Museum of Family History    

          Visit Us           Site Map           Exhibitions           Education & Research           Multimedia           About the Museum           Contact Us           Links 

The astonishing growth of Brownsville within the last three or four years has turned real estate values in the Twenty-Sixth Ward topsy-turvy and has also turned the head of more than one speculator in reality. Four years ago no one would have believed that the unsewered, unpaved and wholly hopeless streets that had been laid out on maps like the towns in the tale of "Martin Chuzzlewit," would blossom into city thoroughfares, with electric lights , sewers and pavements that would put to shame pavements in the higher-toned thoroughfares in the borough; but the wand of a magician has been at work and now, where there were little better than cowpaths a few years ago, there are avenues that are just as well equipped in matters of sanitation as in any section of the city.

Brownsville was originally a pastoral suburb, given over to fields of grateful green, cow stables and barnyards. Within twenty years it was purely a farmer's land. The streets were not cut through in many cases, and where there were thoroughfares, like Chester Street, Bristol Street, Rockaway Avenue and the intersecting avenues, there was no paving, no curbing, and nothing in wet weather but mudholes. East New York Avenue, the main artery which led to the Brownsville district, was unpaved and ankle deep in mud when the weather was bad. No one ever thought in the old days of walking down Rockaway Avenue when anything was to be bought. That was the simple outlet for men, pioneers in the district, who wanted to take the Fulton Street or the old rapid transit cars to the greater borough on the other side of the river, when there were no bridges to carry one over. The settlers in the Brownsville district were not Jews, but oddly enough, brawny Scots, who found cheap land for the building of their little homes, frugally secured by self-abnegation and much  ...ial of "barley brew." Brownsville  was ... purely a settlement of the Caledonian, ...tis Macdonalds, its Cooks, its Armits, ...osses, its Gregges, Its Mackenzies and  ... Chalmerses.

Judah has driven the Scot out of the place, but the driving was slow, for the Caledonian did not like to be dislodged. As the late Paul Blouet would have remarked, all Scots ...e Jews, and it was very hard at first for the chosen people  to find a foothold in the district. But once they got established they kept the wavering Scots before them like a whirlwind. It was a sad tearing out of lofty ties, but the tearing was for the time going slow and uncertain. Prices that were ...lous even to the eyes of the frugal Scots .... offered for holdings. There had been .... activity for a while in vacant property, Rockaway Avenue, on old Eastern Parkway, now known as Pitkin Avenue, and on intersecting streets of the Eastern Parkway .... backbone. Pretty soon the city authorities saw that the Jews were in earnest in buying their homes there. The cheap frame structures that were at first built, began to may way for structures of brick and stone. The wooden building became obsolete after ..ile and plans were placed before the ....ng Commissioner for buildings of much ...ter class. It was apparent that the new denizens of the district were for permanent homes and permanent investments, and the city officials began to fill in improvements, ...ng befgore other sections of the city got asphalt streets, they were established in Brownsville. This was a necessity, for the fish markets in the streets were replicas of the markets in Mulberry bend, and in Bax... Street, where it was found a sanitary ...ushed. The Health Board was about and ... the necessity for a ready flow of water ... streets that could be turned into sluices that was necessary.

Brownsville as a refuge for the East Side was begun, and the Jew was not long ... to appreciate the advantages of the .... All sorts and conditions of Hebrews moved over from Manhattan. They came ...ly built, badly ventilated and overcrowded tenements to a place where they sought lots of room and cheap rents. There was God's sunlight in the rooms and ... temptation to keep things clean, al... dominant idea in the Jewish household whose very religion is cleanliness. It ... like the land of promise, not flowing with milk and honey, it is true, but giving promise all the same of a new life, different from that in far away Brody, or in nearby Manhattan.
 

A VERY COMMON SIGHT IN BROWNSVILLE, PITKIN AVENUE

The tide began flowing Brooklynward just about four years ago, and it has been growing to a flood ever since. The conductors on the Douglass Street cars got to know the people. They did not call out the streets on the trips uptown, but as soon as they got to the fringe of the new Jewish settlement, it was "Brownsville" they called, and "Brownsville"  got to be the rallying cry for thousands of Jews. Some of the immigrants from the old country knew Brownsville better after a while than they knew New York, and it is dollars to doughnuts that many a Yiddisher who had never set his foot on United States territory knew more about the way to get to the fastnesses of Rockaway Avenue from the steamship dock than he did to get to Union Square. It was all very amazing to the poor Caledonians who were living in Brownsville, wondering what was going to happen, but it was pie to farseeing real estate men, like the late Bernard Pink, who bought real estate in the Rockaway Avenue section and put up houses to aid the newcomers in finding homes. Mr. Pink has been dead for some years now, and he would doubtless we surprised to find out that his sagacity was so conservative in its expectations.

Today thousands of Jews are moving to Brownsville every week, and they are not finding homes quickly enough. There never was so much activity in real estate matters in any section of Brooklyn, as there is at the present time. Prices that were considered fabulous are offered to the old settlers for their holdings. There is a section opening out that is known as "New Brownsville," west of Rockaway Avenue, and taking in the streets that intersect Pitkin Avenue lower down toward the House of the Good Shepherd. This New Brownsville is a settlement entirely apart from the old Brownsville, and it is here that the old Scottish settlers are being driven out, not without the essential "bawbee," as an inducement. And the bawbee is dropping in in a most unexpected way. Lots that were held at such a high figure as "a thoozand dollars" are bringing $2,500, and that on side streets that might hang their heads in shame when compared to public thoroughfares. And the wonder of it all is that the shrewd Jews are paying prices for land hitherto unheard of in the annals of suburban realty. Two agents got to blows the other day over the sale of a parcel of ground on Chester Street, 50x100, frontage, at $100 a foot ... Each had a customer or two, and each was offering high prices. The bid of $5,000 was for the fifty feet, but when the seller found that there were two agents to buy, he chose the man who had the better standing in the neighborhood. The deal went through, but the agents came to blows about it.
 

THE STREETS OF BROWNSVILLE ARE NEARLY IMPASSABLE FROM BUILDING MATERIALS AND SEWER PIPES

One widow who had land to sell was pestered for days about her home, and even when she was ill and in bed, there were speculators trying to get her to part with her little parcel of land. Finally, in desperation, to get rid of them, she sold out at a price, it may be said, that was far above what she had expected to get for the ground.

The buyers are far-seeing, and they feel that they are making no mistakes. Certain Jews have been picking as much gold out of the soil in Brownsville as they would if they were digging in golden veins. Many have gotten rich within four years in real estate speculations, and they are still hotfoot after bargains. All of this activity has had its effect on the building trade. Blocks of houses of brick and stone, all flats, are going up weekly. The entire territory is cluttered up, as may be seen by the pictures presented with this story, with building material. There is no rest in the entire district from the hammering of the carpenter, the rattle of brick as it is dumped on the streets, and the rumble of trucks with building material. The city is trying to keep up with the parade by laying water mains and sewer pipes through the newly occupied territory, and within a few months, it would seem, the Brownsville population will be quadrupled. With the single exception of the old Sixteenth Ward in Williamsburg, there is no place of refuge for the Jews except in Brownsville, and the advantages of the new settlement are patent to every stranger from the East Side. The Eastern District settlement is overcrowded, but in Brownsville there is plenty of room to spread out. That is what is taking the stranger from across the bridge. He can get three times the room over here that he can on the East Side for the same money, and beside, the sanitary conditions are perfect, the houses are new and well-lighted, and there is every appliance for home comfort. It is not to be wondered at that, there is a constant procession of moving vans across the new East River bridge, carrying the goods and chattels of the evicted from the East Side. And the East Side landlords are in a fruitless panic, for the Jews will not stay in Manhattan any longer. They are coming to Brooklyn. They are not only settling in Brownsville, but in the entire south side of East New York, from Grant Avenue to Rockaway Avenue. They have been buying land from the old Belle Plain territory, close by the Bayside Cemetery, on the front of Jamaica Bay and near Woodhaven, down to the Rockaway Avenue boundary of old Brownsville, and it is safe to say that the ground will be built up within a year with apartment houses of all descriptions, peopled by the frugal folks who are seeking liberty and a way to make their own livings untrammeled by governmental taxation. The Twenty-Sixth Ward seems to be the promised land for Jewry, and some of the old settlers of narrow inclinations are beginning to worry that they too will be driven out.

The class of Jews that comes to Brooklyn is of the progressive sort, and they are the kind of Jews that, after a generation or two, will not segregate, but will mix up with their Gentile neighbors and, while keeping to the doctrines of their old faith, will not be so bigoted as the people who begot them, and who are rapidly dying off. The fact that there is a boom is plain from the interest that the moneyed institutions are taking in the new territory. The boom in Brownsville is one of the wonders of the town, and as indicated at the outset, is turning the real estate market in the Twenty-Sixth Ward topsy turvy.