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'Bedford-Stuyvesant' (also known as 'Bed-Stuy') is a neighborhood in the central portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community Board 3, Brooklyn Community Board 8 and Brooklyn Community Board 16.
It is bordered by Flushing Avenue (On the Williamsburg border) to Classon Avenue (bordering Clinton Hill) to Atlantic/Kingston Avenues to Eastern Parkway (bordering Crown Heights), crossing over to Pitkin Avenue (also bordering Crown Heights), to East New York Avenue (Bordering Brownsville), and Van Sinderen Avenue (bordering East New York).
Over the years, it has been a cultural center for Brooklyn's African American population. This has occurred since the 1930s when blacks left an overcrowded Harlem upon the opening of a new subway line and more housing availability in Brooklyn. From Bed-Stuy, blacks have since moved into and became the predominate ethnic group in surrounding areas of Brooklyn such as East New York, Brownsville, Canarsie and Crown Heights.
The main thoroughfares are Nostrand Avenue and Fulton Street. The large part of what is considered Bedford-Stuyvesant is actually made up of four neighborhoods: Bedford, Stuyvesant Heights, Ocean Hill and Weeksville.
The neighborhood name is an extension of the name of the Village of Bedford, expanded to include the area of Stuyvesant Heights. The name ''Stuyvesant'' comes from Peter Stuyvesant, the last governor of the colony of New Netherland.
In pre-revolutionary Kings County, Bedford, which now forms the heart of the community, was the first major settlement east of the then Village of Brooklyn on the ferry road to Jamaica and eastern Long Island.
With the building of the Brooklyn and Jamaica Railroad in 1832, taken over by the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) in 1836, Bedford was established as a railroad station near the intersection of current Atlantic and Franklin Avenues. In 1878, the Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island Railway established its northern terminal with a connection to the LIRR at the same location.
The community of Bedford contained one of the older free African American communities in the U.S., Weeksville, much of which is still extant and preserved as an historical site. Ocean Hill, a subsection founded in 1890 is primarily a residential area.
In the last decades of the 19th century, with the advent of electric trolleys and the Fulton Street Elevated, Bedford Stuyvesant became a working class and middle class bedroom community for those working in downtown Brooklyn and Manhattan in New York City. At that time, most of the pre-existing wooden homes were destroyed and replaced with brownstone row houses, which are highly sought after in the neighborhood's contemporary renaissance. Many consider the area to be the African-American mecca of Brooklyn, similar to what Harlem is to Manhattan.
During and after World War II, large numbers of African Americans, migrating from the Southern United States upon the decline of agricultural work and seeking economic opportunities in the North, moved into the neighborhood, often preferring it to the available housing in Harlem, then the city's pre-eminent black community. A large number of immigrants from the Caribbean also arrived around this time, coming from countries such as Jamaica, Guyana, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, and Barbados.
A series of problems led to a long decline in the neighborhood. Some of the new residents who had been rural workers had difficulty finding reasonably paid work in the urban New York economy. The city itself was in a period of steady decline, exacerbated by abandonment of parts of the transportation network, decline of public facilities and services, inability to deal with increasing crime, and difficulties in municipal government. The movement of significant parts of its population to suburban areas ghettoized a racially diverse neighborhood.
The 1960s and 1970s were a difficult time for New York City and impacted Bedford-Stuyvesant seriously. One of the first urban riots of the era took place there and social and racial divisions in the city contributed to the tensions, which reached a climax when attempts at community control in the nearby Ocean Hill school district pitted some black community residents and activists (from both inside and outside the area) against teachers, the majority of whom were white and many Jewish. Charges of racism were a common part of social tensions at the time. In 1964, race riots broke out in the Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem after a white NYPD lieutenant, Thomas Gilligan, shot and killed a black teenager, James Powell, 15.[1]. The riot spread to Bedford-Stuyvesant. This riot resulted in the destruction and looting of many neighborhood businesses, many of which were Jewish-owned. Race riots followed in 1967 and 1968, as part of the political and racial tensions in the United States of the era, aggravated by continued high unemployment among African Americans, continued de facto segregation in housing, the failure to enforce civil rights laws, and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other African Americans.
Beginning in the late 1980s the neighborhood began to experience a renaissance which continues to the present day.[1]
The two significant reasons for this are the affordable housing stock consisting of handsome brownstone rowhouses located on quiet tree-lined streets and the marked decrease of crime in the neighborhood, which is at least partly attributable to the decline of the national Crack Epidemic in the late 1980s.
