NY Magazine: Changes Underfoot in Bed Stuy
NY Magazine, April 25, 2005 — Although middle-class amenities are sparse and the schools mostly substandard, Bed-Stuy’s image is beginning to mold to its softer reality. Real-estate agents will tell you that the neighborhood is undervalued even now. There is no great untapped brownstone quarter beyond Bed-Stuy. Bushwick has been devastated by arson and abandonment;…
NY Magazine, April 25, 2005 — Although middle-class amenities are sparse and the schools mostly substandard, Bed-Stuy’s image is beginning to mold to its softer reality. Real-estate agents will tell you that the neighborhood is undervalued even now. There is no great untapped brownstone quarter beyond Bed-Stuy. Bushwick has been devastated by arson and abandonment; Brownsville and East New York were tenement districts from the get-go. Bed-Stuy, so long reviled, may represent the last best chance for the urban version of the American Dream…The irony of Bed-Stuy is that it was gentrified from the start. Built around the turn of the twentieth century for swells like F. W. Woolworth, the housing stock was unparalleled: 6,000 vintage townhouses, half again as many as in Park Slope…Disinvestment did many terrible things to the neighborhood, but it also spared Bed-Stuy from the curse of modernization—from the architects with an itch for Italian Nouveau, or the contractors who chipped away at history on the Upper East Side until there was little left.
Comment: If the real estate market as a whole does not suffer a major setback, Bed Stuy’s future is bright indeed. The racial issue (which was at the heart of the article), we think, will be complicated for a while, but will not in itself ultimately be a barrier to change. However, the article underplays some of the irreversible damage that has been done in Bed Stuy that landmarked neighborhoods like Fort Greene and Clinton Hill largely avoided (except for the projects, of course). The result, even under the brightest of scenarios, is a checkerboard with gorgeous historic blocks coexisting with numerous patches of ugly slap-dash architecture. As one reader commented recently, though, Bed Stuy is so big and diverse–architecturally and socio-economically–that it really doesn’t make sense to try to paint it all in one broad stroke.
The Tipping of Jefferson Avenue [NY Magazine]
The picture is of the black and Puerto Rican couple mentioned in the article.
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Different couple I think.
By the way, doesn’t the article say that she’s black and he’s white? But in the photo it’s the opposite.
I live in Bed Stuy literally a block away from Jeffereson (on Stuyvesant). I moved there about a year and a half ago. I thought this was an excellent article.
The writer was able to delicately handle the charged topic of gentrification. Neither group of people whether the old timers or newcomers were demonized. The difficulty of finding affordable housing for everyone was brought into light.
I’m glad that finally the people who have held the community together for decades are getting recognized and not treated as barbarians the way the New York Times is inclined to do. They always write about “white pioneers” (as if these neighborhoods are like the wild, wild west) without menion of the strong bonds that have been there for generations.
I was also relieved to read the way in which the author gave a colorful picture of the community without being patronizing (something the NY Times fails to do.)
As a newcomer to the neighborhood, I hope we can all find peace and a place to call home in Bed Stuy.
I’ve just moved here from Chicago and have been looking at buying in Bed Sty. What blogs can I chat with others about the area? I have been in a few biddings and realized that this IS the new coming area. I haven’t found the right place yet but, I know it’s out there.
It’s worth it to read this article in the magazine (as opposed to online) for the collage along one spread of the story that shows house after architecturally stunning house along Jefferson. For the poster who wondered what an article like this might do for prices in Bed-Stuy (in another thread), I think this image alone will show people what a treasure this neighborhood is.