Crown Heights, Brooklyn

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Crown Heights is a neighborhood in the central portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The main thoroughfare through this neighborhood is Eastern Parkway, a tree-lined boulevard designed by Frederick Law Olmsted extending two miles east and west.

typical Crown Heights Row Houses in the Crow Hill area
typical Crown Heights Row Houses in the Crow Hill area

For most of its history, the area was known as Crow Hill. It was a succession of hills running east and west from Utica Avenue to Classon Avenue, and south to Empire Boulevard and New York Avenue.[1] The name was changed when Crown Street was cut through in 1916.[2]

Crown Heights is bounded by Washington Avenue (to the west), Atlantic Avenue (to the north), Ralph Avenue (to the east) and Clarkson Avenue (to the south). It is about two miles long and two miles deep. The neighborhoods that border Crown Heights are: Prospect Heights (to the west); Prospect Lefferts Gardens (to the southwest); Wingate and Rugby (to the south); Brownsville (to the east); and Bedford-Stuyvesant (to the north).

This neighborhood extends through much of Brooklyn Community Board 8[3] and 9[4]. It is under the jurisdiction of two Precincts of the New York City Police Department. The 77th Precinct is part of Brooklyn North, which covers Crown Heights, Prospect Heights and Weeksville). The 71st Precinct is part of Brooklyn South and covers the southern end of Crown Heights.[5]

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Early History

Although no known evidence remains in the Crown Heights vicinity, prior to the European colonization of the Americas large portions of what is now called Long Island including present-day Brooklyn were occupied by the Lenape, (later renamed Delaware Indians by the European colonizers). The Lenape lived in communities of bark- or grass-covered wigwams, and in their larger settlements—typically located on high ground adjacent to fresh water, and occupied in the fall, winter, and spring—they fished, harvested shellfish, trapped animals, gathered wild fruits and vegetables, and cultivated corn, tobacco, beans, and other crops.

The first recorded contact between the indigenous people of the New York City region and Europeans was with the explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524 when he anchored at the approximate location where the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge touches down in Brooklyn today. There he was visited by a canoe party of Lenape. The next contact was in 1609 when the explorerer Henry Hudson arrived in what is now New York Harbor aboard a Dutch East India Company ship the Halve Maen (Half Moon) commissioned by the Dutch Republic.

European habitation in the New York City area began in earnest with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement, later called "Nieuw Amsterdam" (New Amsterdam), on the southern tip of Manhattan in 1614.

By 1630, Dutch and English colonists started moving into the western end of Long Island. In 1637, Joris Jansen de Rapalje[6] “purchased” about 335 acres around Wallabout Bay and over the following two years, Director Kieft of the Dutch West India Company "purchased" title to nearly all the land in what is now Kings County and Queens County from the indigenous inhabitants.

Finally, the areas around present-day Crown Heights saw its first European settlements starting in about 1661/1662 when several men each received, from Governor Pieter Stuyvesant and the Directors of the Dutch West India Company what was described as “a parcel of free (unoccupied) woodland there” on the condition that they situate their houses “within one of the other concentration, which would suit them best, but not to make a hamlet.”[7][8]

[edit] Development in the 1880s

Crown Heights had begun as a posh residential neighborhood, a "bedroom" for Manhattan's growing bourgeois class. Beginning in the 1880s, many upper-class residences, including characteristic brownstone buildings, were erected along Eastern Parkway. Away from the parkway were a mixture of lower middle-class residences. This development peaked in the 1920s. Before World War II Crown Heights was among New York City's premier neighborhoods, with tree-lined streets, an array of cultural institutions and parks, and numerous fraternal, social and community organizations. Many second and third generation people of Jewish descent had settled in the area.

[edit] Mid-20th Century

Population changes began in the 1930s with immigrants from Jamaica, African Americans from the South in the 1940s and Haitians in the 1970s. Newer Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe also settled throughout the area.

During the '40s, '50s and '60s, many middle class Jews lived in Crown Heights. There were a number of large synagogues on Eatern Parkway, including Chovevei Torah between Albany and Troy.

There were two very prominent Yeshiva elementary schools in the neighborhood, Crown Heights Yeshiva on Crown Street between New York and Nostrand Avenues and the Yeshiva of Eastern Parkway, located on Eastern Parkway between Troy and Schenectady Avenues. Another famous school in the neighborhood was the Reines Talmud Torah which was not a day school, having only afternoon and Sunday morning classes.

In the mid-twentieth century, many of the more established residents left for newer housing and jobs in the suburbs. With increased apartment vacancies, property owners rented to tenants who would not have been able to afford the area earlier. Concurrently, the values of private homes began to fall. Both white and non-white middle class families felt compelled to move out before their houses were devalued further. Their places were taken by African Americans, later immigrants from the Caribbean, and Latinos.

[edit] The 1960s Through the Early 1990s

The 1960s and 1970s were a time of turbulent race relations. With increasing poverty in the city, racial conflicts plagued some New York neighborhoods. With its racially and culturally mixed populations, Crown Heights was mired in this strife. The neighborhood's relatively large population of Hasidic Jews composed a prominent white minority who had stayed in the community after other whites left.

With increasing immigration from rural areas of the Caribbean, Crown Heights became an area of population with low skills for the urban environment. During the Johnson administration, Crown Heights was declared a primary poverty area due to a high unemployment rate, high juvenile and adult crime rate, poor nutrition for lack of family income, relative absence of job skills and readiness to work, and a relatively high concentration of elderly residents.

Violence has erupted in the neighborhood on more than one occasion, including during the New York City blackout of 1977. In 1991 there was an outbreak known as the Crown Heights Riot.

