Greenpoint (Brooklyn)

Polish shops in Greenpoint

Greenpoint is the northernmost borough of Brooklyn in New York City. To the southwest, Greenpoint is bordered by Williamsburg , to the southeast by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, to the north by Newtown Creek and to the west by the East River . The Pulaski Bridge , named after Casimir Pulaski , connects Greenpoint with Long Island City, the westernmost borough of Queens . Many of the 40,000 inhabitants (Census 2000) are of Polish descent.

history

View towards the East River and Manhattan

Shelter Pavilion in McGolrick Park

Before the arrival of the Europeans, Greenpoint was inhabited by the Keskachauge, a branch of the Lenape . The area was named after a strip of green land that protruded into the East River. In 1638 the Dutch West India Company negotiated with the Lenape for the right to colonize the Brooklyn Peninsula.

The first Greenpoints settler reported was Dirck Volckertsen, a Norwegian immigrant who built a house there in 1645 after he had legally asserted himself against a competitor in the dispute over this land the year before. He regularly got into fatal confrontations with the Indians, who paid with their lives two of his sons-in-law. In the 1650s he began selling and leasing his property to Dutch settlers. For a long time the area was then mainly used for agriculture.

During the War of Independence , the British Army operated a field camp there, while the rest of the country was supported by just five closely related families, until the actual settlement core of Greenpoint was built on divided plots in the course of the 19th century. Before that, Greenpoint's farms were largely isolated from the rest of Brooklyn, only connected to it by a single road, Wood Point Road. As a result, farmers often used boats to bring their produce to Manhattan and sell it there.

In 1839, Neziah Bliss, who married into one of the local families, had a toll road built that follows what is now Franklin Street. In 1850 he opened the first regular ferry service to Manhattan. Little by little, Neziah Bliss bought up most of the land. After the property had previously been acquired for Winthrop Park, it opened in 1891. Twenty years later, the Shelter Pavilion was built in the park. In 1941 it was renamed McGolrick Park .

During the 19th century, industries began to settle along the East River and Newton Creek. a. Wood processing, shipbuilding, printing, ceramics and metal construction. Most of the workers were immigrants, many of them from Germany, Ireland and Poland. At this time, densely built-up blocks of houses emerged, especially on the streets leading to the shore. Parts of it are now recorded in the national register of monuments .

During the American Civil War , the rope mills on the banks of the East River were repurposed by the Union . The USS Monitor , the first ironclad in the US Navy, and six other ships of this class were built here by Continental Ironworks . On January 30, 1862, the USS Monitor was launched from Newton Creek. On October 5, 1950, an oil refinery explosion on Newton Creek . There alone 17 million gallons of oil leaked. The contaminated sites are still an environmental problem today.

In 2005, the Department of City Planning confirmed the relocation of 175 blocks to Greenpoint and Williamsburg. 7,300 new residential units with an estimated 16,700 residents as well as more than 20,000 m² of retail space were to replace 93,000 m² of industrial area, with the construction of affordable rental apartments being subsidized. The plan also included the creation of a 50-acre park on the East River in Greenpoint and Williamsburg. On March 2, 2006, the Rezoning Plan was modified. However, many residents and members of the local government ( Brooklyn Community Board 1 ) continue to object to the zoning plan.

Greenpoint is part of the 12th Congressional District of New York. This is represented in Congress by the MP Nydia Velázquez ( Democrats ).

Demographics

For a long time, Greenpoint was shaped by the workers and immigrants who work and live there. The effects of gentrification became apparent in the 1980s . In 1986 at the latest, rising rents could be observed in the immediately neighboring Williamsburg, when industrial buildings there went through a conversion . In addition, residents of Manhattan have moved to Brooklyn before the immensely rising real estate prices at the time. In the first half of the 1980s, for example, they intensified a development that led to rents in Greenpoint rising by 500% during this period and the average age of the population there, with 13.6% over 65 years of age, increasing Increased compared to the rest of New York. At the same time, a smaller community of artists established itself in Greenpoint.

Today, Greenpoint is predominantly characterized by a non-generational middle class. Because of the many citizens of Polish descent living there, it is also called Little Poland . After Chicago, Greenpoint is one of the largest Polish communities in the US. The Polish-language newspaper Nowy Dziennik appears here.

According to a census, almost 40,000 people lived in Greenpoint in 2000, spread across almost 16,000 households. The median household income at that time was just under $ 34,000 (2008: 43,359) and was thus significantly higher than in neighboring Williamsburg. 43.6% of the citizens said they were of Polish descent. Single people over 65 lived in 10.1% of households and children in 26%. 17.7% of the population lived below the poverty line, a smaller proportion than in neighboring districts.

According to City-Data.com, the index for the cost of living in the ZIP area corresponding to Greenpoint was 185.8 in December 2009 on a scale standardized to an index value of 100.

Culture and sights

Russian Orthodox Cathedral

McCarren Park and the smaller McGolrick Park, in which an allegorically stylized monument erected in 1938 commemorates the construction of the USS Monitor , are worth seeing in Greenpoint . There is also a historic district listed in the national monument register, which is located between Franklin Street and Manhattan Avenue, among other places. Of architectural interest are an Episcopal Church on Kent Street from 1853 and a Russian Orthodox cathedral on North 12th Street from 1921.

Facts

Scenes from the well-known films Departed and Donnie Brasco were shot in Greenpoint
The streets are sorted alphabetically by name and begin on Ash Street to the north
Famous people born or raised in Greenpoint include Mae West , Margaret Wise Brown , Mickey Rooney , Pat Benatar , Willie Sutton and Henry Miller .