Closing Bell: What's a Brownstoner?
“What’s a Brownstoner?” is a question pretty relevant around these parts, and Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn author Suleiman Osman takes it up with Dwell. Osman talks about brownstoners of the ’60s and ’70s who contributed to historical renovation but also displacement in many Brooklyn neighborhoods. He says brownstoners were (and still are?) “Rejecting conformity and…
“What’s a Brownstoner?” is a question pretty relevant around these parts, and Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn author Suleiman Osman takes it up with Dwell. Osman talks about brownstoners of the ’60s and ’70s who contributed to historical renovation but also displacement in many Brooklyn neighborhoods. He says brownstoners were (and still are?) “Rejecting conformity and returning to an older and more authentic form of living no longer available in modernizing Manhattan and postwar suburbs.” Brownstoners started block associations, renamed neighborhoods, and, most importantly, renovated: “They symbolically pulled away layers of fakeness to return the structures to their intended and authentic use as single-family homes.” The interview is worth a read, especially in terms of its ruminations on the shifting values of brownstoners since the ’60s and whether New York is in danger of running out of cheap brownstones.
Conversation: Brownstone Brooklyn [Dwell]
Image via Dwell
If you see the full-size poster on the Dwell site, it looks a little more like pottery. I remember those glazed clay Victorian house planters/pencil holders they used to sell at crafts fairs in 1976 in my glorious girlhood in California. And we made them in junior high school pottery class too.
it looks like she’s holding a magic wand in the poster, rather than a sculpting tool.
I’m digging the poster…it’s so cool…
Thanks mopar. After I made that comment, I remembered that I DIDN’T actually go on that Boerum Hill house tour. Our [PLG] tour was on the same day. What I did do was arrange, through the old Brooklyn Brownstone Conference, for the organizers of the two tours to honor each other’s tickets. IIRC we got a couple of hardy souls to go on the PLG tour after finishing the BH one. The present biennial Boerum Hill tour, which started again several years ago after a 20+ year hiatus, is also frequently on the same day as our tour, but, with the increased emphasis on fund-raising, that probably couldn’t be done any more.
That’s awesome, Bob!
I REMEMBER that poster Mopar and went on that tour. My god, I’m old!
Totally dig the poster!
Hipsters also see themselves as in search of authenticity. Queens College professor Sharon Zukin also recently wrote a book about the Village that asked a similar question, whether the drive to preserve historic neighborhoods destroyed them. I’m fascinated by the specific history of 1960s gentrification (or whatever you want to call it) in Brooklyn. Can’t wait to read this book, so just downloaded it on Kindle though it looks so pretty I might buy the book too.
I see it a little differently: There was a broader interest in Victorian houses beyond brownstones that started in the 1960s –actually, the 1950s — and was not necessarily limited to urban places.
With gentrification, we’re still reaping the effects of the public policy that created the post-war economic boom and destroyed farmlands and cities. The GI bill, the cheap mortgages available to whites in the 1950s and 1960s for suburban areas, the investment in highways, the destruction of public transportation, real estate development and speculation turning farmland into suburbs, the purposeful disinvestment in cities all created the huge postwar boom that in a sense could be called a bubble, since it was no more natural than anything else and was built on real estate speculation just like our most recent one.
Jessibaby – I actually met the author and he’s a super lovely guy. Not really the egotistical sort to make his students read his work. Interesting book that does a pretty good job of telling the facts without placing judgement.