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December 19, 2008
Bed-Stuy Landmark Name Change
House for sale/let in the Bedford Section. Brand new three story plus
basement in Stuyvesant Heights. These are the ads that you would see
120 years ago in the Brooklyn news papers. I was looking at an old map
of the Bedford Stuyvesant area and the neighborhood was split up into
areas such as Tompkins Park (or East Brooklyn), Bedford Corners (or
Hancock Heights) and Stuyvesant Heights. When many outsiders hear the name Bed-Stuy the first thing that comes to mind is someplace negative. It is true that in the 1980s and early 1990s it was a time when the area was full of crime and drugs. Bed-Stuy is a rather
new name that started in middle of the last century. Could a name
change be good for the neighborhood? As many of you know Bedford Stuyvesant is in the process of landmarking different sections of the neighborhood such as Bedford Corners Historic District, Agate and Alice Ct Historic District, Ocean Hill Historic District and extending Stuyvesant Heights Historic District. Do you think a name change is what it
takes to draw higher end businesses into the area? Right now we are starting all over again with landmarking. It was started in the mid 80s but someone dropped the ball.
What do you think about the breaking up of the area and going back to the Victorian names?
Comments
I appreciate the thought and intention behind your question, but not sure that name changes will bring what you want. I am personally driven crazy by real estate agencies intentionally misidentifying any neighborhood, let alone bordering neighborhoods, as being within the bounds of "desirable" neighborhoods. Also intensely dislike long-established, oldtime neighborhoods winding up with totally concocted names like Nolita, Bococa, etc. Similarly, has or would identifying parts of Harlem as only Morningside Heights, Hamilton Heights, Manhattanville, Manhattan Valley, Strivers Row, Mount Morris, etc., make them more "desirable" or disrupt a history of unity? And are all neighborhoods only "improved" when higher-end businesses are drawn there, rather than quality businesses with deep roots (as opposed to shallow, profit-driven, johnny-come-lately roots)? Brooklyn was a very segregated place in the 50s and 60s (and I'm sure before), so not sure that I'd date things to the 80s and 90s. I don't mean these as arguments against your suggestion...just some initial thoughts off the top of my head.
Posted by: vinca at December 19, 2008 1:45 PM
I think it's useful. Bed-Stuy, is large, as is Harlem, and those localizing names help orient people. Also, when I ask a taxi driver to take me to Bedford Corners I may get less flak than if I ask him to take me to Bed-Stuy!
Posted by: Susan Elkins at December 19, 2008 1:58 PM
I agree vinca...it is a tough one. Although I may be in Stuyvesant Heights (not sure technically since I'm a block north of where the "historic district" ends) I'd never tell an outsider that's where I live. I live in Bed Stuy.
Posted by: daveinbedstuy at December 19, 2008 2:00 PM
There's no taxi driver who will take you anywhere near there :)
Besides, he'll look at you like you're Ozzie Osborne if you say "Bedford Corners"
Posted by: daveinbedstuy at December 19, 2008 2:14 PM
What I was trying to say was that there's no taxi driver that knows how to take you anywhere near thre.
Posted by: daveinbedstuy at December 19, 2008 2:22 PM
Susan: your comments are exactly among the reasons why I would argue against a name change (and I'm still turning the whole question over in my mind, not arguing one way or another). But to your point, the refusal to drive to Bed-Stuy lies in deep-seated cultural prejudices and fears, quickly learned and hard to overcome. A name change is unlikely to produce the mental, spiritual and cultural shift that would make "otherness" and cultural diversity less frightening to average folks who may not even be conscious of where their hesitations and fears come from.
Posted by: vinca at December 19, 2008 2:25 PM
yeah i lived in two places when i lived in harlem. first in morningside heights and then in hamilton heights. when people asked me where i lived i would alway say harlem. if they wanted to know i guess specifically which area then yeah id say either boringside heights or hamilton gunfights.
bed stuy should just stay bed stuy.
i work in soho and i can't stand the nolita and noho monikers.
