Post-colonial era

Urbanization

A preindustrial Winter Scene in Brooklyn, c. 1819–20, by Francis Guy (Brooklyn Museum).

The first half of the 19th century saw the beginning of the development of urban areas on the economically strategic East River shore of Kings County, facing the adolescent City of New York confined to Manhattan Island. The New York Navy Yard operated in Wallabout Bay (border between Brooklyn and Williamsburgh) for the entire 19th century and two-thirds of the 20th century.
The first center of urbanization sprang up in the Town of Brooklyn, directly across from Lower Manhattan, which saw the incorporation of the Village of Brooklyn in 1817. Reliable steam ferry service across the East River to Fulton Landing converted Brooklyn Heights into a commuter town for Wall Street. Ferry Road to Jamaica Pass became Fulton Street to East New York. Town and Village were combined to form the first, kernel incarnation of the City of Brooklyn in 1834.
In parallel development, the Town of Bushwick, a little farther up the river, saw the incorporation of the Village of Williamsburgh in 1827, which separated as the Town of Williamsburgh in 1840 and formed the short-lived City of Williamsburgh in 1851. Industrial deconcentration in mid-century was bringing shipbuilding and other manufacturing to the northern part of the county. Each of the two cities and six towns in Kings County remained independent municipalities, and purposely created non-aligning street grids with different naming systems.
However, the East River shore was growing too fast for the three-year-old infant City of Williamsburgh; it, along with its Town of Bushwick hinterland, was subsumed within a greater City of Brooklyn in 1854.
By 1841, with the appearance of the The Brooklyn Eagle, and Kings County Democrat published by Alfred G. Stevens, the growing city across the East River from Manhattan was producing its own prominent newspaper.^[16] It later became the most popular and highest circulation afternoon paper in America. The publisher changed to L. Van Anden on April 19, 1842,^[17] and the paper was renamed The Brooklyn Daily Eagle and Kings County Democrat on June 1, 1846.^[18] On May 14, 1849 the name was shortened to The Brooklyn Daily Eagle;^[19] on September 5, 1938 it was further shortened to Brooklyn Eagle.^[20] The establishment of the paper in the 1840s helped develop a separate identity for Brooklynites over the next century. The borough's soon-to-be-famous National League baseball team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, also assisted with this. Both major institutions were lost in the 1950s: the paper closed in 1955 after unsuccessful attempts at a sale following a reporters' strike, and the baseball team decamped for Los Angeles in a realignment of major league baseball in 1957.
Agitation against Southern slavery was stronger in Brooklyn than in New York, and under Republican leadership the city was fervent in the Union cause in the Civil War. After the war the Henry Ward Beecher Monument was built downtown to honor a famous local abolitionist. A great victory arch was built at what was then the south end of town to celebrate the armed forces; this place is now called Grand Army Plaza.
The city had a population of 25,000 in 1834, but the police department only comprised 12 men on the day shift and another 12 at night. Every time a rash of burglaries broke out, officials blamed burglars coming in from New York City. Finally in 1855, a modern police force was created, employing 150 men. Voters complained of inadequate protection and excessive costs. In 1857 the state legislature merged the Brooklyn force with that of New York City.^[21]

Civil War

"Any Thing for Me, if You Please?" Post Office, 1864

Fervent in the Union cause, the city of Brooklyn played a major role in supplying troops and materiel for the American Civil War. The most well-known regiment to be sent off to war from the city was the 14th Brooklyn "Red Legged Devils". They fought from 1861 to 1864, wore red the entire war, and were the only regiment named after a city; President Lincoln called them into service personally, making them part of a handful of three-year enlisted soldiers in April 1861. Unlike other regiments during the American Civil War, the 14th wore a uniform inspired by that of the French Chasseurs, a light infantry used for quick assaults on the enemy.
As both a seaport and a manufacturing center, Brooklyn was well prepared to contribute to the Union's strengths in shipping and manufacturing. The two combined in shipbuilding; the ironclad Monitor was built in Brooklyn.

