Greenpoint is the northernmost neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is bordered on the southwest by Williamsburg at the Bushwick inlet, on the southeast by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and East Williamsburg, on the north by Newtown Creek and Long Island City, Queens at the Pulaski Bridge, and on the west by the East River. Originally farmland (many of the farm owners’ family names, e.g., Meserole and Calyer, still name the streets), the residential core of Greenpoint was built on parcels divided during the 19th century, with rope factories and lumber yards lining the East River to the west, while the northeastern section along the Newtown Creek through East Williamsburg became an industrial maritime reach. There has been an effort to reclaim not only the rezoned Greenpoint/Williamsburg East River waterfront for recreational use, but to extend that effort to include a continuous promenade into the Newtown Creek area. The neighborhood is part of New York’s 12th congressional district, State Senate Districts 17 and 25, State Assembly District 50, City Council District 33, and Brooklyn Community Board 1. The neighborhood is served by the NYPD’s 94th Precinct.
HISTORY
Greenpoint was originally inhabited by Keskachauge (Keshaechqueren) Indians, a sub-tribe of the Lenape. Contemporary accounts describe it as remarkably verdant and beautiful, with Jack pine and oak forest, meadows, fresh water creeks and briny marshes. Water fowl and fish were abundant. The name originally referred to a small bluff of land jutting into the East River at what is now the westernmost end of Freeman Street, but eventually came to describe the whole peninsula.
In 1638 the Dutch West India Company negotiated the right to settle Brooklyn from the Lenape. The first recorded European settler of what is now Greenpoint was Dirck Volckertsen (Dutchified from Holgerssøn), a Norwegian immigrant who in 1645 built a one-and-a-half story farmhouse there with the help of two Dutch carpenters. In was in the contemporary Dutch style just west of what is now the intersection of Calyer Street and Franklin Street. There he planted orchards and raised crops, sheep and cattle. He was called Dirck de Noorman by the Dutch colonists of the region, Noorman being the Dutch word for “Norseman” or “Northman.” The creek that ran by his farmhouse became known as Norman Kill (Creek); it ran into a large salt marsh and was later filled in. Volckertsen received title to the land after prevailing in court the year before over a Jan De Pree, who had a rival claim. He initially commuted to his farm by boat and may not have moved into the house full time until after 1655, when the small nearby settlement of Boswyck was established, on the charter of which Volckertsen was listed along with 22 other families. Volckertsen’s wife, Christine Vigne, was a Walloon.
Volckertsen had periodic conflicts with the Keshaechqueren, who killed two of his sons-in-law and tortured a third in separate incidents throughout the 1650s. Starting in the early 1650s, he began selling and leasing his property to Dutch colonists, among them Jacob Haie (Hay) in 1653, who built a home in northern Greenpoint that was burned down by Indians two years later. The Hay property and other holdings came into the possession of Pieter Praa, a captain in the local militia, who established a farm near present day Freeman Street and McGuinness Boulevard, and went on to own most of Greenpoint. Volckertsen died in about 1678 and his grandsons sold the remainder of the homestead to Pieter Praa when their father died in 1718; the name of Norman Avenue remains as testimony to Volckertsen’s legacy.
Praa had no male heirs when he died in 1740, but the farming families of his various daughters formed the core of Greenpoint for the next hundred years or so. By the time of the Revolutionary War, Greenpoint’s population was entirely five related families:
Abraham Meserole, a grandson of Pieter Praa, and his family lived on the banks of the East River between the present day India and Java Streets;
Jacob Meserole (brother of Abraham) and his family farmed the entire south end of Greenpoint and built a house between present day Manhattan Avenue and Lorimer Street near Norman Avenue;
Jacob Bennett, son-in-law of Pieter Praa, and his family farmed the land in the northern portion of Greenpoint and built their house near present day Clay Street roughly between present day Manhattan Avenue and Franklin Street;
Jonathan Provoost, son-in-law of Pieter Praa, and his family farmed the eastern portion of Greenpoint, and lived in the house built by Praa;
Jacobus Calyer, a grandson-in-law of Pieter Praa, and his family farmed the western portion of Greenpoint, and lived in the house built by Volckertsen.
Throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries, the farms were quite isolated from the rest of Brooklyn, connected only to one another by farm lanes and to the rest of Bushwick Township by a single road, Wood Point Road. The families used long boats to travel to Manhattan to sell their farm produce. Little historical information exists about this period of Greenpoint’s history other than the personal papers and recorded oral history of these five families.
The British Army had an encampment in Greenpoint during the Revolution, which caused considerable hardship for the families; Abraham Meserole’s son was imprisoned on suspicion of revolutionary sympathies.
DEMOGRAPHICS
Greenpoint is largely middle class and multi-generational; it is not uncommon to find three generations of family members living in this community. The neighborhood is sometimes referred to as “Little Poland” due to its large population of working-class Polish immigrants, reportedly the second largest concentration in the United States after Chicago. Although they may constitute the majority, Greenpoint is not only populated with Polish immigrants and Polish-Americans, as there is a small population of Hispanics found in the area north of Greenpoint Avenue.
As of the census of 2000, there were 39,360 people, 15,865 households, and 8,744 families residing in the 11222 zip code, which is roughly coterminous with Greenpoint. The population density was 23,221 people per square mile (8965.7/km²). There were 16,949 housing units at an average density of 9999.3/sq mi (3860.8/km²). The racial makeup of the neighborhood was 80.3% White, 1.6% African American, 0.4% Native American, 3.8% Asian, 0.05% Pacific Islander, 9.4% from other races, and 4.5% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 19.5% of the population. Another 43.6% of the residents claimed Polish ancestry.
There were 15,865 households out of which 26.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 37.3% were married couples living together, 12.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 44.9% were non-families. 30.8% of all households were made up of individuals and 10.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.47 and the average family size was 3.15.
In the neighborhood the population was spread out with 19.9% under the age of 19, 8.2% from 20 to 24, 35.7% from 25 to 44, 24.9% from 45 to 64, and 11.3% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36.6 years. For every 100 females there were 102 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 101 males.
The median income for a household in the neighborhood was $33,578 as compared to Williamsburg’s median household income of $23,567. Males had a median income of $32,019 versus $26,183 for females. About 17.7% of the population were below the poverty line, as compared to Williamsburg’s 41.4% and Kings county’s 22.4% below poverty.