A Short History of the Gentrification of Brooklyn

City Journal:

To understand the emergence of the new Brooklyn, it’s best to start by recalling its original heyday. From the mid-nineteenth century to 1898, when it became part of New York City, Brooklyn was one of the nation’s preeminent industrial cities, and its dominance continued until about 1960. Facing New York’s deepwater harbor and the well-traveled East River, Brooklyn’s waterfront was lined with factories. Workers in those factories lived in the borough’s numerous tenements, row houses, and subdivided townhouses. Some worked the assembly line in the Ansonia Clock Factory in Park Slope. (It later became the neighborhood’s first condo-loft space.) Others worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, in an area now known as Vinegar Hill. Still others worked on the docks in Red Hook, the inspiration for the Marlon Brando movie On the Waterfront; in the Arbuckle coffee-roasting factory under the Manhattan Bridge; in the paint factories and metal shops in Gowanus; in the breweries in the once-German enclaves of Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and Bushwick; and in the pharmaceutical factory founded in East Williamsburg by Charles Pfizer. They worked in the Domino sugar refinery, at one time the largest in the world, whose big red DOMINO sign (still illuminating the East River at night) was all that some Manhattanites knew firsthand of Brooklyn.

Ah, the good old days when Americans made stuff.  Here is my favorite part of the new, resurgent Brooklyn:

Steve Hindy and Tom Potter, founders of Brooklyn Brewery, epitomize the peculiar combination of hipster localism and business savvy characteristic of the young Brooklyn firms. Both had been company men—Hindy an Associated Press correspondent and Potter a Chemical Bank lending officer—before opening their Brooklyn plant in 1996. They were clever enough to see the marketing possibilities in Brooklyn’s changing identity and to ignore advice from establishment grown-ups to find a different name for their beer. Instead, they hired legendary designer Milton Glaser to create a seventies-style, retro-cool Brooklyn Brewery logo. Today, the brewery sells its products all over the world and is among the top 30 beer producers in the nation.

Brooklyn beer is great stuff.  Anyway, it is good that such a historic urban area has been revitalized.  Maybe there is some hope for Detroit and Cleveland.