Williamsburg is one of the stereotypical neighborhoods that have defined Brooklyn in the 20th century. The famous children’s book A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith, described the life of a girl growing up in the poverty-stricken slums of turn-of-the century Williamsburg. Built as a neighborhood for working class immigrants, across the East River and Williamsburg bridge from Manhattan, Williamsburg was filled with factories and warehouses and tenement housing. It was the kind of neighborhood that multitudes of second generation Americans, like the protagonist in Betty Smith’s novel, left behind in their quest for upward mobility.

Williamsburg today is on the cusp of a potential real estate boom. It is the home of four stable ethnic populations: Puerto Rican-, Polish-, and Italian-Americans, and a Hasidic community, each of which occupy a different part of the neighborhood and rarely interact with each other except through commerce. In the last ten years there has been a sizable influx of artists and other professionals. They are fleeing from the high rents of Manhattan but are looking for an urban ambience nearby the commerce, wealth, culture, and glitz that Manhattan has to offer. Old warehouses and derelict factory buildings have been turned into loft apartments and art studios. Apartments that used to rent for $600/month now go for $1500/month in the areas that have been solidly gentrified.

The biggest development on the horizon is the much talked about conversion of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, that abuts the southern section of the neighborhood, into a movie studio. Robert De Niro’s name has been associated with this plan and if it comes to fruition, it will change the image and character of Williamsburg permanently. The new movie studio complex will produce independent and artistic films - the sort of films that typically are not favored by the large Hollywood studios. This industry will undoubtedly attract a huge inflow of professional people who will want to live near their work and will encourage a massive gentrification of everything in West Brooklyn that hasn’t already been gentrified.

Even if the ethnic neighborhoods that comprise most of today’s Williamsburg survive, their proximity to the boutiques, cafes, nightclubs, and alternative lifestyles that will certainly accompany this studio, will make for an even weirder mix of neighbors than that which currently exists. Some would say that’s what makes New York City an interesting place to live. On one block you have Hasidic mothers walking with six or seven children to the kosher market, on streets where all the signs are in Yiddish. On the next street you hear Latin music booming from radios, while Spanish-speaking men sit on the sidewalk playing dominoes or cards. A few streets later, you having the swinging lifestyle of the yuppies with their ubiquitous Starbucks and organic food stores. Do these people all really want to live on top of each other with a population density of close to 50,000 per square mile? Probably not, but in New York City you don’t have a choice

Also See: