1853: Brooklyn Eyes Bushwick, Williamsburg
I found in the NYT archives this morning a bit about the mechanics of the merger of Bushwick and Williamsburg with Brooklyn [pdf]. It’s pretty dry, but some notable bits are that Greenpoint was part of the Town of Bushwick, and what is currently Bushwick was considered a rural district. Also, Bushwick was the only entity of the three that was in the black.
November 28th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
I think Bushwick should reclaim Greenpoint.
November 28th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Depsite what it says under “On the Relative Rate of Taxation,” I am pretty sure Greenpoint was unincorporated when the cities of Brooklyn Williamsburgh and the Town of Bushwick consolidated.
November 29th, 2007 at 6:51 am
You’ll find more info in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle online
November 29th, 2007 at 11:39 am
you know how brooklynites like to complain how the biggest mistake we ever made was joining up with NYC? now us bushwickans can whine about how things were never the same after the city fathers decided to let Bushwick get swallowed up by Brooklyn. and you know how we love to complain!
December 3rd, 2007 at 4:55 am
Boswijck
Are we goig back to being that little town in the woods???!!!
December 6th, 2007 at 8:59 am
If we’d stop filling our vacant lots with trash and just let them weed up, large parts of Bushwick would start going woody in a few years.
“This was a discount store, now it’s turned into a cornfield.”
December 15th, 2007 at 10:53 am
There is some interesting stuff here.
While it is true that Bushwick consolidated into Brooklyn slightly in the black, the real revelation here is the extent to which Bushwick had not developed during the nearly 200 years of its previous existence while Williamsburg had zoomed into dominance during less than 50 years. The fact that Bushwick’s infrastructure consisted of only a paltry $10,000 allocated to education with nothing committed to such essentials as police and fire makes one imagine how such vital services were delivered.
This uneven development is also underlined by the relative populations of the two communities. At the time of consolidation, over 50,000 people lived in Williamsburg (which did not exist until the early 1800’s) while only about 5,000 lived in all of Bushwick. Although the town of Bushwick was experiencing some pupulation growth - barely 1,300 persons lived there in 1840 - most of this occurred in either Greenpoint, which had for all practical purposes already become a separate comunity, and the Bowronsville settlement in Bushwick’s new lots, near the present South Bushwick Reform Church at Himrod and Bushwick Ave. Giving these dynamics, it is hardly surprising that Williamsburg would totally dominate and eventually incorporate the oldest part of Bushwick into itself.
The other interesting insight here - at least to me - is the description of the powers and duties exercised by the Wards that were created at the time of consolidation. While we usually just think of Wards as strictly political districts, the article makes it clear that they played vital roles in determining such things as: setting the local tax rate; developing local budgets; and managing the delivery of public services. Having cut my teeth in City government during the 1970’s, when the idea of the decentralized management of local services was al the rage, I found the descriptions of the old Wards pretty fascinating.
December 15th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
John, I guess it makes sense that as the 19th century progressed, more people were likely to move to a bustling port town, Williamsburg, than to a blob of farms “far” from civilization and jobs like Bushwick.
So it seems pretty logical that Williamsburg, though far newer, would come to dominate North Brooklyn in that time.