Greenpoint, Brooklyn
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Greenpoint is the northernmost neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is bordered on the southwest by Williamsburg at the Bushwick inlet, on the southeast by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and East Williamsburg, on the north by Newtown Creek and Long Island City, Queens at the Pulaski Bridge, and on the west by the East River. The neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community Board 1.
Nestled in the northernmost reach of Brooklyn and surrounded by waterways on three borders, this waterfront neighborhood lies only a short distance from both Manhattan and Queens.
Notable individuals born and/or raised in Greenpoint include actress Mae West, children's book author Margaret Wise Brown, and pop singer Pat Benatar.
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[edit] Rezoning of 2005
On May 11, 2005, the New York City Council passed a large-scale rezoning of the Greenpoint and Northside waterfront from manufacturing to residential and mixed use with a set-aside (and $100 million in funding) for the creation of open waterfront park space, with a two-mile-long esplanade to be built in segments. The land is being rezoned to permit new housing, where luxury highrises could be developed along with low-rise subsidized housing as part of the plan's inclusionary housing strategy. The rezoned waterfront will also include retail, a 28-acre waterfront park, and a continuous riverfront promenade. The rezoning is part of a continuing process of gentrification in the area, which was once characterized by manufacturing and other light industry interspersed with smaller residential buildings, but now contains over a hundred residentially converted loft buildings and new residential buildings. The rezoning is projected to result in the creation of about 10,000 new apartments in about 10 years.
Critics of the rezoning have contended that the rezoning will irrecoverably distort the existing community's character ("Manhattanization") and force out existing residents, and that the plan lacks adequate provisions for public transportation or public safety infrastructure to accommodate the expected new residents. Others championing the rezoning cite its projected economic benefits, the new waterfront promenades, and its "Inclusionary Housing" component (which offers developers incentives to rent about one-third of the new housing units below market rates at "affordable" prices). Critics counter that similar set-asides for "affordable" housing have gone unfulfilled in previous large-scale developments, such as Battery Park City.
[edit] History
In the nineteenth century, Greenpoint established itself as a center of shipbuilding and waterborne commerce; its shipbuilding, printing, pottery, glassworks and foundries were staffed by generation after generation of hardworking immigrants. The homes built for the merchants and the buildings erected for their workers sprang up along streets that lead down to the waterfront. Today, this area is on the National Register of Historic Places as Greenpoint’s Historic District.
Greenpoint’s East River waterfront holds the maritime history of the community. The buildings which formerly manufactured the ropes for the shipbuilding industry are still there. The launch site of the USS Monitor lies on Bushwick Creek. Long a site of shipbuilding, the neighborhood’s dockyards harbored the construction of the Monitor—the Union’s first ironclad fighting ship built during the American Civil War. The Monitor, together with seven other ironclads, was built at the Continental Ironworks in Greenpoint.
[edit] Demographics
Greenpoint is largely working class and multi-generational; it is not uncommon to find three generations of family members living in this community. The neighborhood is sometimes referred to as "Little Poland" due to its large population of working-class Polish immigrants, reportedly the second largest concentration in the United States after Chicago.[citation needed] Greenpoint is not only populated with Polish immigrants and Polish-Americans, but also contains a large population of Hispanics (mostly north of Greenpoint Avenue), Italian Americans and Irish Americans scattered throughout the neighborhood.