Twin city

Brooklyn is referred to as a twin city of New York in the 1883 poem, "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus, which appears on a plaque inside the Statue of Liberty. The poem calls New York Harbor "the air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame". As a twin city to New York, it played a role in national affairs that was later overshadowed by its century-old submergence into its old partner and rival.
Economic growth continued, propelled by immigration and industrialization, and Brooklyn established itself as the third-most populous American city for much of the 19th century. The waterfront from Gowanus Bay to Greenpoint was developed with piers and factories. Industrial access to the waterfront was improved by the Gowanus Canal and the canalized Newtown Creek. The USS Monitor was only the most famous product of the large and growing shipbuilding industry of Williamsburg. After the Civil War, trolley lines and other transport brought urban sprawl beyond Prospect Park and into the center of the county.

Brooklyn Bridge in 1883, by Currier and Ives

The rapidly growing population needed more water, so the City built centralized waterworks including the Ridgewood Reservoir. The municipal Police Department, however, was abolished in 1854 in favor of a Metropolitan force covering also New York and Westchester Counties. In 1865 the Brooklyn Fire Department (BFD) also gave way to the new Metropolitan Fire District.
Throughout this period the peripheral towns of Kings County, far from Manhattan and even from urban Brooklyn, maintained their rustic independence. The only municipal change seen was the secession of the eastern section of the Town of Flatbush as the Town of New Lots in 1852. The building of rail links such as the Brighton Beach Line in 1878 heralded the end of this isolation.

Borough of Brooklyn wards, 1900

Sports became big business, and the Brooklyn Bridegrooms played professional baseball at Washington Park in the convenient suburb of Park Slope and elsewhere. Early in the next century, under their new name of Brooklyn Dodgers, they brought baseball to Ebbets Field, beyond Prospect Park. Racetracks, amusement parks, and beach resorts opened in Brighton Beach, Coney Island, and elsewhere in the southern part of the county.

Currier and Ives print of Brooklyn, 1886.

Toward the end of the 19th century, the City of Brooklyn experienced its final, explosive growth spurt. Railroads and industrialization spread to Bay Ridge and Sunset Park. In the space of a decade, the city annexed the Town of New Lots in 1886, the Town of Flatbush, the Town of Gravesend, the Town of New Utrecht in 1894, and the Town of Flatlands in 1896. Brooklyn had reached its natural municipal boundaries at the ends of Kings County.

Mayors of the City of Brooklyn

See also: List of mayors of New York City and Brooklyn borough presidents

Brooklyn elected a mayor from 1834 until consolidation in 1898 into the City of Greater New York, whose own second mayor (1902–1903), Seth Low, had been Mayor of Brooklyn from 1882 to 1885. Since 1898, Brooklyn has, in place of a separate mayor, elected a Borough President.

Mayors of the City of Brooklyn^[22]

Mayor	Party	Start year	End year
George Hall	Democratic-Republican	1834
Jonathan Trotter	Democrat	1835	1836
Jeremiah Johnson	Whig	1837	1838
Cyrus P. Smith		1839	1841
Henry C. Murphy	Democrat	1842
Joseph Sprague		1843	1844
Thomas G. Talmage		1845
Francis B. Stryker	Whig	1846	1848
Edward Copland		1849
Samuel Smith	Democrat	1850
Conklin Brush	Whig	1851	1852
Edward A. Lambert	Democrat	1853	1854
George Hall		1855	1856
Samuel S. Powell	Democrat	1857	1860
Martin Kalbfleisch		1861	1863
Alfred M. Wood	Republican	1864	1865
Samuel Rooth		1866	1867
Martin Kalbfleisch	Democrat	1868	1871
Samuel S. Powell		1872	1873
John W. Hunter		1874	1875
Frederick A. Schroeder	Republican	1876	1877
James Howell	Democrat	1878	1881
Seth Low	Republican	1882	1885
Daniel D. Whitney	Democrat	1886	1887
Alfred C. Chapin		1888	1891
David A. Boody		1892	1893
Charles A. Schieren	Republican	1894	1895
Frederick W. Wurster		1896	1897