Through the 1990s, crime, racial conflict, and violence decreased in New York. Urban renewal and gentrification began to change the face of Crown Heights, diversifying its population economically, socially, and racially.

[edit] The Crown Heights Riot

Main article: Crown Heights Riot

The events referred to as the Crown Heights Riot were a multi-day disturbance that took place in August 1991.[9]

Longstanding resentments, fears and sensational rumors fed on an automobile accident on 19 August 1991 at 8:30 pm and erupted into neighborhood violence. The accident involving a Jewish driver caused the injury of one Black child and death of another. After the police told a Jewish volunteer ambulance to remove the driver from the scene before a city ambulance took the injured children, African American and Caribbean residents took out their anger on Jewish residents. Stones and other objects were thrown by both sides, fires were set and shops were looted. On the same day black teenagers attacked and Lemrick Nelson Jr. stabbed Jewish student Yankel Rosenbaum, from Australia, who later died.

[edit] Current renaissance

Crown Heights today has extreme contrasts between lovely architecture and vacant, run-down buildings, and variety of peoples and shops, ranging from variously hatted and top-coated Lubavitcher residents to vegan rasta Afro-Caribbean restaurants. Rising real estate values and gentrification have also recently become part of this mix.[10]

In the spring of 2008 some racial tension flared up in a few blocks; however, it never reached to the level of tension that occurred during the Crown Heights Riot of the early 1990s. [11]. However, the Crown Heights neighborhood is an ethnic and social melange where a wide variety of people from older residents, to college students and new immigrants continue to live, work and play side by side while enjoying a peaceful and friendly lifestyle.

NYC.GOV statistics for 2007 reveal that the 77th precinct, which includes a significant part of Crown Heights, has experienced a year-to-date decline of 40% in the number of murders (a total of 9, down from 15), and of 20% in the number of rapes (12, down from 15). However, felonious assaults and burglaries have increased significantly (16.8 and 24.8%, respectively)[12]

[edit] Demographics

As of 2007, of the approximately 150,000 residents in Crown Heights, 90 percent were of African descent (70 percent from the Caribbean and 20 percent of American birth), 8 percent were Hasidic Jews, and 2 percent were Latino, Asian and other ethnic groups.[13]

contingent in the West Indian-American Day Parade
contingent in the West Indian-American Day Parade

Reflecting the most varied population of Caribbean immigrants outside the West Indies, Crown Heights is known for its annual West Indian Carnival. The main event is the West Indian Carnival Parade, also known as "The Labor Day Parade." The parade route goes along Eastern Parkway, from Utica Avenue to Grand Army Plaza. According to the West Indian-American Day Carnival Association,[14] over 3.5 million people participate in the parade each year.

It is also the location of the worldwide headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic Jewish movement, at 770 Eastern Parkway. A thriving Orthodox Jewish community has grown up around that location.

Due to its favorable housing prices, convenient access via mass transit to Downtown Brooklyn and Manhattan, as well as proximity to cultural attractions such as Prospect Park, the Brooklyn Museum and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Crown Heights has attracted an influx of artists, professionals and students of all ethnic and social backgrounds, including members of the LGBT Community.

[edit] Political representation

In City government, Crown Heights is part of New York City Council Districts 35[15] and 36.[16].

Crown Heights is represented in State government as part of the State Senate 19th District[17] and the State Senate 20th District[18]. In the New York State Assembly, Crown Heights is part of State Assembly District 43[19] and State Assembly District 57[20].

[edit] Landmarks

[edit] Notable natives

[edit] See also

[edit] Further reading

[edit] References

  1. ^ "The Eastern District of Brooklyn" by Eugene Armbruster 1912 updated 1941
  2. ^ "Crown Heights" from the 1939 "WPA Guide to New York City"
  3. ^ Official Website Community Board 8
  4. ^ Official Website Community Board 9
  5. ^ "Brooklyn, New York Police Precincts & Patrol Districts" (includes precinct maps)
  6. ^ "Notes for: Jan Joris Jansen (Rapalje) De_Rapalie" from the Janssen Verheul families in Canada and Holland database
  7. ^ "Crown Heights North Historic District: Designation Report" prepared by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission April 24, 2007 (pdf)
  8. ^ "Chapter 3.1: Woodland to City Neighborhood: 300 Years of Change" by Jerome Krase, Brooklyn College Sociology Department "Self and Community in the City", The University Press of America 1982
  9. ^ "Harvard Research Publication on the Crown Heights Riots and background"
  10. ^ Klockenbrink, Myra. "If You're Thinking Of Living In: Crown Heights",The New York Times, January 20, 1985.
  11. ^ "Racial tensions brewing in Crown Heights." CNN.
  12. ^ Compstat.
  13. ^ The Voices and Faces of Crown Heights, accessed 11/26/2007
  14. ^ West Indian-American Day Carnival Association
  15. ^ Council Member- District: 35
  16. ^ Council Member- District: 36
  17. ^ official page 19th Senate District
  18. ^ official page 20th Senate District
  19. ^ official page State Assembly District 43
  20. ^ official page State Assembly District 573
  21. ^ Duffy, Thom. "'Celebrate Brooklyn' Readies Summer Lineup", Billboard (magazine), May 7, 2004. Accessed October 27, 2007. "My life totally revolved around Brooklyn, says Davis, recalling his boyhood in a working-class Jewish neighborhood of Crown Heights, watching the Brooklyn Dodgers play at Ebbet's Field and listening to Martin Block's Make Believe Ballroom on WNEW."
  22. ^ Telpha, Carol. "Neighborhoods: Close-Up on Crown Heights", The Village Voice, December 12, 2002. Accessed October 18, 2007. "Actress and singer Stephanie Mills and rapper Skoob of Das EFX are Crown Heights natives."

[edit] External links

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