EAST NEW YORK PROJECT PACKET

EAST NEW YORK
PROJECT PACKET
Name: ________________________________________________________________
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INTRODUCTORY READING: Encyclopedia. Snyder-Grenier, Ellen Marie.
"East New York." The Encyclopedia of New York City. 2nd ed. New Haven:
Yale, 2010. 392. Print.
Adaption
East New York is a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. It sits at the eastern edge of central Brooklyn.
Settled in the late 1600s by Dutch farmers, they left the Town of Flatbush in search of new farming land.
They called this area New Lots and it would be called such until a Connecticut merchant named John
Pitkin would settle the community of East New York in 1835. The area stayed largely rural until the
arrival of German immigrants during the 1850s and growth rapidly accelerated with the opening of the
Williamsburg Bridge in 1903 and the addition of Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) in 1922. By the 1940s
the area had many German, Italian, Russian, and Lithuanian immigrants. In the 1960s, with urban
renewal in Brownsville, many African-American residents began moving into East New York and the
white community began to leave. This phenomenon is known as ‘white flight’. In the 1980s many new
immigrants arrived, this time from the Caribbean. The crime in East New York also rose as all of New
York City dealt with an upsurge in crime and drugs. The neighborhood is now mostly black and Latino
and is undergoing massive revitalization with the help of community members and local city agencies.
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DOCUMENT 1: Map. Fulton, Henry. Farm Line Map of the City of
Brooklyn. Map. New York: J.B. Beers &, 1874. Print.
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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. What names do you recognize and why?
2. What does the shading mean?
3. Why do you think the empty streets have names if there is nothing there?
4. Some of the land is not shaded. Why might that be?
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DOCUMENT 2: Book. Eastern Section of East New York - 1873. 1873.
Society, New York City. Old Days and Old Ways in East New York. 1948.
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Photograph. New York Historical
40. Print
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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. What do you think life was like in East New York in 1873?
2. What is the small building in the front of the picture? What was it used for?
3. How many families do you think lived in each building?
4. How do you think people got around town in 1873?
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DOCUMENT 3: Book. Heidenreich, Frederick J. Old Days and Old Ways in East
New York. 1948. Print.
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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. What things might a barber do to you if you asked for “the works?”
2. How did the lamplighter light the lamps?
3. What else was the lamp post used for?
4. What type of people lived in East New York?
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DOCUMENT 4: Hagstrom's Map of New York Subways Elevated Lines. Map. New
York: Hagstrom, 1940. Print.
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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. Locate and draw a circle around the New Lots Avenue station.
2. What are the different subway lines called? Do we still call them by these names today?
What do we call them now?
3. What changes do you think the creation of subway lines brought to East New York?
4. Draw a star where there are other landmarks today.
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DOCUMENT 5: Photograph. Kruh. They Want Action Against Hoodlums. 1953. Photograph. Brooklyn
Collection, Brooklyn Public Library. Print.
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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. Describe what you see in this document.
2. What happened at this train station stop that upset local residents?
3. What do you think these residents hoped to accomplish by demonstrating at the train
station?
4. Do you know of other examples where residents have rallied together for the sake of a
good cause?
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DOCUMENT 6: Newspaper. Delafuente, Charles, and Jack Cowley.
"B'klyn Protest Erupts in Riot." New York Post 12 June 1970. Print.
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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. According to the article, why did protests break out in East New York on Friday, June 12,
1970?
2. What were residents doing that alerted the police?
3. What caused residents to escalate their protests to riots?
4. What negative impacts did the riots have on East New York’s neighborhood?
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DOCUMENT 7: Newspaper. Blumenthal, Ralph. "Youth Takes City Aide
on Tour of East New York." The New York Times 11 Feb. 1972: 74. Print.
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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. Why did local youth, Bryce Murray, ask to take Chairman of the City Planning Commission,
Donald Elliott, on a tour of his neighborhood?
2. What did Bryce show the Chairman?
3. Why do you think Bryce choose to show the areas that he did? Would you say these were
good or bad? Why?
4. What do you think the Chairman took away from his tour with Bryce?
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DOCUMENT 8: Book."Spring Creek - Linear City." Plan for New York City
1969: A Proposal. Vol. 3. City of New York: Department of City Planning,
1969. 72. Print. Brooklyn. Print.
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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. What year do you think this plan was written? What makes you believe this?
2. Why do you think the City wanted to build a new community in Spring Creek?
3. Provide at least three examples of where you see the fulfillment of these plans in Spring
Creek today.
4. This plan was proposed in 1969 and the development it talks about was meant to be
finished by 1989. Why do you think it took so long for the construction to take place?
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DOCUMENT 9: Newspaper. Powell, Michael. "Stalwart Citizens, Not Just
Police Tactics, Deserve Credit as Crime Ebbs." The New York Times 15
Jan. 2013. Print.
July 15, 2013
Stalwart Citizens, Not Just
Police Tactics, Deserve
Credit as Crime Ebbs
By MICHAEL POWELL
New York’s police commissioner, Raymond W.
Kelly, was asked recently to explain the latest
substantial drop in homicides in our city.
Mr. Kelly talked of a new antigang strategy. Then
he shrugged and smiled.
“In my business, in our business, this is
miraculous,” he said. “These are lives being
saved.”
“Miracle” is an appropriate word for the fact that
nearly 1,800 fewer New Yorkers might be
murdered this year than in 1990. But with all due
respect to perhaps the nation’s finest urban
police force, we have become too reductive.
Nearly every drop in crime is attributed to this or
that police strategy.
This fails to reckon with a more intriguing sea
change to be found in neighborhoods once
marked by shootings and mayhem. Blocks
surrendered to the rubble of abandonment have
been rebuilt with city dollars; teenage girls are
having fewer children and are far less likely to
turn to welfare; drug overdose deaths and prison
populations have dropped sharply, and life
expectancy and homeownership in these
neighborhoods has risen sharply.
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This cultural shift might explain as much about
the current drop in crime as any changes
wrought by fine policing.
Near Spring Creek, East Brooklyn Congregations,
a neighborhood alliance, has built fine rows of
prefabricated town houses that would not look
out of place in a trendy Berlin neighborhood. The
Metropolitan Transportation Authority agreed to
run a new express bus from here to the No. 3
subway line in East New York. There are new
schools, supermarkets, parks, apartment
buildings.
Michael Gecan of E.B.C. has organized here for
decades. He is not inclined to discount the police.
They helped to reclaim these streets, opened the
door for the civic change that has transformed a
city.
Neither, however, is he inclined to discount his
own members, the pastors, teachers, nurses,
transit workers and small-business owners who,
at great risk to themselves, worked with the
police to identify drug dealers and gangbangers
and so reclaim this territory.
“Good reinforces good reinforces good,” he says.
“We’re approaching that exalted state known as
normal.”
And isn’t that another miracle of sorts?
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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. List some of the positive changes the article says are taking place in New York City and
East New York specifically:
2. Who does this article give credit to for the decline in crime?
3. How have local Spring Creek residents contributed to making their neighborhood safer?
4. What other things are being done around the neighborhood to make it a better place to
live?
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DOCUMENT 10: Photograph. Google Maps. Https://maps.google.com/, May 2012. Web. 22 Oct. 2013. Web.
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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS :
1. What is this picture of? Where was it taken?
2. What do you think will be here in when you graduate college? Why do you think that?
3. What does East New York need most?
4. In five or more sentences, describe what you can do to help improve East New York.
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