In July 2005, the New York City Police Department designated the Fulton Street-Nostrand Avenue business district in Bedford-Stuyvesant as an "Impact Zone." The designation directed significantly increased levels of police protection and resources to the area centered on the intersection of Fulton Street and Nostrand Avenue for a period of six months and was renewed for another six-month period in December 2005. Since the start of the Impact Zone in Bedford-Stuyvesant, crime within the district decreased 15% from the previous year.
Despite the improvements and increasing stability of the community, Bedford-Stuyvesant has continued to be stigmatized in some circles by a lingering public perception left over from the rough times of the late 20th Century. In March 2005 a campaign was launched to supplant the "Bed-Stuy, Do-or-Die" image in the public consciousness with the more positive "Bed-Stuy, and Proud of It".
Through a series of "wallscapes" (large outdoor murals), the campaign hopes to honor famous community members, including community activist and poet June Jordan, activist Hattie Carthan, rapper and actor Mos Def, and actor and comedian Chris Rock. [2] Additionally various artistic and cultural neighborhood events and celebratons such as the area's annual Universal Hip Hop Parade[3] seek to show off the area's positive acomplishments to the rest of New York City as well as visitors.
This ongoing revitalization and renewal of Bedford-Stuyvesant has prompted an increasingly diverse range of people to seek affordable housing among the many blocks of handsome brownstone rowhouses. The appeal of affordable homes and apartments that are still numerous in Bedford-Stuyvesant along with convenient access via mass transit to Downtown Brooklyn and Manhattan is fast making the area a favorite for students, artists and young families.
As a result, Bedford-Stuyvesant is becoming increasingly racially, economically and ethnically diverse with an increase of both the Hispanic and white populations. As is expected with gentrification, the influx of new residents has sometimes contributed to the displacement of poorer residents, but in many other cases, newcomers have simply rehabilitated and reoccupied formerly vacant and abandoned properties.
Some long-time residents and business owners have expressed the concern that they will be priced out by newcomers that they disparagingly characterize as ''"yuppies and buppies"'' and that the neighborhood's ethnic character will be lost. Others point out that a 70% black population remains; and furthermore Bedford-Stuyvesant's population has experienced much less displacement of the African-Americans population, including those that are economically disadvantaged than other areas of Brooklyn, such as Cobble Hill.[4] Especially since a many of the new residents are upwardly mobile middle income African American families, as well as immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean.
It is further argued that the positive neighborhood changes will benefit all residents of the area bringing with it improve neighborhood safety and creating a demand for improved retail services along the major commercial strips, such as Fulton Street, ''(recently renamed Harriet Tubman Boulevard)''[5], Nostrand Avenue, Tompkins Avenue,Greene Avenue, Lewis Avenue, Flushing Avenue, Park Avenue, Myrtle Avenue, Dekalb Avenue, Putnam Avenue, Bedford Avenue, Marcy Avenue, Malcolm X Boulevard, Gates Avenue, Madison Avenue and Jefferson Avenue. And that this in turn will bring an increase in local jobs and other economic activity to the area itself.
Bedford-Stuyvesant is one of the neighborhoods in New York City (including Harlem of the Harlem Renaissance and Jazz Age, the Lower East Side, Little Italy, Chinatown, the East Village, Greenwich Village, Coney Island, Boro Park and Flatbush) to possess an identity and culture that is known to audiences outside of New York City.
The Billy Joel song "You May Be Right" features the line "I walked through Bedford-Stuy alone."
Bedford-Stuyvesant's prominent neighborhood identity is due in part to the neighborhood's portrayal in a variety of popular media. Director Spike Lee has prominently featured the streets and brownstone blocks of Bedford-Stuyvesant in his films, including ''Do The Right Thing'' (1989) and ''Crooklyn'' (1994). Chris Rock's UPN (later CW) television sitcom, ''Everybody Hates Chris'', portrays Rock's life growing up as a teenager in Bedford-Stuyvesant in 1982. Billy Joel's 1980s hit single, "You May Be Right" mentions the neighborhood with the lyrics "I was stranded in the combat zone / I walked through Bedford-Stuy alone / even rode my motorcycle in the rain" when discussing crazy things the singer had done in his life. The neighborhood was also the setting of Dave Chappelle's 2004 documentary ''Block Party'', in which Chappelle and many prominent Rap and Soul artists performed an impromptu concert at the Broken Angel house.
A large number of well-known rap, R&B and hip-hop artists have come out of Bedford-Stuyvesant, including such notables as Deemi, Aaliyah, The Notorious B.I.G, Jay-Z, Big Daddy Kane, Lil Kim, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Busta Rhymes, Maino, Fabolous, and Papoose.
