Cortelyou Road feels so self-contained that at times it resembles a small town. Like a residential Russian doll, Cortelyou Road has become a neighborhood within the broader neighborhood of Flatbush. A seven-block stretch from Coney Island Avenue to East 17th Street, Cortelyou Road is home to over 85 businesses. On weekends the street is teeming with people at the farmer’s market. Patrons fill the many bars, restaurants and cafes, and children play in the playground at PS 139.

A decade ago, this stretch of Cortelyou was virtually abandoned. The street was lined with 99 cent stores and bodegas, and there were no businesses where residents could linger. Homes were poorly maintained, and when those who lived in the nearby Victorian houses wanted to rest or hang out somewhere besides their own homes, they had to leave the neighborhood entirely.
The story of Cortelyou’s transformation mirrors that of many other Brooklyn neighborhoods, both historically, as at the start of the 20th century, and more recently as a trendy, upcoming area. It has developed commercially, and this has become as much a definitive aspect of the neighborhood, as the quality of its housing. For residents, and prospective residents, what is outside their house is as important as what is on the inside.

“Brooklyn has evolved,” said John Manbeck, former Brooklyn Borough Historian. Of the changes on Cortelyou Road, he said, “The same thing happened in Williamsburg, people who lived there years ago wouldn’t recognize it. Red Hook too.

Before the turn of the century Cortelyou Road was farmland, and a throughway for those making their way further south to the glamour and racetracks of Coney Island. T.B. Ackerson, an icemaker, quit his factory job in 1898 to develop the area into a residential neighborhood, building Victorian and Tudor-style homes. Victorian Flatbush, which Cortelyou Road is a part of, was the place to be: here Guggenheim bought a house for his soon-to-be-wed daughter; Nellie Bly, a groundbreaking journalist, lived on manor off Cortelyou; and Thomas Edison reportedly did some of his experiments in the basement of a house just off Cortelyou Road. Further into the 20th Century, the neighborhood developed into a relatively middle class suburb, and stayed that way until there was a spike in crime in the 1960s. New York City was in the midst of a financial crisis, and Flatbush wasn’t spared. Welfare tenants were relocated to apartments in Flatbush and the middle class began to panic. Flatbush, like the rest of the city, was undergoing what was termed ‘white flight,’ in which the middle class white residents were fleeing the city. By the mid 1970s middle-class residents, both black and white, left Flatbush, not returning until a decade later. Manbeck described this as an “upheaval” for Cortelyou road.

By Idil Abshir
Coppied From
[ Ссылка ]
_____________________________________________________________



#LiveStreaming
#WalkingInBrooklyn
#LiveNow
#BrooklynNY
#CortelyouRoad
#LiveChitChat
#LiveGupShup

свернуть