Bushwick is a neighborhood in the northern part of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is bound by the neighborhood of Ridgewood, Queens, to the northeast; Williamsburg to the northwest; the cemeteries of Highland Park to the southeast; and Bedford–Stuyvesant to the south and southwest.
The town was first founded by the Dutch as Boswijck during the Dutch colonization of the Americas in the 17th century. In the 19th century, the neighborhood became a community of German immigrants and their descendants. The 20th century saw an influx of Italian immigrants and Italian-Americans up to the 1980s. By the late 20th century, the neighborhood became predominantly Hispanic as another wave of immigrants arrived. Formerly Brooklyn's 18th Ward, the neighborhood was once an independent town and has undergone various territorial changes throughout its history.
Bushwick is part of Brooklyn Community District 4, and its primary ZIP Codes are 11206, 11207, 11221, and 11237. It is patrolled by the 83rd Precinct of the New York City Police Department. Politically it is represented by the New York City Council's 34th and 37th Districts.Current City Council Districts for Kings County, New York City. Accessed May 5, 2017.
Geography
Bushwick's borders largely overlap those of Brooklyn Community Board 4, which is delineated by Flushing Avenue on the north, Broadway on the southwest, the border with Queens to the northeast, and the Cemetery of the Evergreens on the southeast. The industrial area north of Flushing Avenue, east of Bushwick Avenue, and south of Grand Street is commonly considered to be either East Williamsburg or part of Bushwick, occasionally with the modifier "Industrial Bushwick".
The town of Bushwick—which, along with Brooklyn and Bedford, became incorporated as the city of Brooklyn on January 1, 1854—included present-day Williamsburg and Greenpoint.DOCUMENTARY STUDY: 55 GOODWIN PLACE HOUSING SITE, Borough of Brooklyn, for New York city Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Revised October 1989.Bedford Stuyvesant/Expanded Stuyvesant Heights Historic District: Designation Report Prior to the merger, in the early 19th century, residential development in the area had begun when the new district of Williamsburg was laid out in western Bushwick. Williamsburg was incorporated in 1827 and officially severed from Bushwick in 1839. Present-day East Williamsburg, which was not part of the city of Williamsburg, was originally organized primarily as Brooklyn's 18th Ward from the annexation of Bushwick. Now part of Brooklyn Community District 1, the area of East Williamsburg is nevertheless considered by some to be part of Bushwick.Boswijk: Town of the WoodsPfizer Sites Rezoning EIS, Chapter 8: Urban Design and Visual Resources. "The Northern Sub-Area is the eight block area lying to northeast of Broadway and roughly bounded by Montrose, Manhattan and Graham Avenues on the north and east. ... This area is variously identified as being the western portion of Bushwick or part of East Williamsburg."
For its entry on Bushwick–Ridgewood, the American Institute of Architects' AIA Guide to New York City uses the area bounded by the Cemetery Belt on the south, Bushwick Avenue on the west (save for a short distance between Bushwick Avenue's northern terminus and the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway, where Woodpoint Road and Kingsland Avenue are the western boundaries), the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway on the north, and the Brooklyn–Queens border on the east—thus including the industrial area north of Flushing Avenue and east of Bushwick Avenue.
The centroid, or geographic center, of New York City is located on Stockholm Street in Bushwick, on the block between Wyckoff and St. Nicholas Avenues.Pollak, Michael. "F.Y.I.", The New York Times, February 27, 2005. Accessed February 2, 2017. "Q. Where is the geographic center of New York?... According to the Department of City Planning, the population center lies in Maspeth, Queens, near the intersection of Galasso Place and 48th Street, near Maspeth Creek. The geographic center is in Bushwick, Brooklyn, on Stockholm Street between Wyckoff Avenue and St. Nicholas Avenue."Staff. "CITY'S HUB PLACED IN BUSHWICK YARD; Regional Plan Group Finds Geographic Center Is Far From Population Center", The New York Times, March 26, 1937. Accessed February 2, 2017. "The Regional Plan Association, whose offices at 400 Madison Avenue are now found to lie on the northwesterly outskirts of the city, announced yesterday that its engineers have discovered, for the first time, that a certain back yard in the Bushwick area of Brooklyn is the geographical center of New York City.... The association found, in effect, that anyone desiring to be centrally located in New York City in the literal geographic sense must live in that block of brownstone houses bounded by Reid and Stuyvesant Avenues, Van Buren Street and Greene Avenue in Brooklyn."
History Bushwick township
In 1638, the Dutch West India Company secured a deed from the local Lenape people for the Bushwick area, and Peter Stuyvesant chartered the area in 1661, naming it Boswijck, meaning "neighborhood in the woods" in 17th-century Dutch.Block, Stock & Barrel . Block Magazine. Its area included the modern-day communities of Bushwick, Williamsburg, and Greenpoint. Bushwick was the last of the original six Dutch towns of Brooklyn to be established within New Netherland.
The community was settled, though unchartered, on February 16, 1660, on a plot of land between the Bushwick and Newtown Creeks by fourteen French and Huguenot settlers, a Dutch translator named Peter Jan De Witt,History of Bushwick . Retrieved November 19, 2006 and one of the original eleven slaves brought to New Netherland, Franciscus the Negro, who had worked his way to freedom.The Rise of Slavery: New York had the most slaves in the North, and Long Island had almost half of them, Newsday. Retrieved November 19, 2006A Black History of Jamaica, New York. Retrieved November 19, 2006 The group centered their settlement on a church located near today's Bushwick and Metropolitan Avenues. The major thoroughfare was Woodpoint Road, which allowed farmers to bring their goods to the town dock. This original settlement came to be known as Het Dorp by the Dutch, and, later, Bushwick Green by the British. The English would take over the six towns three years later and unite them under Kings County in 1683.