*Rob*
Posted by: PitbullNYC at December 19, 2008 2:37 PM
When someone from Harlem tells me they live in Hamilton Heights or Mt. Morris Park I get a good idea of where they are in Harlem. Like Susan I think it helps.
Posted by: Amzi Hill at December 19, 2008 2:42 PM
Bedford Stuyvesant is a VERY large area. Perhaps Flatbush, also very large and generally broken up into the various neighborhoods of Victorian Flatbush, plus PLG, and lots of un-named areas in between, could be a precedent for developing separate identities within the larger area.
The desire to create separate identities for parts of Bedford Stuyvesant is hardly new. When I represented PLG at the old Brooklyn Brownstone Conference in the 70s, Ruby Ford, who attended meetings for a group called (IIRC) Brownstoners of Bedford Stuyvesant, always insisted that she was representing the neighborhoods (plural) of Bedford and Stuyvesant Heights.
Posted by: Bob Marvin at December 19, 2008 2:42 PM
Whats the difference between now and 1950 when somepeople starting calling the area Bed-Stuy? Some of the old timers of that period might have been upset with that name. I know the older people in my family always told us they lived in Bedford Area and they came to the area in the early 1930s.
Posted by: Amzi Hill at December 19, 2008 2:53 PM
FWIW I was told (in the '70s) that the name Bedford Stuyvesant was coined in the '50s by the tabloid newspapers to describe any predominantly black Brooklyn neighborhood that was the location for one of their crime stories.
Posted by: Bob Marvin at December 19, 2008 3:05 PM
What's the difference between living in Yonkers and living in Riverdale? But you know how many people who live a few blocks from the "dividing line" would rather say they live in Riverdale than say they live in Yonkers, even when their zip code says otherwise. Some percentage of people who want to say they live in Stuyvesant Heights will say that because of their many-generation history and neighborhood pride, and some percentage will say that because they want to quickly communicate that they're in the neighborhood but "above" the neighborhood, not quite part of the neighborhood, or different in one way or another from existing stereotypes. It's not unlike newcomers to Brooklyn who might be willing to name their neighborhood (because of it's reflected cachet) but certainly don't want you to confuse them with being native Brooklynites. In my childhood of the 50s, most people named their neighborhood by their block, because right around the corner was someone else's block and someone else's turf. I'd hate to see us return to that. The difference of opinion on place-names speaks to how multi-faceted your original question and how even more complex the underlying issues.
Posted by: vinca at December 19, 2008 3:22 PM
People in Riverdale don't even say they live in the Bronx. One of my friends in college from there told me that Riverdale is in Manhattan. I find out later that Marble Hill is really the only part of Manhattan on the continental US. Even Park Slope is North and South. When a neighborhood is too big people start splitting it up.. Most people from NYC tell people that they are from NYC and not just NY. NY is a good size state and many want to make it clear they they live in the section of the state.. I think the same goes with neighborhoods that are large like Bedford Stuyvesant.
Posted by: Amzi Hill at December 19, 2008 3:42 PM
When I moved to Park Slope 25 years ago, I lived in the much-maligned south Slope. Now the same block is quite definitely situated in the much-coveted center Slope. Will I ever use either of those monikers to describe where I live? Never.
Am I better or different because I live north, center or south? Did my living here have anything to do with the changing boundaries? When people ask where I live,
I tell them I live in Brooklyn near Prospect Park, and I give them the cross-streets. Same way I have for every other place I've ever lived in Brooklyn (described by local feature whose name they might recognize, and followed by an intersection). Very provincial, very old-school Brooklyn. Very happy that, by reflex, I still call Manhattan, big as it is, "the City."
Posted by: vinca at December 19, 2008 3:58 PM
I think the notion to subdivide can come from both ways, positive and negative, as most here have said. I've said in other threads of this nature, that Harlem has long been subdivided into Hamilton Hts, Striver's Row, Sugar Hill, etc,etc. I think those names help give a definite pride of place, especially to an area that may have bad connotations as a whole. All three of the above names were tony, much sought after parts of Harlem for those better off, or more famous, so there is always the snob factor, which can never be discounted. The same goes for sub dividing Bed Stuy, where Stuyvesant Hts has more snob appeal than whatever one would call over there by Nostrand/Willoughby.