In "Scan," an episode of the television show ''Prison Break'', fugitive Fernando Sucre flees to Bedford-Stuyvesant to meet his friend, only to find out that his sweetheart will be getting married in Las Vegas.
In a YouTube.com video [[2]], a little girl haunts a house on Bainbridge St. It was accepted to the 2007 New York International Independent Film and Video Festival.
The Notorious B.I.G. song "Unbelievable" starts with the line referring to himself as "''Live from Bedford-Stuyvesant, the livest one''."
★ Aaliyah
★ Chris Rock
★ Juan Williams
★ Fabolous
★ Lil' Kim
★ Lil' Mama
★ The Notorious B.I.G.
★ Jay Z
★ Memphis Bleek
★ maino
★ Papoose
★ Courtney Hamlin
★ Lena Horne
★ James "Rocky" Robinson
★ Talib Kweli
★ GZA
★ Homicide
★ Lenny Wilkens
★ Mos Def
★ Busta Rhymes
★ Vanessa A. Williams
★ Deemi(Tahu Aponte)
★ Unique Zayas
★ Weeksville Heritage Center
★ Cornerstone Baptist Church
★ Our Lady of the Presentation Church
★ Boys and Girls High School
★ The Stuyvesant Heights Historic District
★ Antioch Baptist Church
★ Boys High School
★ Girls High School
1. http://urbanology.org/BedStuy/ Bed-Stuy On the Move
2. http://gothamgazette.com/community/36/news/1340 Daily News, March 5, 2005
3. http://www.universalhiphopparade.org/index.html Universal Hip Hop Parade
4. http://66.111.110.102/newyork/DetailsAr.do?file=features/499/499.thebattlefor.html "The Battle for Bed-Stuy: The Price of Art" Time Out New York April 2005
5. http://www.bedstuygateway.com/ Bed-Stuy Gateway Business District
★ Bed-Stuy On the Move
★ Bed-Stuy Gateway and the Fulton-Nostrand Revitalization Project
★ Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation
★ Bed-Stuy Blog
★ Bedford Stuyvesant Community News
★ Society for the Preservation of Weeksville and Bedford-Stuyvesant History
★ Universal Hip-Hop Parade Foundation, Inc.
★ Bedford Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corp.
★ Blog of life in Bed Stuy through Summer 2007
It is bordered by Flushing Avenue (On the Williamsburg border) to Classon Avenue (bordering Clinton Hill) to Atlantic/Kingston Avenues to Eastern Parkway (bordering Crown Heights), crossing over to Pitkin Avenue (also bordering Crown Heights), to East New York Avenue (Bordering Brownsville), and Van Sinderen Avenue (bordering East New York).
Over the years, it has been a cultural center for Brooklyn's African American population. This has occurred since the 1930s when blacks left an overcrowded Harlem upon the opening of a new subway line and more housing availability in Brooklyn. From Bed-Stuy, blacks have since moved into and became the predominate ethnic group in surrounding areas of Brooklyn such as East New York, Brownsville, Canarsie and Crown Heights.
The main thoroughfares are Nostrand Avenue and Fulton Street. The large part of what is considered Bedford-Stuyvesant is actually made up of four neighborhoods: Bedford, Stuyvesant Heights, Ocean Hill and Weeksville.
Early history
The neighborhood name is an extension of the name of the Village of Bedford, expanded to include the area of Stuyvesant Heights. The name ''Stuyvesant'' comes from Peter Stuyvesant, the last governor of the colony of New Netherland.
In pre-revolutionary Kings County, Bedford, which now forms the heart of the community, was the first major settlement east of the then Village of Brooklyn on the ferry road to Jamaica and eastern Long Island.
With the building of the Brooklyn and Jamaica Railroad in 1832, taken over by the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) in 1836, Bedford was established as a railroad station near the intersection of current Atlantic and Franklin Avenues. In 1878, the Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island Railway established its northern terminal with a connection to the LIRR at the same location.
The community of Bedford contained one of the older free African American communities in the U.S., Weeksville, much of which is still extant and preserved as an historical site. Ocean Hill, a subsection founded in 1890 is primarily a residential area.
Establishment as an urban neighborhood
Bedford-Stuyvesant brownstones
In the last decades of the 19th century, with the advent of electric trolleys and the Fulton Street Elevated, Bedford Stuyvesant became a working class and middle class bedroom community for those working in downtown Brooklyn and Manhattan in New York City. At that time, most of the pre-existing wooden homes were destroyed and replaced with brownstone row houses, which are highly sought after in the neighborhood's contemporary renaissance. Many consider the area to be the African-American mecca of Brooklyn, similar to what Harlem is to Manhattan.