History

See also: Timeline of Brooklyn

The history of European settlement in Brooklyn spans more than 350 years. The settlement began in the 17th century as the small Dutch-founded town of "Breuckelen" on the East River shore of Long Island, grew to be a sizable city in the 19th century, and was consolidated in 1898 with New York City (then confined to Manhattan and part of the Bronx), the remaining rural areas of Kings County, and the largely rural areas of Queens and Staten Island, to form the modern City of New York.

Colonial era

Six Dutch towns

The Dutch were the first Europeans to settle Long Island's western edge, which was then largely inhabited by the Lenape, a Native American people who are often referred to in contemporary colonial documents by a variation of the place name "Canarsie". The "Breuckelen" settlement, named after Breukelen in the Netherlands, was part of New Netherland, and the Dutch West India Company lost little time in chartering the six original parishes (listed here first by their later, more common English names):^[11]

• Gravesend: in 1645, settled under Dutch patent by English followers of the Anabaptist, Lady Deborah Moody, possibly after Gravesend, England, or 's-Gravenzande, Netherlands
• Brooklyn Heights: as "Breuckelen" in 1646, after the town now spelled "Breukelen", Netherlands
• Flatlands: as "New Amersfoort" in 1647
• Flatbush: as "Midwout" in 1652
• New Utrecht: in 1657, after the city of Utrecht, Netherlands
• Bushwick: as "Boswijck" in 1661

A typical dining table in the Dutch village of Brooklyn, c. 1664, from The Brooklyn Museum.

The colony's capital, New Amsterdam, across the East River, obtained its charter later than the village of Brooklyn did, in 1653. The neighborhood of Marine Park was home to North America's first tidal mill. It was built by the Dutch, and the foundation can be seen today. However, the area was not formally settled as a town. Many incidents and documents relating to this period are in Gabriel Furman's early (1824) compilation.^[12]

Six townships in an English province

Village of Brooklyn and environs, 1766

What is today Brooklyn left Dutch hands after the final English conquest of New Netherland in 1664, a prelude to the Second Anglo–Dutch War. New Netherland was taken in a naval action, and the conquerors renamed their prize in honor of the overall English naval commander, James, Duke of York, brother of the then monarch King Charles II of England and future king himself as King James II of England and James VII of Scotland; Brooklyn became a part of the new English and later British colony, the Province of New York.
The English reorganized the six old Dutch towns on southwestern Long Island as Kings County on November 1, 1683,^[13] one of the "original twelve counties" then established in New York Province. This tract of land was recognized as a political entity for the first time, and the municipal groundwork was laid for a later expansive idea of Brooklyn identity.
Lacking the patroon and tenant farmer system established along the Hudson River Valley, this agricultural county unusually came to have one of the highest percentages of slavery among the population in the "Original Thirteen Colonies" along the Atlantic Ocean eastern coast of North America.^{[citation needed]}

Revolutionary War

Further information: Battle of Long Island and New York and New Jersey campaign

The Battle of Long Island was fought across Kings County.