Bed Stuy is so very large, some dividing up is inevitable. In that inevitability will always be the propensity to assert that Stuy Hts is better than Bedford Corners, is better than Thompkins Park, is better than.....I still call Harlem, Harlem, and Bed Stuy is Bed Stuy.
I usually have to break it down to give directions or to give someone a better idea WHERE in Bed Stuy I'm talking about, so neighborhood names are inevitable. Cabs don't want to go to any part of Brooklyn other than the Hts and the Slope anyway, so I usually get in, give an address, and then directions, if necessary. After they get there, I told them they were in Bed Stuy, or Crown Heights. Most of the drivers, if they didn't know, were usually shocked to find they weren't in the middle of hell, after all.
Posted by: Montrose Morris at December 19, 2008 5:00 PM
Montrose or NOP have you ever heard of St. Marks Heights or Bedford Heights. I seen those names many times when talking about Crown Heights North in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle from 1886-1902+...
Posted by: Amzi Hill at December 19, 2008 5:17 PM
"very old-school Brooklyn. Very happy that, by reflex, I still call Manhattan, big as it is, 'the City.'"
Having grown up in Queens, I still call Manhattan "the City" but AFAIK, REAL old-school Brooklynites refer to that borough as "New York" (referring to the days before the mistake of 1898) :-)
Posted by: Bob Marvin at December 19, 2008 5:22 PM
Fortunately for me, Bob, I'm old enough to know better, but not old enough to call the City "New York." Grateful for small blessings and a brain that can sometimes still count them...
Posted by: vinca at December 19, 2008 5:53 PM
You know, it's simply a question of practicality. All you folks who are reading class distinctions into the discussion are over-thinking it (though I appreciate your thoughtfulness). This name division will happen naturally just as it has in other neighborhoods. We already hear "South-Stuy", so what's the difference if the name is designated rather than evolved? And it's not even a phony designation. Those involved are drawing upon history.
Posted by: Susan Elkins at December 19, 2008 6:01 PM
Dave, I have admit, I cracked up laughing at the thought of telling a cabbie that I'd like to go to Bedford Corners. He might think I'm delusional, that I think I'm Donna Reed looking for Jimmie Stuart.
Posted by: Susan Elkins at December 19, 2008 6:37 PM
Vinca,
FWIW, I recall hearing teenagers referring to Manhattan as "New York" when I lived in the South Slope in the early '70s. They're not THAT old today--or, at least, they're younger that me--it's all relative.:-)
Posted by: Bob Marvin at December 19, 2008 7:17 PM
Bedford Stuyvesant is HUGE.. I find it funny when people say they want to buy in Bedford Stuyvesant but closer to the Clinton Hill side.. Little do they know is that the neighborhood is more handsome architecturally closer to the south and east. Bedford Corners is nothing to look down at you have some of the best streets in NYC like Hancock and Jefferson with Montrose Morris buildings still very much in tack. You have have great little two story homes in the east closer to Ocean Hill and you have grand homes in the Stuyvesant Heights Section. While the neighborhood has been raped architecturally by developers from outside the area in the northern section near Bushwick and Williamsburg you still find gems.
Posted by: Amzi Hill at December 19, 2008 7:30 PM
Amzi, I've heard of the St. Mark's District, or St. Mark's in literature I've come across. Bedford has always seemed to be around Fulton/Bedford/Atlantic, so it now encompasses parts of both what we now call Bed Stuy and Crown Heights North. Then you also have Crow Hill, of course.
Brower Park used to be Bedford Park, maybe the St. Mark's area was also called that, as well, to expand it from just St Mark's Ave. itself.
I love this stuff!
Posted by: Montrose Morris at December 20, 2008 1:24 AM
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