Brownsville, Brooklyn

Brownsville
Neighborhood of Brooklyn
The Samuel J. Tilden Houses, one of many NYCHA public housing developments located in Brownsville
Country	United States of America
State	New York
City	New York City
Borough	Brooklyn
Area[1]
• Total	3.01 km2 (1.163 sq mi)
Population (2010)[1]
• Total	55,043
• Density	18,000/km2 (47,000/sq mi)
ZIP codes	11212, 11233
Area code	917, 718, 347

Brownsville is a residential neighborhood located in eastern Brooklyn, New York City. The total land area is 1.163 square miles (3.01 km²), and the ZIP codes for the neighborhood are 11212 and 11233. Brownsville is bordered by Atlantic Avenue to the north, on the Bedford–Stuyvesant and Bushwick border; East 98th Street/Ralph Avenue to the west, on the Flatbush, Weeksville, and Crown Heights borders; the freight rail Bay Ridge Branch of the Long Island Rail Road and Linden Boulevard to the south, adjacent to the neighborhood of Canarsie; and Van Sinderen Avenue to the east, next to East New York.^[2] It is part of Brooklyn Community Board 16.

Demographics

In 2010, Brownsville's population was 58,300 ^[3] and the demographics were 76.7% Black or African American, 17% Hispanic/Latino, 2.6% White, 1% Asian/Pacific Islander and 3.7% described themselves as other. 29.9% of the population were High School graduates and 8.4% had a Bachelor's degree or higher.

As of 2008, the median household income was $15,978. There were a total of 28,298 housing units in Brownsville.^[4]

Land use and public housing

Brownsville is dominated by public housing developments of various types. There is also a significant concentration of semi-detached multi-unit row houses similar to those found in East New York and Soundview surrounding the public housing developments. Many have been torn down and replaced by vacant lots or newly constructed subsidized attached multi-unit rowhouses. There is also a small number of tenements in the area. The neighborhood contains the highest concentration of NYCHA developments in New York City; NYCHA controls more than one-third of all of the neighborhood’s housing units.^[5]

Van Dyke I Houses

Local retail; the Riverdale Towers sit in the background

Marcus Garvey Houses

There are 18 NYCHA developments located in Brownsville.^[6]

1. 104–14 Tapscott Street; one 4-story building.
2. Brownsville Houses; 27 buildings, 6- and 7-stories tall.
3. Glenmore Plaza; four buildings, 10-, 18- and 24-stories tall.
4. Howard Avenue; five buildings, 3-stories tall.
5. Howard Avenue-Park Place; eight buildings, 3-stories tall.
6. Howard Houses; ten buildings, 7- and 13-stories tall.
7. Hughes Apartments; three 22-story buildings.
8. Marcus Garvey (Group A); three buildings, 6- and 14-stories tall.
9. Prospect Plaza Houses; three vacant 12-story buildings in the process of being rehabilitated. (really in the Ocean Hill section of Brooklyn Community Board 16)
10. Ralph Avenue Rehab; five 4-story buildings.
11. Reverend Randolph Brown; two 6-story buildings.
12. Seth Low Houses; four buildings, 17- and 18-stories tall.
13. Sutter Avenue-Union Street; three rehabilitated tenement buildings, 4- and 6-stories tall.
14. Tapscott Street Rehab; eight 4-story rehabilitated tenement buildings.
15. Tilden Houses; eight 16-story buildings.
16. Van Dyke I; 22 buildings, 3- and 14-stories tall.
17. Van Dyke II; one 14-story building.
18. Woodson Houses; two buildings, 10- and 25-stories tall.

History

Development

The area that would become Brownsville was first used by the Dutch for farming. It was also a source of stone and other building-materials. William Suydam parcelled the land in 1860, laying out 262 lots, but he soon defaulted on his mortgages. Charles S. Brown of Esopus won the land in an auction. By 1883, there were 250 houses in "Brown's Village".^[5]

Brownsville was mostly Jewish from the 1880s to the 1950s. Elias Kaplan led the first large Jewish immigrant contingent to the area in 1887, selling it as an alternative to the poor conditions of migrant workers on the Lower East Side and advertising it as an alternative to the Lower East Side’s unions.^[5] Brownsville was also a place for radical political causes during this time. In 1916, Margaret Sanger set up the first birth control clinic in America on Amboy Street.^[7] Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the neighborhood elected Socialist and American Labor Party candidates to the state assembly.^[8] As of the 1930s it was considered the most densely populated district in all of Brooklyn.^[9] The population remained heavily Jewish, and the neighborhood boasted some seventy Orthodox synagogues.^[9]

Poverty and crime

Loews Pitkin Theatre

A street market on Belmont Avenue in 1962, when the neighborhood still had a large Jewish presence

Originally a landlocked area of flood-prone marshes, Brownsville was inconvenient as a place for the affluent to live due to its distance from Manhattan, but convenient as a place to put up large projects for those of lesser means. The area was used as a dump, and awful stenches wafted north from the glue factories of Jamaica Bay.^[5] As early as the 1910s, the area had acquired a reputation as a vicious slum and breeding ground for crime, and by 1907, 96% of the neighborhood’s housing units were in tenements.^[5] It has been known throughout the years for its criminal gangs and in the 1930s and 1940s achieved notoriety as the birthplace of Murder, Inc. It was a predominantly Jewish neighborhood until the 1960s, when its population had become largely black and Brownsville's unemployment rate was 17 percent. Half of all families in the district lived on less than $5,000 a year.

