Bedford-Stuyvesant

Bedford-Stuyvesant is a neighborhood in central Brooklyn, New York. The area is often called Bed-Stuy for short.

Early History

The neighborhood name is an extension of the name of the Village of Bedford, expanded to include the area of Stuyvesant Heights.

In pre-revolutionary Kings County, New York, Bedford, which now forms the heart of the community, was the first major settlement east of the then-Village of Brooklyn on the road to Jamaica and eastern Long Island.

With the building of the Brooklyn & Jamaica Railroad, soon taken over by the Long Island Rail Road 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.

Establishment as an urban neighborhood

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 row houses, including much attractive housing which is sought after in the neighborhood's renaissance.

Ethnic change

During and after World War II, large numbers of African-Americans, migrating from the American South 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-eminant black community.

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, difficulties in municipal government and movement of significant parts of its population to suburban areas.

The Sixties

The 1960s and 1970s were a difficult time for the 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-Brownsville 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.

Community cohesion and improvement

Better economic conditions and engaged community organizations and local business have contributed to dramatic improvements in the neighborhood, beginning in the 1980s.

External links

NYC Dept. of Housing Preservation and Development Bedford-Stuyvesant Walking Tour

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