is patrolled by the NYPD's 60th Precinct.[3]
History
Brighton Beach was developed by William A. Engeman as a beach resort in 1868, and was named by Henry C. Murphy and a group of businessmen in an 1878 contest;[2] the winning name evoked the resort of Brighton, England.
The centerpiece of the resort was the large Hotel Brighton (or Brighton Beach Hotel), placed on the beach at what is now the foot of Coney Island Avenue and accessed by the Brooklyn, Flatbush, and Coney Island Railway, which opened on July 2, 1878. After a series of winter storms threatened to swamp the hotel, an audacious plan was developed to move it in one piece 520 feet further inland by placing railroad track and 112 railroad flat cars under the raised 460 ft. by 130 ft. building and using six steam locomotives to pull it away from the sea. Engineered by B.C. Miller, the move was begun on April 2, 1888 and continued for the next nine days, being the largest building move of the 19th century.[4]
Adjacent to the hotel, Engeman built the Brighton Beach Race Course for Thoroughbred horse racing. The village was annexed into the 31st Ward of the City of Brooklyn in 1894.
Brighton Beach was re-developed as a fairly dense residential community with the final rebuilding of the Brighton Beach railway into a modern rapid transit line, known as the BMT Brighton Line of the New York City Subway c. 1920. The subway system in the neighborhood is above ground on an elevated structure.
The years just before and following The Great Depression brought with them a neighborhood consisting mostly of first and second generation Jewish-Americans and, later, a number of concentration camp survivors. Notable establishments included Diamond's (a small clothing store owned by the parents of Neil Diamond), Irving's Deli, Mrs. Stahl's Knishes and The Famous, a kosher restaurant. The summer would bring the crowds, and many world renowned celebrities, to the Brighton Beach Baths (Private Beach Club) and surrounding public beaches.
Today, the area has a large community of Jewish immigrants who left the Former Soviet Union since 1970. Some non-Jewish immigrants, such as Armenians and Georgians, have also settled in Brighton Beach and the surrounding neighborhoods, taking advantage of the already established Russian-speaking community.
Among the charitable organizations serving the Russian-speaking community is the Russian-speaking Community Life Center, which provides a variety of classes and programs.
Culture
Brighton Beach was dubbed "Little Odessa" by the local populace due to many of its residents having come from Odessa, a city of Ukraine.[5] In 2006, Alec Brook-Krasny was elected for the 46th District of the New York State Assembly, the first elected Soviet-born Jewish politician from Brighton Beach.
The proximity of Brighton Beach to the city's beaches (Brighton Beach Avenue runs parallel to the Coney Island beach and boardwalk) and the fact the neighborhood is directly served by a subway station makes it a popular summer weekend destination for New York City residents.
Transportation
Roadways
Major roadways in Brighton Beach are the Belt Parkway, Coney Island Avenue and Ocean Parkway.
New York City Subway
The BMT Brighton Line has two stations, Brighton Beach and Ocean Parkway, serving the neighborhood. Both are located on an elevated structure over Brighton Beach Avenue. The Q train provides local service north to Manhattan at all times while the B train provides express service weekdays only.
New York City Buses
Buses serving Brighton Beach include the B1, B36, B49, and B68.
Education
Brighton Beach is served by the New York City Department of Education. Manhattan Beach is zoned to PS 225 The Eileen E. Zaglin School for grades K-8, as well as PS 100 The Coney Island School located on Brighton Beach and West 3rd Street for grades K-5 and P.S. 253 The Magnet School of Multicultural Humanities.
Nearby high schools include:
Crime
In the 1970s Brighton Beach was a hot spot for the Russian-speaking Mafia. While the Russian-speaking mob still holds a small influence over Brighton Beach, notorious gangs roamed the city and owned businesses in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The most notorious was the Potato Bag Gang,[6] which served as a robbery gang for larger Russian crime syndicates in New York City. Marat Balagula was a crime boss from Brighton Beach who denies having any connection to the American Mafia or the Russian-speaking Mafia.
In popular culture
- The Neil Simon play, Brighton Beach Memoirs, which won two Tony awards in 1983, and its subsequent film adaptation, are both set against the backdrop of Brighton Beach in 1937.
- The 1994 film Little Odessa is set in Brighton Beach.
- In Darren Aronofsky's 2000 film, Requiem for a Dream, the character Sara Goldfarb (played by Ellen Burstyn) lives in an apartment on Brighton 6th Street.
- In the film Lord of War, the main character, Yuri Orlov, played by Nicolas Cage, lives in Brighton Beach.
- In the 2007 crime drama, We Own the Night, the character Bobby Green, played by Joaquin Phoenix, is the manager of a nightclub in Brighton Beach.
- In the 2009 film Two Lovers, featuring Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow, the action takes place in Brighton Beach.