The social problems associated with poverty, from crime to drug addiction, have plagued the area for decades. Despite the decline of crime compared to its peak during the crack and heroin epidemics, violent crime continues to be a serious problem in the community.^[10] Brownsville has significantly higher dropout rates and incidents of violence in its schools.^[11] Students must pass through metal detectors and swipe ID cards to enter the buildings. Other problems in local schools include low test scores and high truancy rates.

Many riots and violent crimes have marked Brownsville's bad reputation. In September 1967, a riot occurred following the death of an 11-year-old African American boy named Richard Ross, who was killed by an African American NYPD detective, John Rattley, at the corner of St. Johns Place and Ralph Avenue. Rattley believed Ross had mugged a 73-year-old Jewish man. The riot was led in part by Brooklyn militant Sonny Carson and was quelled after Brooklyn North Borough Commander Lloyd Sealy deployed a squad of 150 police officers. Officer Rattley was not indicted by the grand jury.^{[12][13][14][15]}

In 1968, Brownsville was the setting of a protracted and highly contentious teachers' strike.^[16] The Board of Education had experimented with giving the people of the neighborhood control over the school. The new administration laid off several teachers in violation of union contract rules. The teachers were all white and mostly Jewish, and the resulting strike served to badly divide the whole city. The resulting strike dragged on for half a year, becoming known as one of John Lindsay's "Ten Plagues".^[17]

After a wave of arson throughout the 1970s ravaged the low-income communities of New York City, many of the residential structures in Brownsville were left seriously damaged or destroyed. The city began to rehabilitate many formally abandoned tenement-style apartment buildings and designate them low-income housing, beginning in the late 1970s. Also, many subsidized multi-unit townhouses and newly constructed apartment buildings have been or are being built on vacant lots across the neighborhood.

Even in 2009, when Brooklyn's crime rate became the lowest in many years, crime and poverty were still relatively high in Brownsville.^[18] Crime rates in Brownsville had declined in the same manner that they had elsewhere in the city, but the declines were not as severe as in other areas of the city, and as a result, Brownsville was considered to be the murder capital of New York City in 2012.^[19]

Recent events

In 2008, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Betsy Head Play Center a landmark, making it the first and only individual landmark in Brownsville. A large swimming pool with bathhouses and other facilities, the Center was one of 11 expansive outdoor swimming pools opened in the summer of 1936 by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and City Parks Commissioner Robert Moses and funded largely by the Works Progress Administration (WPA).^[20]

Police

The NYPD's 65th Precinct, built in the 1900s, covered most of the area until its closure in the mid-1980s. Originally, there were two precincts prior to its closure; the area is now patrolled solely by the 73rd Precinct^[21] located at 1470 East New York Avenue. New York City Housing Authority property in the area is patrolled by Police Service Area #2 (P.S.A. 2).^[22] It is part of Brooklyn Community Board 16.

Education

Public schools are operated by the New York City Department of Education.

• Brownsville Academy High School

Until 2001, Brownsville was the only Brooklyn school district without a high school. There are now three; two are housed in the same building at 226 Bristol Street. Teachers Preparatory opened in September 2001. FDA VII opened in September 2004. Teachers Preparatory School serves 6th through 12th graders. It received a grade of "A" on both its middle school and high school report cards for 2008.^[23] There also is a transfer school Brownsville Academy, which is a Diploma Plus transfer school. It received a "Well Developed" score for 2008–2009.^[24] It also received a grade of B on its 2007–2008 report card.^[25]

Transportation

Brownsville's main thoroughfare is Pitkin Avenue.^[26] The New York City Subway serves Brownsville on the IRT New Lots Line (2 3 4 5 trains) and BMT Canarsie Line (L trains).^[27]

Notable people

See also

• Murder, Inc.
• New York City teachers' strike of 1968
• Zion Triangle

References

Neighborhoods in the New York City Borough of Brooklyn Admiral's Row Bath Beach Bay Ridge Bedford-Stuyvesant Bensonhurst Bergen Beach Beverley Square Bridge Plaza BoCoCa Boerum Hill Borough Park Brighton Beach Brooklyn Heights Brownsville Bushwick Canarsie Carroll Gardens Chinatown Clinton Hill Cobble Hill Columbia Street Waterfront District Coney Island Crown Heights Ditmas Park Downtown Dumbo Dyker Heights East Flatbush East New York East Williamsburg Farragut Fiske Terrace Flatbush Flatlands Fort Greene Fulton Ferry Gerritsen Beach Gowanus Gravesend Greenpoint Greenwood Heights Highland Park Homecrest Kensington Manhattan Beach Mapleton Marine Park Midwood Mill Basin Navy Yard New Utrecht Ocean Hill Ocean Parkway Pacific Park/Atlantic Yards Park Slope Pigtown Plumb Beach Prospect Heights Prospect Lefferts Gardens Prospect Park South Red Hook Sea Gate Sheepshead Bay Spring Creek South Brooklyn South Slope Starrett City Sunset Park The Hole Vinegar Hill Wallabout Weeksville West Midwood White Sands Williamsburg Windsor Terrace Wingate Wyckoff Heights Community Boards 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 See also History of Brooklyn Timeline of Brooklyn

Coordinates: 40°39′38.35″N 73°54′38.81″W / 40.6606528°N 73.9107806°W / 40.6606528; -73.9107806