Williamsburg (Brooklyn)

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Gentrified Street in Williamsburg
Williamsburg with a view of the Williamsburg Bridge

Williamsburg is a neighborhood of the New York borough Brooklyn .

history

In 1661 a Dutch settlement called Boswijck was founded in the area of ​​the present part of the city , which was renamed Bushwick in 1664 by the English rulers since then . In 1792, a neighboring property was named in honor of officer and engineer Jonathan Williams Williamsburgh .

In 1827 Williamsburgh was incorporated into the Town of Bushwick . However, this incorporation was reversed in 1840. In 1855 it was incorporated into the City of Brooklyn , which in 1898 became the borough of the City of New York .

In the second half of the 19th century, Williamsburg was mostly inhabited by Germans.

Neighboring districts

The East River separates Williamsburg from the East Village and the Lower East Side , both of which are in Manhattan . To the north is the Greenpoint district , which also belongs to Brooklyn . Following Grand Avenue to the northeast, you reach Maspeth , which Williamsburg has a small but direct border with the other borough of Queens . To the east lies Bushwick , in the southeast of Bedford-Stuyvesant and the South Clinton Hill and Vinegar Hill .

Traffic routes

Interstate 278, also known as the Brooklyn Queens Expressway , is one of New York's city highways that runs from southwest to northeast through Williamsburg. The toll-free Williamsburg Bridge connects Williamsburg with Manhattan. Important main streets are Grand Street as an extension of the bridge in a west-east direction, Union Avenue in a south-north direction and Williamsburger Broadway, which also runs from the bridge on the southern edge of the district in a south-east direction.

Furthermore, the district is crossed by a total of three underground lines. The BMT Jamaica Line runs elevated from the Williamsburg Bridge on Broadway in a south-east direction to East New York and is served by the J, M and Z lines, the IND Crosstown Line with the G line runs under Union Avenue in north-south -Direction, and the BMT Canarsie Line with line L serves the northern and eastern edges of the district. The crossing stations are at the corner of Metropolitan Avenue and Union Avenue and Broadway and Union Avenue.

Residents

Some parts of Williamsburg are dominated by the predominantly ultra-Orthodox , especially Hasidic Jews living there , including those of the Satmar .

After a 14-year construction period, a new synagogue was opened on October 15, 2006 by Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum . The synagogue is on Kent Avenue.

A second large group in Williamsburg are people of the "alternative" type: musicians, intellectuals, artists who, due to rising rents in Manhattan, used Williamsburg with its lower rents as a cheaper alternative. This hike has mostly been going on since the 1990s, when Williamsburg was becoming a trendy neighborhood and hipster attraction . In 2008, the rents were due to gentrification so much increased that many of the so-called Bohemians saw themselves forced to lower-cost, more distant from Manhattan parts of Brooklyn such as Bushwick , Bedford-Stuyvesant, Fort Greene , Ridgewood , Clinton Hill and Red Hook to pull.

According to a 2015 article, Williamsburg has a population of around 220,000, about 80,000 of whom are Jewish. 55 percent are poor, another 20 percent describe themselves as needy.

Williamsburg sons and daughters and known residents

In culture

Web links

Commons : Williamsburg, Brooklyn  - collection of pictures, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ George Szpiro: Williamsburg, Stronghold of the Ultra-Orthodox , in: NZZ , May 8, 2015
  2. ↑ locations on IMDB (Engl.)

Coordinates: 40 ° 42 ′  N , 73 ° 57 ′  W