Crown Heights (Brooklyn)

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Location of Crown Heights within Brooklyn

Crown Heights is the name of a neighborhood in the Brooklyn borough of New York . Known for the large population of Orthodox Jews who settled there in the course of the 20th century, the area is today significantly influenced by immigrants from the Caribbean . Regardless of its socially precarious situation, the district has a comparatively high density of cultural institutions and architectural sights.

Location and administration

Wilhelminian style buildings on Pacific Street

The Crown Heights district is located northeast of the central Brooklyn district center Prospect Park . To the north is the district of Bedford-Stuyvesant . To the south, Crown Heights is bounded by East Flatbush and the smaller Lefferts Gardens district . The Prospect Heights district adjoins it to the west or Manhattan . In terms of traffic, Crown Heights is framed to the north by Atlantic Avenue, to the south by Empire Boulevard and East New York Avenue, to the west by Prospect Park and Washington Avenue and on the narrow east side by a small piece of Howard Avenue. The most important east-west connecting road through the district is the Eastern Parkway.

The Community Board is located on Nostrand Avenue
Menachem Mendel Schneerson (right), chief rabbi of the Jewish Orthodox Chabad movement until 1994

Administratively, Crown Heights is assigned to two New York community districts : Brooklyn CD 8, which includes the northern half of Crown Heights and the neighborhoods of Prospect Heights and Weeksville, and Brooklyn CD 9, which includes the neighborhoods east of Prospect Park and the southern part of Crown Heights as well as Lefferts Gardens and the smaller Wingate neighborhood. The Eastern Parkway forms the border between the two administrative units.

The Weeksville district at the eastern end, which is heavily dominated by Caribbean immigrants, and Wingate - a district on the southern edge of the district, which is sometimes also assigned to East Flatbush, are considered relatively independent neighborhoods within Crown Heights. The police responsibilities are roughly based on the district division. The 71st Police Station belonging to South Brooklyn is located near Empire Boulevard. The 77th Police Station belonging to Brooklyn-North is centrally located in the district between Atlantic and Kingston Avenues. In terms of traffic technology, Crown Heights is integrated into the local transport network, among other things, by two supraregional express lines of the New York City Subway : the IRT Eastern Parkway Line and the IRT Nostrand Avenue Line . Central subway stations are located on the Avenues Franklin, Nostrand, Kingston and Utica.

history

Mural on Nostrand Avenue (1974)

The area around what is now Brooklyn was discovered by the Dutch in the early 17th century . The first European settlements arose in the decades after 1650. The settlement was accompanied by the displacement of the indigenous indigenous population - mainly members of the Lenni Lenape , who moved to the hinterland after some disputes . In the course of the 19th century, the settlements in the west of Long Island , which were combined under the administrative unit of Kings County, were gradually absorbed by the prosperous local metropolis of Brooklyn. By the end of the 19th century , the district had established itself as a residential area for better-earning resettlers from Manhattan - although there were also enough quarters with a rather petty-bourgeois layout away from the major connecting roads .

Since the turn of the 20th century, the district has increasingly distinguished itself as an immigration area for members of the Jewish middle class . By the middle of the century, Jews who had moved in made up the majority of the white neighborhood residents. From the Second World War , an increased influx of blacks from the Caribbean began, who became part of the population of the district. The influx, which took place in several waves - first migrants from Harlem as a result of the improved subway connection (and which has entered popular culture through Duke Ellington's well-known title Take the A-Train ), then later impoverished southern states - blacks and immigrants from the Caribbean - started displacement processes Gang that were exacerbated by forced real estate sales.

Brownsville , East New York , Flatbush and Bushwick became predominantly black neighborhoods in the course of this process; the lower white middle class moved to outlying areas such as Carnasie and Bensonhurst . An exception to these intra-district migration movements was Crown Heights. The Orthodox Jewish Lubavitch rallied around the New York Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson , who explicitly advocated not giving up the district as a Jewish residential area. The financial crisis in 1975, the one-sided boom in the service economy since the 1980s and the associated loss of importance of the old industries all affected Brooklyn badly. Poverty and social polarization impaired the coexistence of the different ethnic groups .

Racial Conflicts and Gentrification

The simmering racial conflicts in Crown Heights escalated in the summer of 1991 in the so-called Crown Heights Riots . The trigger was the accidental death of an immigrant from Guiana by a driver of Jewish origin. The escalation between the Orthodox Jewish and the Caribbean population was accompanied on the one hand by accusations of social exclusion, on the other hand by anti-Semitic propaganda and pogrom-like attacks on Jewish residents of the district.

