What's it Like in Crown Heights?
That’s what Brooklyn Based has been asking, and two Crown Heights residents—a relative long-timer and a newcomer—are answering. The 12-year resident pays $864.72 for a fourth-floor walk-up, likes the transportation options and the West Indian Day Parade, and doesn’t like the violence, not surprisingly. Still she feels safe. The three-year resident moved to a one-bedroom…
That’s what Brooklyn Based has been asking, and two Crown Heights residents—a relative long-timer and a newcomer—are answering. The 12-year resident pays $864.72 for a fourth-floor walk-up, likes the transportation options and the West Indian Day Parade, and doesn’t like the violence, not surprisingly. Still she feels safe. The three-year resident moved to a one-bedroom for $1,100. She finds the lack of big box commerce—dry cleaners and fruit stands but few big chains—a reprieve from mall-ized Manhattan, and like the longtime resident, appreciates the new upscale restaurants moving in. But she makes a point: new residents, and the businesses that accommodate them, seem to have little to do with longtime residents. Crown Heights has long been known as a neighborhood of duality, with African-Americans and Orthodox Jews sometimes in conflict, sometimes in harmony, but now there seems to be another Crown Heights emerging. Thoughts?
Photo by sahadeva.
NOP wrote, of CH in the ’50s, that “there were people who thought Crown Heights, if stabilized, could represent a new kind of community”.
That’s pretty much what happened just across Empire Blvd., in PLG. The difference was the stabilizing effect of the Lefferts Manor single-family covenant and the absence of the hasidic–black divisiveness.
Why don’t you read my posts at 11:30 and 12:21? And no- I wasn’t implying that at all because I happen to know the history of the area. Since you obviously can’t grasp that just leave it alone.
1842- I was not attacking you and if you look at most articles and posts about crown heights that is indeed the case. I try to be as respectful as possible and I defend myself. I was not making a personal comment on you but in general. I certainly have enough experience with posters on this site to know first hand about being attacked and I don’t like it. In fact i thanked you for your help in trying to explain.
Chaka:
That’s very interesting information.
I learned about Weeksville just recently — and it’s only a short distance from where I lived and went to public school in Crown Heights!
Who knew? All that rich history was ignored or suppressed in the 50’s. (And only a couple of years ago did the Historical Society hold the “Slavery in New York” exhibition. How many New Yorkers knew there were slaves right here in the city? They comprised a third of the population at one point and New York was the second largest slave port, right after Charleston!)
A friend of my parents named Paula Marshall wrote a novel about West Indians buying houses in Crown Heights during the 1940’s, based on her own family, but I don’t remember meeting any. Montrose may be correct that people were busy assimilating during the 1950s. (I can’t imagine any of my friends’ dads changing from their chesterfields into feathers for the Eastern Parkway parade!)
NOP
where did i make a mistake? you’re the one who made a mistake. just admit that you were trying to imply that CH is and always has been (since the dawn of time) a black neighborhood. i’m calling you on your “facts”. i didn’t make a judgement call on today’s reality one way or another.
Of course 🙂
-But actually my reaction is closer to “accuracy” based on the article. A lot of us neurotic CH’ers posting here today.
Bxgrl, I hope you chill sometime. Ever notice you’re always getting in arguments with people? I tried to figure out what you were trying to say with your comments, and it was not controversial in the end. But to start saying that long time black homeowners have been largely ignored in discussions of Crown Heights is bunk. You’ve got a chip on your shoulder. Montrose has his point of view that he expressly clearly and respectfully. You might want to take notes or we’ll all continue to see your posts being ‘misinterpreted’.
Have a good weekend!
Jingle mail, you really need to relax and take a chill pill here. You do understand that bxgrl’s remark about black people owning in Crown Heights since the “dawn of time†was firmly in the camp of hyperbole, don’t you? I trust you understand hyperbole, an exaggeration meant only to prove a point, not a factual statement on the passage of time. Sheesh.
We all know that the homeowners of Victorian Crown Heights were wealthy, white men. Again, sowhat? If you want to be factual, and not given to hyperbole, then surely you know that before them, the original people on this land were the Lenape people. They were followed by the Dutch and the English. In fact, the land that was sold as lots to the builders and speculators who built much of the Crown Heights we see now was sold by the family of Lefferts Lefferts, who owned African slaves, who once worked his vast farmholdings. So many diverse people have left their mark on this community. We honor them, their histories and contributions, good and bad, and now we have this architecturally and culturally significant neighborhood to work with and preserve. That’s what’s important now. Bxgrl is proud of this neighborhood’s history, both 100 years ago, and more recently. She thinks, and I agree, that the contributions of those who lived here 50 years ago are as important to that history as that of the wealthy people who were also proud to call it home back then. All have a part to play in making Crown Heights a community we can be proud of.
“I get really tired of posters doing interpretations based on their own biases or neuroses on brownstoner”
Unless it’s your neurosis about representations of CH of course.