Many of Bushwick's Dutch records were lost after its annexation by Brooklyn in 1854. Contemporary reports differ on the reason: T. W. Field writes that "a nice functionary of the [Brooklyn] City Hall ... contemptuously thrust them into his waste-paper sacks", while Eugene Armbruster claims that the movable bookcase containing the records "was coveted by some municipal officer, who turned its contents upon the floor".
At the turn of the 19th century, Bushwick consisted of four villages: Green Point, Bushwick ShoreGreenpoint History. Retrieved November 19, 2006 (later known as Williamsburg), Bushwick Green, and Bushwick Crossroads (at the spot where today's Bushwick Avenue turns southeast at Flushing Avenue).HISTORY OF BROOKLYN: CHAPTER IX. BUSHWICK AND WILLIAMSBURGH, FROM THE CLOSE OF THE REVOLUTION, UNTIL 1854. Retrieved November 19, 2006
Bushwick's first major expansion occurred after it annexed the New Lots of Bushwick, a hilly upland originally claimed by Native Americans in the first treaties they signed with European colonists granting the settlers rights to the lowland on the water. After the second war between the natives and the settlers broke out, the natives fled, leaving the area to be divided among the six towns in Kings County. Bushwick had the prime location to absorb its new tract of land in a contiguous fashion. New Bushwick Lane (Evergreen Avenue), a former Native American trail, was a key thoroughfare for accessing this new tract, which was suitable mostly for potato and cabbage agriculture.RootsWeb: NYBROOKLYN-L Archives . Archiver.rootsweb.com. This area is bounded roughly by Flushing Avenue to the north and Evergreen Cemetery to the south. In the 1850s, the New Lots of Bushwick area began to develop. References to the town of Bowronville, a new neighborhood contained within the area south of Lafayette Avenue and Stanhope Street, began to appear in the 1850s.RootsWeb: NYKINGS-L Archives . Archiver.rootsweb.com.Obsolete Brooklyn Street Names. Brooklyn.net (November 15, 2003).
The area known as Bushwick Shore was so called for about 140 years. Bushwick residents called Bushwick Shore "the Strand", the Dutch term for "beach". Bushwick Creek, in the north, and Cripplebush, a region of thick, boggy shrubland extending from Wallabout Creek to Newtown Creek, in the south and east, cut Bushwick Shore off from the other villages in Bushwick. Farmers and gardeners from the other Bushwick villages sent their goods to Bushwick Shore to be ferried to New York City for sale at a market located at the present-day Grand Street. Bushwick Shore's favorable location close to New York City led to the creation of several farming developments. Originally a development within Bushwick Shore, Williamsburgh rapidly expanded during the first half of the 19th century and eventually seceded from Bushwick to form its own independent city in 1852. Both Bushwick and Williamsburgh were annexed to the City of Brooklyn in 1854.
Early industry When Bushwick was founded, it was primarily an area for farming food and tobacco. As Brooklyn and New York City grew, factories that manufactured sugar, oil, and chemicals were built. The inventor Peter Cooper built a glue manufacturing plant, his first factory, in Bushwick. Immigrants from western Europe joined the original Dutch settlers. The Bushwick Chemical Works, at Metropolitan Avenue and Grand Street on the English Kills channel, was another early industry among the lime, plaster, and brickworks, coal yards, and other factories that developed along English Kills, which was dredged and made an important commercial waterway.
In October 1867, the American Institute awarded Bushwick Chemical Works the first premium for commercial acids of the greatest purity and strength. The Bushwick Glass Company, later known as Brookfield Glass Company, established itself in 1869, when a local brewer sold it to James Brookfield. It made a variety of bottles and jars, as well as large numbers of glass electrical insulators for telegraph, telephone and power lines.
In the 1840s and 1850s, a majority of the immigrants were German, which became the dominant population. Bushwick established a considerable brewery industry, including "Brewer's Row"—14 breweries operating in a 14-block area—by 1890. Thus, Bushwick was dubbed the "beer capital of the Northeast". The last Bushwick breweries, the Schaefer's and Rheingold Breweries, closed its doors in 1976. As late as the 1980s, there were unsuccessful efforts to revive the Rheingold Brewery. The William Ulmer Brewery at Beaver and Belvidere Streets was given landmark status by the city in 2010, becoming the first brewery with such a status.
As late as 1883, Bushwick maintained open farming land east of Flushing Avenue. A synergy developed between the brewers and the farmers during this period, as the dairy farmers collected spent grain and hops for cow feed. The dairy farmers sold milk and other dairy products to consumers in Brooklyn. Both industries supported blacksmiths, wheelwrights, and feed stores along Flushing Avenue.
Railway hub
In 1868, the Long Island Rail Road built the Bushwick Branch from its hub in Jamaica via Maspeth to Bushwick Terminal, at the intersection of Montrose and Bushwick avenues, allowing easy movement of passengers, raw materials, and finished goods. Routes also radiated to Flushing, Queens.