BROOKLYN: DOWNTOWN
Downtown Brooklyn before-and-after the construction of the BQE in the 1940s and subsequent “revitalization” and “urban renewal” schemes in the 1950s and 60s. Before these projects had destroyed much of Downtown’s existing built fabric, the neighborhood had been not just the economic, but also the cultural and social focal point for the formerly independent city of Brooklyn, a role which continued after municipal consolidation in 1898. The neighborhood housed tens of thousands of low-income residents working at the nearby docks and Navy Yard, or commuting to other parts of the city using Downtown’s excellent transit connections. Residents consisted mostly of recent European immigrants and Black people who had moved north during the Great Migration—or, as the official comments accompanying the 1930s Brooklyn redlining map put it, the neighborhood had an “infiltration of Italians & Negros” (see below for full comments and here).
After the highway and renewal projects (construction of which is seen below), and until relatively recently, the neighborhood had been transformed into a 9-to-5 business district, with much of the land having been given over to interchanges connecting between the new BQE and the existing Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges (both of which had to be retrofitted to handle more cars, at the expense of the existing rail transit they carried). Replacing the rowhouses and brownstones were vehicle ramps and far fewer units of public housing, most of which was cut off from the rest of Downtown by the new BQE (in the form of the Farragut Houses).*
Moreover, a contemporary investigation into Robert Moses’ projects (more on RM, NYC’s chief planner at the time, in previous posts) found that a “pathetically small percentage” of the tens of thousands who had been displaced had been rehoused in public housing (with over 200,000 displaced city-wide due to RM’s projects). The investigation also found that while the city had promised “just compensation” and financial relocation assistance for those displaced, such aid often simply never materialized (Caro, 973).
In fact, the investigation found, “except in rare instances, [the displaced] could not even obtain reimbursement for the moving expenses which they were being forced to incur through no choice of their own. Not only were they forced to move out of their homes, they were forced to pay for the moving.” (Caro, 973). Contrast this to the value today of what few original homes in Downtown weren’t demolished: the building seen below—virtually identical to the one demolished in the first image—was recently listed for $2.4 million, according to the NYT. The amount of generational wealth destroyed is simply staggering to imagine.
Recent rezoning has re-permitting the development of more residential buildings and allowed Downtown to break free from just being the 9-to-5 business district Robert Moses transformed it into. However, the housing stock being built—luxury condo towers designed more as investments than actual occupation—has been ensuring gentrification and further displacement. More info in the NYT article “Taller Towers, Fewer Homes.”
*The other significant housing development in Downtown Brooklyn at the time, the Concord Houses, was a supposedly private development aimed at middle-class renters. However, much like the similar Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village projects in Manhattan (all of which were closed to non-whites), RM had both helped the private interests acquire the land at a discounted price and had offered financial assistance from the city. “Though the money that built them [Stuy-Town, PCV, and Concord] was supposedly private,” Caro writes, “the tax abatement that RM arranged for them would, when totaled over the years, insure that the public investment in them would dwarf the private, and the powers that Moses utilized to make possible not only their construction but the assemblage of their sites—eminent domain, street closings, utility easements—were all public.” (Caro, 968.)