- Brighton Beach is also featured in the 1990s Russian spy-comedy Weather Is Good on Deribasovskaya, It Rains Again on Brighton Beach.
- In the Russian crime film Brother 2, Danila, the protagonist, comes to Brighton Beach from Russia.
- In the 1998 novel In Every Laugh a Tear by Lesléa Newman, developments take place partly in Brighton Beach.
- In the 1998 trading autobiography The Education of a Speculator, speculator and hedge fund manager Victor Niederhoffer takes us back to his childhood in Brighton Beach during the 1950s.
- In the 2000 novel Vector by Robin Cook, disillusioned former Russian biochemical worker Yuri Davydov develops weapons-grade Anthrax in the basement of his Brighton Beach home.
- Brighton Beach is where Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character Neil McCormick was taken to be beaten and raped in the 2004 film, Mysterious Skin.
- In the 2008 video game Grand Theft Auto IV, Brighton Beach is represented by the neighborhood of "Hove Beach". This is in reference to Brighton, England's proximity to, and relationship with, neighboring Hove. The two, having city status, are officially known as Brighton and Hove.
- In the songs "Xero Tolerance" and "Hey Pete" by Type O Negative, Brighton Beach is mentioned as the place where Pete is going to kill his cheating girlfriend. The D-train is his means of transportation in these songs. The full title of the band's faux-live album on which these songs appear is "The Origin Of The Feces - Not Live At Brighton Beach".
- In the video game, XIII, Brighton Beach is one of the first settings of the game's complex plotline.
- The French electronic music group Telepopmusik has a song on their album Angel Milk entitled "Brighton Beach".
- In the space flight simulator Orbiter, there is a fictional base on the moon named Brighton Beach.
- On the TV series The West Wing, Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff) hails from Brighton Beach.
- On the TV series Bored to Death, unlicensed private detective Jonathan Ames investigates a case based at a Russian nightclub in Brighton Beach.
- A Lifetime reality TV show called Russian Dolls, documenting the lives of young Russian-Americans and a group of Brighton Beach housewives spending time in a popular Russian nightclub, Rasputin Restaurant, premiered August 11, 2011.
- In an episode of the CBS's Blue Bloods the storyline revolves around the murder of a Russian Mob associate who lived in Brighton Beach. Several scenes are shot on and around the boardwalk.
- In Haley Tanner's debut novel "Vaclav and Lena" (2011) action takes place in Brighton Beach
Brighton Beach is mentioned:
Notable residents
Notable current and former residents of Brighton Beach include:
- Marat Balagula (b. 1943) neighborhood mob boss during the 1980s
- Eddie Daniels, clarinettist and saxophonist
- Howard Greenfield (1936–86), songwriter[7]
- Vyacheslav Ivankov (1940-2009), alleged crime boss
- Jack Kirby (1917-94), comic book artist, co-creator of Captain America during the early 1940s
- Lea Bayers Rapp (born 1946), author, journalist, playwright[8]
- Lynn Ross (stage name), dancer in original 1957 Broadway production of West Side Story[9]
- Neil Sedaka (born 1939), songwriter[10]
- The Tokens, vocal group formed in 1955 at Abraham Lincoln High School[11]
See also
References
- ^ http://homes.point2.com/Neighborhood/US/New-York/New-York-City/Brooklyn/Brighton-Beach-Demographics.aspx
- ^ a b Jackson, Kenneth T.: The Encyclopedia of New York City: The New York Historical Society; Yale University Press; 1995. pp. 139-140.
- ^ 60th Precinct, NYPD
- ^ The New York Times, April 4, 1888
- ^ Johnstone, Sarah: Ukraine, Lonely Planet, 2005. P.119.
- ^ Orleck, Annelise; Elizabeth Cooke (1999). The Soviet Jewish Americans. Greenwood Publishing. pp. 116. ISBN 9780313300745. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=r-5OeuOLjl4C&pg=PA116&dq=%22Potato+Bag+gang%22&num=100&client=firefox-a&sig=ACfU3U2SwtARZM2IfmplwLt4r21J7iPWXA. Retrieved 2008-09-13.
- ^ Berger, Joseph. "Vintage Pop Star With the Soul of a Bar Mitzvah Boy", The New York Times, May 24, 2004. Accessed September 23, 2009. "Several years before enrolling in Juilliard, he had been introduced to a neighbor with a touch of the poet, Howard Greenfield, and they became a songwriting team for the next 20 years."
- ^ Kensington Books
- ^ Broadway World
- ^ Dettelbach, Cynthia. "From angst-ridden teenager to world-class music star", Cleveland Jewish News, July 30, 2004. Accessed September 23, 2009. "That includes instant face and name recognition, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a place in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and even a street named after him in his native Brighton Beach, Brooklyn."
- ^ Vocal Group Hall of Fame
External links