Triggered by the incipient gentrification processes in the eastern part of Brooklyn, the precarious situation in the district has improved slightly since the 1990s. In 2011, however, a report by the Jüdische Allgemeine stated that the coexistence of the different ethnic groups is characterized by coexistence and indifference rather than real togetherness. The Orthodox Jewish share of the population has now consolidated. Numerous black employees work in Lubavitch companies . In 2013 there were again anti-Semitic incidents. This time, predominantly Jewish children and young people were affected by assaults.

population

Demographically, the district is now dominated by a black majority of the population. According to a New York Times article , Crown Heights had around 150,000 residents in 1994 - 19.1% white and 74.7% black - mostly immigrants from the West Indies. Official reports from the City of New York showed an overall decline in population for 2010 for the two community districts comprising Crown Heights. According to the city's numbers, the proportion of white residents in both community districts has increased significantly, while the proportion of black residents has decreased. Regardless of this, residents with dark skin make up the vast majority: around 63,000 out of 96,000 in the northern CD and just under 67,000 out of 98,000 in the southern CD.

The district is still marked by poverty and social tensions. The crime rate has been falling since the mid-1990s. The 71st police district with a total of 450,000 residents (whose main area was sometimes referred to as "Fort Dogde" by the media) was, however, considered to be one of the toughest in New York until well into the 1990s - with a crime rate that was that of the problematic district of East New York surpassed. An on-site report in the Berliner Zeitung in 1996 listed several reasons for the decline : on the one hand, the zero tolerance policy of New York's then Mayor Rudy Giuliani , and on the other, the decline in the crack wave of the 1990s. In the meantime, according to a police officer quoted in the report, the rather calming drug heroin has taken its place . The police district also made the headlines due to a high number of police ill-treatment. According to the article in the Berliner Zeitung, a report by Amnesty International listed 90 cases - including those with death from police action.

The Lubavitch Orthodox Jewish life, as well as minor Orthodox groups, is most concentrated in the central section of the borough on both sides of Eastern Parkway between Nostrand Avenue and Kingston Avenue. The neighborhood's Jewish population is believed to be the largest in New York. Irrespective of isolated improvements, the district is still shown as a dangerous place in reports and travel advice guides.

Cultural meaning

West Indian Day Parade (2008)

Compared to other parts of the city, Crown Heights has an above-average number of significant architectural and cultural facilities. The following were or are of importance beyond the district:

  • the Brooklyn Museum on the border with Prospect Park - the second largest museum in New York
  • the Brooklyn Children's Museum . Founded in 1899 and not far from Atlantic Avenue in the Bedford-Stuyvesant district, the museum is the oldest children's museum in the world. It was founded in 1899 and after its reopening in 2008 due to renovations, it was New York's first Green Museum.
  • the Jewish Children's Museum. Centrally located in the district near Eastern Parkway, the facility is the largest Jewish children's museum in the United States .
  • the Gothic-style headquarters of the Jewish Orthodox Lubavitch - Hasidim on the Eastern Parkway
  • the Weeksville Heritage Center - a historic Weeksville neighborhood that became known as the stronghold of the free Northern Black community and a stronghold of abolitionism .
  • the Ebbets Field - the former home of the Brooklyn National League - Baseball team Brooklyn Dodgers . After the Dodgers moved away in 1957, the stadium was abandoned. There is now a social housing complex with 25,000 mostly black residents on the site.
  • the Labor Day Carnival with the central event West Indian Day Parade takes place every September. With one to three million attendees, Labor Day Carnival is one of the two main street carnival festivities in Brooklyn.

Great personalities

Music label manager Clive Davis (2007)
The opera singer Beverly Sills (1956)

Like other parts of Brooklyn, Crown Heights has a high percentage of prominent citizens. The following famous people were either born in Brooklyn's Crown Heights district or have lived there temporarily:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Information on district boundaries : corresponding marking on Google Maps
  2. ↑ a b Information from the community district reports of the New York City Council for 2010. Online: Brooklyn Community District 8 ( Memento of the original from October 13, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Brooklyn Community District 9 ( Memento of the original from May 15, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed on March 21, 2015 (PDF; Engl.) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nyc.gov @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nyc.gov
  3. ↑ Map of NYPD Brooklyn Police Precincts ( Memento of the original from July 7, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , brooklyn.com, accessed March 21, 2015  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / brooklyn.com
  4. ↑ a b The time of begging is over , Spiegel, issue 39/1991, 23 September 1991
  5. ^ "Blacks and Jews have been fighting each other in New York for months": The Bloody Front in Brooklyn
  6. ^ New York: Peace in Crown Heights , Hannes Stein, Jüdische Allgemeine, August 25, 2011
  7. ↑ Anti-Semitic game in Crown Heights: "Fuck the Jews" ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , CFCA - Forum for the Coordination of the Fight Against Anti-Semitism, November 13, 2013 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / antisemitism.org.il
  8. ↑ The Voices and Faces of Crown Heights , Sheila Rule, New York Times, April 15, 1994 (Engl.)
  9. ^ A b Use in Dodge City , Jan Heidtmann, Berliner Zeitung, August 12, 1996
  10. ↑ “A megalomaniac madhouse” , Malte Hering, Till Krause, Lars Reichardt, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, issue 44/2012