Crown Heights, Brooklyn
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Crown Heights is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. This neighborhood extends through much of Brooklyn Community District Boards 8 and 9. The main thoroughfare through this neighborhood is Eastern Parkway, which divides the north and south sides of this neighborhood. Crown Heights is bounded by Washington Avenue (west), Atlantic Avenue (north) and Ralph Avenue (east), Clarkson Ave (south). The neighborhoods that border Crown Heights are: Prospect Heights (to the west); Prospect Lefferts Gardens (to the southwest), Wingate and Rugby (to the South), Brownsville (to the east); Bedford-Stuyvesant (to the north).
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[edit] Demographics
The worldwide headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic Jewish community, at 770 Eastern Parkway, is located in Crown Heights.
A large West Indian population coexists, uneasily at times, with Hasidic Jews in Crown Heights. In recent years, a considerable number of Latin American and Russian immigrants have also moved into the neighborhood.
More recently, (see below), Crown Heights has seen an influx of "gentrifiers"--a racial mix of artists, professionals, students, and gays and lesbians. These new inhabitants, however, are more likely to be white, younger, and more affluent than many of the previous residents.
Violence has erupted in this neighborhood on more than one occasion, including during the New York City blackout of 1977. However, the best-known series of events -- the Crown Heights Riot -- occurred in 1991.
Crown Heights is also known for its annual West Indian Carnival. Its main event is the West Indian Carnival Parade, also known as "The Labor Day Parade." The parade route goes along Eastern Parkway, from Utica Avenue to Grand Army Plaza. According to the West Indian-American Day Carnival Association, over 3.5 million people participate in the parade each year.
[edit] Crown Heights Today
Crown Heights today is a series of messy paradoxes, from its lovely architecture to its vacant, run-down buildings, from variously hatted and top-coated Lubavitcher communities to vegan rasta Afro-Caribbean restaurants. Rising real estate values and gentrification have also recently become part of this mix.
Crown Heights, like its neighbor Bedford-Stuyvesant, is in the midst of an uneasy and ambivalent transformation and is home to many recent immigrants and public housing developments. There is also a rapidly rising middle class population, many artists, and even one of Brooklyn's oldest gay and lesbian bars catering largely to Afro-Caribbean residents.
Realtors often try to create the impression that Prospect Heights, an area that itself is often misrepresented as "Park Slope North", extends into Crown Heights. The Wikipedia entry for Prospect Heights, for instance, mentions the notion that Prospect Heights extends as far as Bedford Avenue, while most area residents agree that Washington Ave is actually the border.
The lovely brownstones, Medgar Evers College-CUNY, proximity to Park Slope, and great train access mean that some real estate developers are already trying to refer to the area around the Brooklyn Museum and the Botanic Gardens, which encompasses parts of both Prospect Heights and Crown Heights, as "Museum Heights."
[edit] The Crown Heights Riot
The Crown Heights Riot was a multi-day riot in Crown Heights in August, 1991. The riots were precipitated by the death of a seven-year-old Guyanese boy named Gavin Cato, killed by a car that was a part of a motorcade returning from the Lubavitcher Rebbe's father-in-law's grave. As the car crossed the intersection, it was hit by another car, causing it to veer out of control and run over Gavin. A private Hatzolah ambulance came to the scene and removed the Hasidic driver on the orders of a police officer, who also ordered the ambulance to leave the area without considering the injured boy, since a city ambulance had been called for. The city ambulance arrived soon after to treat Gavin, who died of his injuries at a nearby hospital.
West Indian-American residents and other residents of the neighborhood rioted for four consecutive days fueled by a belief that the treatment of the car accident victims was unequal. Fires were set and shops were looted as the riot grew out of control, with crowds on both sides throwing stones and other objects at each other. A visiting rabbinical student from Australia by the name of Yankel Rosenbaum, 29 years old, was killed during the rioting. Before dying, Rosenbaum was able to identify 16-year-old Lemrick Nelson, Jr. as his assailant. Nelson was charged with the killing, but acquitted. After the acquittal, Nelson admitted to having stabbed Rosenbaum, and was convicted for having violated his civil rights.
Then mayor David Dinkins was criticized for his poor handling of the events, and the turmoil proved to be a key issue in the next New York City mayoral election, contested in 1993 as a rematch between incumbent David Dinkins and Rudolph Giuliani, whom Dinkins had narrowly defeated four years earlier. Giuliani won the election, and subsequent polls showed that a significant shift in the Jewish vote from 1989 was a contributing factor in his victory.
[edit] Structural landmarks
- 770 Eastern Parkway
- Brooklyn Botanic Garden
- Brooklyn Children's Museum
- Brooklyn Public Library (Eastern Parkway branch)
- Jewish Children's Museum
- Medgar Evers College
- World's First Children's Library
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Race and Religion among the Chosen Peoples of Crown Heights, by Henry Goldschmidt (Rutgers University Press, 2006)
- Crown Heights North Association
- Landmarking of Crown Heights as a NYC historic district
- Harvard Research Publication on the Crown Heights Riots and background
- West Indian-American Day Carnival Association
- Crown Heights News
