Crown Heights is a neighborhood in the central portion of the
New
York City
borough of
Brooklyn. The main thoroughfare through this neighborhood is
Eastern Parkway, a tree-lined boulevard designed by Frederick Law Olmsted
extending two miles east and west.
typical Crown Heights Row Houses in the
Crow Hill area
For most of its history, the area was known as Crow Hill. It was a
succession of hills running east and west from Utica Avenue to Classon Avenue,
and south to Empire Boulevard and New York Avenue.[1]
The name was changed when Crown Street was cut through in
1916.[2]Crown Heights is bounded by Washington Avenue (to the west), Atlantic Avenue (to
the north), Ralph Avenue (to the east) and Clarkson Avenue (to the south). It is
about two miles long and two miles deep. The neighborhoods that border Crown
Heights are:
Prospect Heights (to the west);
Prospect Lefferts Gardens (to the southwest); Wingate and Rugby (to the
south);
Brownsville (to the east); and
Bedford-Stuyvesant (to the north).This neighborhood extends through much of
Brooklyn Community Board 8[3]
and
9[4].
It is under the jurisdiction of two
Precincts of the
New York City Police Department. The 77th Precinct is part of Brooklyn
North, which covers Crown Heights,
Prospect Heights and
Weeksville). The 71st Precinct is part of Brooklyn South and covers the
southern end of Crown Heights.[5]
Early History
Although no known evidence remains in the Crown Heights
vicinity, prior to the European colonization of the Americas
large portions of what is now called Long Island including
present-day Brooklyn were occupied by the Lenape, (later
renamed Delaware Indians by the European colonizers). The
Lenape lived in communities of bark- or grass-covered
wigwams, and in their larger settlements—typically located
on high ground adjacent to fresh water, and occupied in the
fall, winter, and spring—they fished, harvested shellfish,
trapped animals, gathered wild fruits and vegetables, and
cultivated corn, tobacco, beans, and other crops.
The first recorded contact between the indigenous people of
the New York City region and Europeans was with the explorer
Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524 when he anchored at the
approximate location where the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge
touches down in Brooklyn today. There he was visited by a
canoe party of Lenape. The next contact was in 1609 when the
explorerer Henry Hudson arrived in what is now New York
Harbor aboard a Dutch East India Company ship the Halve Maen
(Half Moon) commissioned by the Dutch Republic.
European habitation in the New York City area began in
earnest with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement,
later called "Nieuw Amsterdam" (New Amsterdam), on the
southern tip of Manhattan in 1614.
By 1630, Dutch and English colonists started moving into the
western end of Long Island. In 1637, Joris Jansen de
Rapalje[6] “purchased” about 335 acres around Wallabout Bay
and over the following two years, Director Kieft of the
Dutch West India Company "purchased" title to nearly all the
land in what is now Kings County and Queens County from the
indigenous inhabitants.
Finally, the areas around present-day Crown Heights saw its
first European settlements starting in about 1661/1662 when
several men each received, from Governor Pieter Stuyvesant
and the Directors of the Dutch West India Company what was
described as “a parcel of free (unoccupied) woodland there”
on the condition that they situate their houses “within one
of the other concentration, which would suit them best, but
not to make a hamlet.”[7][8]
Development in the 1880s
Crown Heights had begun as a posh residential neighborhood,
a "bedroom" for Manhattan's growing bourgeois class.
Beginning in the 1880s, many upper-class residences,
including characteristic brownstone buildings, were erected
along Eastern Parkway. Away from the parkway were a mixture
of lower middle-class residences. This development peaked in
the 1920s. Before World War II Crown Heights was among New
York City's premier neighborhoods, with tree-lined streets,
an array of cultural institutions and parks, and numerous
fraternal, social and community organizations. Many second
and third generation people of Jewish descent had settled in
the area.
Mid-20th Century
Population changes began in the 1930s with immigrants from
Jamaica, African Americans from the South in the 1940s and
Haitians in the 1970s. Newer Jewish immigrants from Eastern
Europe also settled throughout the area.
During the '40s, '50s and '60s, many middle class Jews lived
in Crown Heights. There were a number of large synagogues on
Eatern Parkway, including Chovevei Torah (just off the
corner of Albany Avenue), also known as the Murphy Shul, and
the Young Israel of Eastern Parkway (between Albany and
Troy), where Rabbi Harold B. Kanatopsky was the rabbi for
some 25 years.
There were two very prominent Yeshiva elementary schools in
the neighborhood, Crown Heights Yeshiva on Crown Street
between New York and Nostrand Avenues and the Yeshiva of
Eastern Parkway, located on Eastern Parkway between Troy and
Schenectady Avenues. Another famous school in the
neighborhood was the Reines Talmud Torah which was not a day
school, having only afternoon and Sunday morning classes.