Ethnic changes
During and after World War II, large numbers of African Americans, migrating from the Southern United States upon the decline of agricultural work and seeking economic opportunities in the North, moved into the neighborhood, often preferring it to the available housing in Harlem, then the city's pre-eminent black community. A large number of immigrants from the Caribbean also arrived around this time, coming from countries such as Jamaica, Guyana, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, and Barbados.
Post-war problems
A series of problems led to a long decline in the neighborhood. Some of the new residents who had been rural workers had difficulty finding reasonably paid work in the urban New York economy. The city itself was in a period of steady decline, exacerbated by abandonment of parts of the transportation network, decline of public facilities and services, inability to deal with increasing crime, and difficulties in municipal government. The movement of significant parts of its population to suburban areas ghettoized a racially diverse neighborhood.
The Sixties
The 1960s and 1970s were a difficult time for New York City and impacted Bedford-Stuyvesant seriously. One of the first urban riots of the era took place there and social and racial divisions in the city contributed to the tensions, which reached a climax when attempts at community control in the nearby Ocean Hill school district pitted some black community residents and activists (from both inside and outside the area) against teachers, the majority of whom were white and many Jewish. Charges of racism were a common part of social tensions at the time. In 1964, race riots broke out in the Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem after a white NYPD lieutenant, Thomas Gilligan, shot and killed a black teenager, James Powell, 15.[1]. The riot spread to Bedford-Stuyvesant. This riot resulted in the destruction and looting of many neighborhood businesses, many of which were Jewish-owned. Race riots followed in 1967 and 1968, as part of the political and racial tensions in the United States of the era, aggravated by continued high unemployment among African Americans, continued de facto segregation in housing, the failure to enforce civil rights laws, and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other African Americans.
Current Renaissance
Beginning in the late 1980s the neighborhood began to experience a renaissance which continues to the present day.[1]
The two significant reasons for this are the affordable housing stock consisting of handsome brownstone rowhouses located on quiet tree-lined streets and the marked decrease of crime in the neighborhood, which is at least partly attributable to the decline of the national Crack Epidemic in the late 1980s.
In July 2005, the New York City Police Department designated the Fulton Street-Nostrand Avenue business district in Bedford-Stuyvesant as an "Impact Zone." The designation directed significantly increased levels of police protection and resources to the area centered on the intersection of Fulton Street and Nostrand Avenue for a period of six months and was renewed for another six-month period in December 2005. Since the start of the Impact Zone in Bedford-Stuyvesant, crime within the district decreased 15% from the previous year.
Despite the improvements and increasing stability of the community, Bedford-Stuyvesant has continued to be stigmatized in some circles by a lingering public perception left over from the rough times of the late 20th Century. In March 2005 a campaign was launched to supplant the "Bed-Stuy, Do-or-Die" image in the public consciousness with the more positive "Bed-Stuy, and Proud of It".
Through a series of "wallscapes" (large outdoor murals), the campaign hopes to honor famous community members, including community activist and poet June Jordan, activist Hattie Carthan, rapper and actor Mos Def, and actor and comedian Chris Rock. [2] Additionally various artistic and cultural neighborhood events and celebratons such as the area's annual Universal Hip Hop Parade[3] seek to show off the area's positive acomplishments to the rest of New York City as well as visitors.
This ongoing revitalization and renewal of Bedford-Stuyvesant has prompted an increasingly diverse range of people to seek affordable housing among the many blocks of handsome brownstone rowhouses. The appeal of affordable homes and apartments that are still numerous in Bedford-Stuyvesant along with convenient access via mass transit to Downtown Brooklyn and Manhattan is fast making the area a favorite for students, artists and young families.
As a result, Bedford-Stuyvesant is becoming increasingly racially, economically and ethnically diverse with an increase of both the Hispanic and white populations. As is expected with gentrification, the influx of new residents has sometimes contributed to the displacement of poorer residents, but in many other cases, newcomers have simply rehabilitated and reoccupied formerly vacant and abandoned properties.
Some long-time residents and business owners have expressed the concern that they will be priced out by newcomers that they disparagingly characterize as ''"yuppies and buppies"'' and that the neighborhood's ethnic character will be lost. Others point out that a 70% black population remains; and furthermore Bedford-Stuyvesant's population has experienced much less displacement of the African-Americans population, including those that are economically disadvantaged than other areas of Brooklyn, such as Cobble Hill.[4] Especially since a many of the new residents are upwardly mobile middle income African American families, as well as immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean.