Originally settled by German and Irish immigrants, Greenpoint became populated primarily by Polish immigrants by 1900. Recent years have also seen an influx of younger people often associated with nearby Williamsburg. The Real Estate Board of New York issued a report showing a vibrant real estate market in Brooklyn, as median sale prices for coops and condominiums rose about 6% in 2006 to $343,000. Sale prices in the Greenpoint section rose 65% in 2006, the most of any neighborhood in the borough.[1]
[edit] Environmental Litigation
In 1950, the predecessor of the ExxonMobil Oil company is alleged to have spilled 17 million gallons of oil into Newtown Creek in what is one of the worst oil spills in United States History.[2]. Oil is believed to have been seeping into the groundwater since then, and a second spill is said to have occurred in 1978. It should be noted that drinking water does not come from these long abandoned aquifers where oil has collected.[3]
In January of 2006, State and oil company officials asserted that to date half of the spill has been cleaned up. On October 20, 2005, local residents within the area of the spill, which is located in the predominantly commercial/industrial western section of Greenpoint near the East Williamsburg Industrial Park, filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil, BP and Chevron in Brooklyn State Supreme Court, alleging they have suffered adverse consequences to their health although there has been no proof to date to back up these claims. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's notice of intent to sue charge that ExxonMobil's methods for recovering the spilt oil are actually releasing more pollutants into Newtown Creek, and the notice charges that ExxonMobil has had knowledge of this problem for years. [4]
Riverkeeper Inc., an environmental advocacy group, filed a lawsuit in 2004 against Exxon Mobil, alleging damage to the environment. It was joined by City Councilmen David Yassky and Eric Gioia and by the Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz. Homeowners claim that, because of the companies' negligence, millions of gallons of oil were released into the ground in this section of the community. Greenpoint has a 10% lower cancer rate than the rest of the city, according to a study published by NYC Dept. of Health that did not differentiate between different types of cancer. (Source:NYC Dept. of Health (see [1]). [5]
[edit] Landmarks and Attractions
Parks include McCarren Park (formerly known as Greenpoint Park), the largest greenspace, and the smaller McGolrick Park (formerly known as Winthrop Park), which contains both the landmarked Shelter Pavilion (1910) and an allegorical monument (1938) to the USS Monitor ironclad ship.
Of architectural interest in Greenpoint are the Astral Apartments (1886) on Franklin Street, the Saint Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church (1875) on Manhattan Avenue, the Eberhard-Faber Pencil Factory on Greenpoint Ave at Franklin St., the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Transfiguration of Our Lord (1921) on North 12th Street, the Oliver Hazard Perry School (P.S. 34) (1867) on Norman Avenue (the oldest continuously operating public school building in New York City); the North Fork (formerly Green Point) Savings Bank (1908) and the and the Saint Stanislaus Kostka Roman Catholic Church (1896) on Humboldt Street, which is a Catholic shrine to the Polish community.
[edit] Trivia
- Greenpoint Hospital on Skillman Avenue between Kingsland Avenue and Debevoise Ave., was opened in 1914 and was operation through the early 1980s. Interestingly, it is well outside the currently accepted boundaries of Greenpoint.
[edit] References
- ^ Real Estate prices in the Greenpoint section rose 65% in 2006, the most of any neighborhood in the borough, Crain's New York Business, NY, March 7, 2007
- ^ Greenpoint, Maspeth Residents Lobby To Get 55-Year-Old Oil Spill Cleaned Up, New York Sun, November 18, 2005
- ^ BROOKLYN: RESIDENTS CLAIM POLLUTION DAMAGE, The New York Times, October 21, 2005
- ^ Nicolas Confessore, "Cuomo Moves Toward Suing Five Companies for Spill," "New York Times" February 10, 2007, B1.
- ^ "Cuomo Moves Toward Suing Five Companies for Spill," "New York Times" February 10, 2007, B1.
[edit] External links
- The Greenpoint-Williamsburg Waterfront Access Plan
- Greenpoint Landmarks
- A.O.H. Greenpoint, Brooklyn
- greenpunkt.com: guide to Greenpoint, Brooklyn
- Greenpoint, Brooklyn
- Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center
- Greenpoint Waterfront Association for Parks and Planning
- Landmarks: Greenpoint's Public School 34, The Oliver Hazard Perry School
- Information about the lawsuit against ExxonMobil
- Greenpoint Wiki - Wiki dedicated to Greenpoint
- Local news