In the mid-twentieth century, many of the more established
residents left for newer housing and jobs in the suburbs.
With increased apartment vacancies, property owners rented
to tenants who would not have been able to afford the area
earlier. Concurrently, the values of private homes began to
fall. Both white and non-white middle class families felt
compelled to move out before their houses were devalued
further. Their places were taken by African Americans, later
immigrants from the Caribbean, and Latinos.
The 1960s Through the Early 1990s
The 1960s and 1970s were a time of turbulent race relations.
With increasing poverty in the city, racial conflicts
plagued some New York neighborhoods. With its racially and
culturally mixed populations, Crown Heights was mired in
this strife. The neighborhood's relatively large population
of Hasidic Jews composed a prominent white minority who had
stayed in the community after other whites left.
With increasing immigration from rural areas of the
Caribbean, Crown Heights became an area of population with
low skills for the urban environment. During the Johnson
administration, Crown Heights was declared a primary poverty
area due to a high unemployment rate, high juvenile and
adult crime rate, poor nutrition for lack of family income,
relative absence of job skills and readiness to work, and a
relatively high concentration of elderly residents.
Violence has erupted in the neighborhood on more than one
occasion, including during the New York City blackout of
1977. In 1991 there was an outbreak known as the Crown
Heights Riot.
Through the 1990s, crime, racial conflict, and violence
decreased in New York. Urban renewal and gentrification
began to change the face of Crown Heights, diversifying its
population economically, socially, and racially.
The Crown Heights Riot
Main article: Crown Heights Riot
The events referred to as the Crown Heights Riot were a
multi-day disturbance that took place in August 1991.[9]
Longstanding resentments, fears and sensational rumors fed
on an automobile accident on 19 August 1991 at 8:30 pm and
erupted into neighborhood violence. The accident involving a
Jewish driver caused the injury of one Black child and death
of another. After the police told a Jewish volunteer
ambulance to remove the driver from the scene before a city
ambulance took the injured children, African American and
Caribbean residents took out their anger on Jewish
residents. Stones and other objects were thrown by both
sides, fires were set and shops were looted. On the same day
black teenagers attacked and Lemrick Nelson Jr. stabbed
Jewish student Yankel Rosenbaum, from Australia, who later
died.
Current renaissance
Crown Heights today has extreme contrasts between lovely
architecture and vacant, run-down buildings, and variety of
peoples and shops, ranging from variously hatted and
top-coated Lubavitcher residents to vegan rasta
Afro-Caribbean restaurants. Rising real estate values and
gentrification have also recently become part of this
mix.[10]
In the spring of 2008 some racial tension flared up in a few
blocks; however, it never reached to the level of tension
that occurred during the Crown Heights Riot of the early
1990s. [11]. However, the Crown Heights neighborhood is an
ethnic and social melange where a wide variety of people
from older residents, to college students and new immigrants
continue to live, work and play side by side while enjoying
a peaceful and friendly lifestyle.
NYC.GOV statistics for 2007 reveal that the 77th precinct,
which includes a significant part of Crown Heights, has
experienced a year-to-date decline of 40% in the number of
murders (a total of 9, down from 15), and of 20% in the
number of rapes (12, down from 15). However, felonious
assaults and burglaries have increased significantly (16.8
and 24.8%, respectively)[12]
Demographics
As of 2007, of the approximately 150,000 residents in Crown
Heights, 90 percent were of African descent (70 percent from
the Caribbean and 20 percent of American birth), 8 percent
were Hasidic Jews, and 2 percent were Latino, Asian and
other ethnic groups.[13]
contingent in the West Indian-American Day Parade
Reflecting the most varied population of Caribbean
immigrants outside the West Indies, Crown Heights is known
for its annual West Indian Carnival. The main event is the
West Indian Carnival Parade, also known as "The Labor Day
Parade." The parade route goes along Eastern Parkway, from
Utica Avenue to Grand Army Plaza. According to the West
Indian-American Day Carnival Association,[14] over 3.5
million people participate in the parade each year.
It is also the location of the worldwide headquarters of the
Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic Jewish movement, at 770 Eastern
Parkway. A thriving Orthodox Jewish community has grown up
around that location.
Due to its favorable housing prices, convenient access via
mass transit to Downtown Brooklyn and Manhattan, as well as
proximity to cultural attractions such as Prospect Park, the
Brooklyn Museum and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Crown
Heights has attracted an influx of artists, professionals
and students of all ethnic and social backgrounds, including
members of the LGBT Community.
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