It is further argued that the positive neighborhood changes will benefit all residents of the area bringing with it improve neighborhood safety and creating a demand for improved retail services along the major commercial strips, such as Fulton Street, ''(recently renamed Harriet Tubman Boulevard)''[5], Nostrand Avenue, Tompkins Avenue,Greene Avenue, Lewis Avenue, Flushing Avenue, Park Avenue, Myrtle Avenue, Dekalb Avenue, Putnam Avenue, Bedford Avenue, Marcy Avenue, Malcolm X Boulevard, Gates Avenue, Madison Avenue and Jefferson Avenue. And that this in turn will bring an increase in local jobs and other economic activity to the area itself.
Bedford-Stuyvesant in the popular media
Bedford-Stuyvesant is one of the neighborhoods in New York City (including Harlem of the Harlem Renaissance and Jazz Age, the Lower East Side, Little Italy, Chinatown, the East Village, Greenwich Village, Coney Island, Boro Park and Flatbush) to possess an identity and culture that is known to audiences outside of New York City.
The Billy Joel song "You May Be Right" features the line "I walked through Bedford-Stuy alone."
Bedford-Stuyvesant's prominent neighborhood identity is due in part to the neighborhood's portrayal in a variety of popular media. Director Spike Lee has prominently featured the streets and brownstone blocks of Bedford-Stuyvesant in his films, including ''Do The Right Thing'' (1989) and ''Crooklyn'' (1994). Chris Rock's UPN (later CW) television sitcom, ''Everybody Hates Chris'', portrays Rock's life growing up as a teenager in Bedford-Stuyvesant in 1982. Billy Joel's 1980s hit single, "You May Be Right" mentions the neighborhood with the lyrics "I was stranded in the combat zone / I walked through Bedford-Stuy alone / even rode my motorcycle in the rain" when discussing crazy things the singer had done in his life. The neighborhood was also the setting of Dave Chappelle's 2004 documentary ''Block Party'', in which Chappelle and many prominent Rap and Soul artists performed an impromptu concert at the Broken Angel house.
A large number of well-known rap, R&B and hip-hop artists have come out of Bedford-Stuyvesant, including such notables as Deemi, Aaliyah, The Notorious B.I.G, Jay-Z, Big Daddy Kane, Lil Kim, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Busta Rhymes, Maino, Fabolous, and Papoose.
In "Scan," an episode of the television show ''Prison Break'', fugitive Fernando Sucre flees to Bedford-Stuyvesant to meet his friend, only to find out that his sweetheart will be getting married in Las Vegas.
In a YouTube.com video [[2]], a little girl haunts a house on Bainbridge St. It was accepted to the 2007 New York International Independent Film and Video Festival.
The Notorious B.I.G. song "Unbelievable" starts with the line referring to himself as "''Live from Bedford-Stuyvesant, the livest one''."
Notable natives
★ Aaliyah
★ Chris Rock
★ Juan Williams
★ Fabolous
★ Lil' Kim
★ Lil' Mama
★ The Notorious B.I.G.
★ Jay Z
★ Memphis Bleek
★ maino
★ Papoose
★ Courtney Hamlin
★ Lena Horne
★ James "Rocky" Robinson
★ Talib Kweli
★ GZA
★ Homicide
★ Lenny Wilkens
★ Mos Def
★ Busta Rhymes
★ Vanessa A. Williams
★ Deemi(Tahu Aponte)
★ Unique Zayas
Landmarks
★ Weeksville Heritage Center
★ Cornerstone Baptist Church
★ Our Lady of the Presentation Church
★ Boys and Girls High School
★ The Stuyvesant Heights Historic District
★ Antioch Baptist Church
★ Boys High School
★ Girls High School
References
1. http://urbanology.org/BedStuy/ Bed-Stuy On the Move
2. http://gothamgazette.com/community/36/news/1340 Daily News, March 5, 2005
3. http://www.universalhiphopparade.org/index.html Universal Hip Hop Parade
4. http://66.111.110.102/newyork/DetailsAr.do?file=features/499/499.thebattlefor.html "The Battle for Bed-Stuy: The Price of Art" Time Out New York April 2005
5. http://www.bedstuygateway.com/ Bed-Stuy Gateway Business District
External links
★ Bed-Stuy On the Move
★ Bed-Stuy Gateway and the Fulton-Nostrand Revitalization Project
★ Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation
★ Bed-Stuy Blog
★ Bedford Stuyvesant Community News
★ Society for the Preservation of Weeksville and Bedford-Stuyvesant History
★ Universal Hip-Hop Parade Foundation, Inc.
★ Bedford Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corp.
★ Blog of life in Bed Stuy through Summer 2007
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