Should Bedford Stuyvesant but split up again?

Subject: Re: Should Bedford Stuyvesant but split up again?

vaguynny wrote: I was looking at an old map of the Bedford Stuyvesant area and the neighborhood was split up into areas such as Thompkins Park, Bedford Corners and Stuyvesant Heights. I know so many people that when they hear Bed-Stuy the think of negative place of the 1980s. Bed-Stuy is a rather new name that started in the mid 1950s. Could a name change be good for the neighborhood what do you think?

Methinks better schools and services for the poor would be better for the neighborhood.

Changing the name won't make people who already live here call it by a different name, so it won't help much. Unless your goal is to deceive outsiders?

vaguynny wrote: I saw in the Times a house on Green and Bedford Ave and they are calling that East Clinton Hill

East Clinton Hill, that's funny. Real-estate agents are shameless whores who will do anything to move a property and make it attractive, but that's ridiculous. Clinton Hill is an historic neighborhood with very fixed boundaries.

I live in Wallabout, which is nice and quiet (for the moment) and just fine, but people often ask me if I live in Clinton Hill. Not on this side of Park Ave., but like I said, it's nice and quiet, and just fine.

We'll see once the huge development goes up on the old Navy Brig site on Clermont...

I think there is some confusion being revealed about what, in recent years, has been considered part of Harlem. Manhattan Valley is south of 96th Street, and Morningside Heights has been so called for decades. Your point might be stronger if you had mentioned Hamilton Heights, Mount Morris Park, or East Harlem. But I think the gist of what you are suggesting really does confirm that this is more a realtor driven ploy to raise comfort level of outsiders with a new neighborhood, not an indigenous (in the non-abroginal meaning of the word!) movement to differentiate a particular subsection. I don't mean to presume, but I gather the original poster probably isn't a long-time resident of Bed-Stuy. And while I would fight to the, uh, last cup of fair trade coffee for any resident to seek to improve or change their home, I would think the renaming would be the last on any newer resident's list. It is kinda presumptious, no?

Putnam Denizen, Clinton Hill is not a newly minted subneighborhood, it dates from the 1840s, though from old Brookyn Eagle articles it was sometimes only called The Hill. :?

Hi Putnam Denizen, I posted the Clinton Hill note yesterday. I'd heard some other people relate what you said above too. You can find references to Clinton Hill in old Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspapers from the 19th century. The archive is online. It's pretty cool, you can look up your old relatives if they lived here in the 19th century, you house address etc. - often with your address you get obituaries for people who died in your house (how appropriate for Halloween).

I even saw a reference to a "Clinton Hill Social" that was held in January of 1877 on Adelphi Street (which is now considered Fort Greene, so go figure), so the name's been out there for a while.
In the archives of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, I've also seen some old references to "the Hill", as well as 19th century ads for houses to let in the neighborhood of "Clinton" on "the Hill". - My guess is that the original name for the neighborhood fell out of common use in the mid last century as demographics changed, and the name was revived in the late 70s and the 80s when the landmarking push and final approval took place.

Its kind of hard to tell with all of the buildings, but each of the heights areas are higher than surrounding land. Brooklyn Heights overlooks the water and rises from the area we know as DUMBO. Crown Heights is higher than Bed-Stuy with a slight incline that increases as you move south towards EP. Same thing with Prospect Heights, although the hill is a lot less pronounced until you get to area that is now the park behing GAP.
You have to use your imagination and thing about the land before there were any houses.

Well, here are a few with which I am familiar.

Brooklyn Heights is very clearly up on a high bluff relative to the waterfront that was the key means of shipping, ferries from/to Manhattan and later the Bridge(s), so that one's pretty obvious.

Cobble Hill was a high promontory that was originally used as a defense point against the invading British in the Battle of Brooklyn, but when they took the hill they opted to level it so it would not be used again, and carted all that soil over to create landfill in other waterfront areas like parts of Red Hook.

But I prefer to call it by it's old Dutch name, Ponkiesburg. (hah)

Greenwood Heights, that one's easy. Very high up, great views from the cemetery.

Prospect Heights appears to benefit from the same actual topographical slope that Park Slope does, with the park and Prospect Heights at the top.

Crown Heights seems to have been historically named ages ago before the age of the modern (spin-artist) real estate broker, so I am guessing there is probably legitimate cause for that name. Hm. Yeah, I now recall a very pronounced slope running down from Eastern Parkway southward toward Empire, so yeah, makes sense.

Stuyvesant Heights? No idea if there's a high point there, or if it's just a name. Perhaps just the same top that Crown Heights rests upon? It seems to have been around for a long time. Anyone know?

And I have seen people recently trying to put out the name "Bedford Heights," appearing to borrow the grandeur of the naming of other side of Bed Stuy for the better perception of their own neighborhood. Please prove me wrong on that one, but that just comes off as cheesy broker tactics or neighborhood resident opportunism, fabricating a name to add cachet. Is there actually any historical basis for that, or is it just people and brokers in that area seeking the same luxe-sounding name treatment as the other side of Bed Stuy?

And am I dreaming, or did I actually see someone coin the term "Greenpoint Heights" the other day. Seriously. Hah, yes, here it is:
http://curbed.com/archives/2007/11/01/car_toastathon_marathon_greenpoint_action_edition.php

What else is out there?

Hah..

Best Of.

No Kurdish, please.

I'd need to check again to be sure, but if I recall correctly, the WPA guide to New York City, published in 1939, and the definitive reference on NYC from that time describes separate neighborhoods of Bedford and Stuyvesant Heights. Of course, that doesn't mean that people in the area didn't refer to it as "Bed-Stuy" at that time. They have a copy of the guide at the GAP library. If anyone's going to be there in the next few days, can you check it?