On August 27, 1776 was fought the Battle of Long Island (also known as the 'Battle of Brooklyn'), the first major engagement fought in the American Revolutionary War after independence was declared, and the largest of the entire conflict. British troops forced Continental Army troops under George Washington off the heights near the modern sites of Green-Wood Cemetery, Prospect Park, and Grand Army Plaza.^[14]
Washington, viewing particularly fierce fighting at the Gowanus Creek from atop a hill near the west end of present-day Atlantic Avenue, was famously reported to have emotionally exclaimed: "What brave men I must this day lose!".^[15]
The fortified American positions at Brooklyn Heights consequently became untenable and were evacuated a few days later, leaving the British in control of New York Harbor. While Washington's defeat on the battlefield cast early doubts on his ability as the commander, the tactical withdrawal of all his troops and supplies across the East River in a single night is now seen by historians as one of his most brilliant triumphs.^[15]
The British controlled the surrounding region for the duration of the war, as New York City was soon occupied and became their military and political base of operations in North America for the remainder of the conflict. The British generally enjoyed a dominant Loyalist sentiment from the residents in Kings County who did not evacuate, though the region was also the center of the fledgling—and largely successful—American intelligence network, headed by Washington himself.
The British set up a system of notorious prison ships off the coast of Brooklyn in Wallabout Bay, where more American patriots died of intentional neglect than died in combat on all the battlefields of the American Revolutionary War, combined. One result of the Treaty of Paris in 1783 was the evacuation of the British from New York City, celebrated by residents into the 20th century.

Brooklyn

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the borough in New York City. For other uses, see Brooklyn (disambiguation).

Coordinates: 40°41′34″N 73°59′25″W

Brooklyn
Borough of New York City
Kings County
Clockwise from top left: Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn brownstones, Soldiers' and Sailors' Arch, Brooklyn Borough Hall, Coney Island
Flag Seal
Motto: Eendraght Maeckt Maght ("Unity makes strength")
Location of Brooklyn, shown in red, in New York City
Coordinates: 40°37′29″N 73°57′8″W
Country	United States of America
State	New York
County	Kings
City	New York City
Settled	1634
Named for	Breukelen, Netherlands
Government
• Type	Borough (New York City)
• Borough President	Eric Adams (D) — (Borough of Brooklyn)
• District Attorney	Eric Gonzalez[2] — (Kings County)
Area
• Total	97 sq mi (250 km2)
• Land	71 sq mi (180 km2)
• Water	26 sq mi (70 km2)
Population (2015)
• Total	2,636,735[1]
• Density	37,137.1/sq mi (14,338.7/km2)
• Demonym	Brooklynite
ZIP Code prefix	112
Area code(s)	347, 718, 917, 929
Website	www.Brooklyn-USA.org

Brooklyn (/ˈbrʊklᵻn/) is the most populous borough of New York City, with a Census-estimated 2,636,735 residents in 2015.^[1] It borders the borough of Queens at the southwestern end of Long Island. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, the most populous county in the U.S. state of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, after the county of New York (which is coextensive with the borough of Manhattan).^[3]
With a land area of 71 square miles (180 km²) and water area of 26 square miles (67 km²), Kings County is New York's fourth-smallest county by land area and third-smallest by total area, though it is the second-largest among the city's five boroughs.^[4] Today, if New York City dissolved, Brooklyn would rank as the third-most populous city in the U.S., behind Los Angeles and Chicago.
Brooklyn was an independent incorporated city (and previously an authorized village and town within the provisions of the New York State Constitution) until January 1, 1898, when, after a long political campaign and public relations battle during the 1890s, according to the new Municipal Charter of "Greater New York", Brooklyn was consolidated with the other cities, boroughs, and counties to form the modern "City of New York," surrounding the Upper New York Bay with five constituent boroughs. The borough continues, however, to maintain a distinct culture. Many Brooklyn neighborhoods are ethnic enclaves. Brooklyn's official motto, displayed on the Borough seal and flag, is Eendraght Maeckt Maght which translates from early modern Dutch as "Unity makes strength".
In the first decades of the 21st century, Brooklyn has experienced a renaissance as an avant garde destination for hipsters,^[5] with concomitant gentrification, dramatic house price increases, and a decrease in housing affordability.^[6] Since 2010, Brooklyn has evolved into a thriving hub of entrepreneurship and high technology startup firms,^[7][8] and of postmodern art^[9] and design.^[8]