Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of the five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located at the westernmost end of Long Island and formerly an independent city, Brooklyn shares a land border with the borough and county of Queens. It has several bridge and tunnel connections to the borough of Manhattan, across the East River, including the architecturally significant Brooklyn Bridge, and is connected to Staten Island by the Verrazzano–Narrows Bridge.
The borough, as Kings County, at, is the second most densely populated county in the U.S. after Manhattan, and the most populous county in the state, as of 2022. In the 2020 United States census, the borough had a population of 2,736,074. Had Brooklyn remained an independent city on Long Island, it would now be the fourth most populous American city after the rest of New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. With a land area of and a water area of, Kings County, one of the twelve original counties established under British rule in 1683 in the then-province of New York, is the state of New York's fourth-smallest county by land area and third smallest by total area.
Brooklyn, named after the Dutch town of Breukelen in the Netherlands, was founded by the Dutch in the 17thcentury and grew into a busy port city on New York Harbor by the 19thcentury. On January1, 1898, after a long political campaign and public-relations battle during the 1890s and despite opposition from Brooklyn residents, Brooklyn was consolidated and annexed, along with other areas, to form the current five-borough structure of New York City in accordance with the new municipal charter of Greater New York. The borough continues to maintain a distinct culture. Many Brooklyn neighborhoods are ethnic enclaves. With Jews forming around a fifth of its population, the borough has been described as one of the main global hubs for Jewish culture. 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'.
Educational institutions in Brooklyn include the City University of New York's Brooklyn College, Medgar Evers College, and College of Technology, as well as Pratt Institute, Long Island University, and the New York University Tandon School of Engineering. In sports, basketball's Brooklyn Nets, and New York Liberty play at the Barclays Center. In the first decades of the 21stcentury, Brooklyn has experienced a renaissance as a destination for hipsters, with associated gentrification, dramatic house-price increases, and a decrease in housing affordability. Some new developments are now required to include affordable housing units. Since the 2010s, parts of Brooklyn have evolved into a hub for entrepreneurship, high-technology startup firms, postmodern art, and design.
Toponymy
The name Brooklyn is derived from the original Dutch town of Breukelen. The oldest mention of the settlement in the Netherlands is in a charter of 67 by Holy Roman Emperor Otto I as Broecklede. This form is made up of the words broeck, meaning bog or marshland, and lede, meaning small water stream, specifically in peat areas. Breuckelen on the American continent was established in 1646, and the name first appeared in print in 1663.Over the past two millennia, the name of the ancient town in Holland has been Bracola, Broccke, Brocckede, Broiclede, Brocklandia, Broekclen, Broikelen, Breuckelen, and finally Breukelen. The New Amsterdam settlement of Breuckelen also went through many spelling variations, including Breucklyn, Breuckland, Brucklyn, Broucklyn, Brookland, Brockland, Brocklin, and Brookline/Brook-line. There have been so many variations of the name that its origin has been debated; some have claimed breuckelen means "broken land". The current name, however, is the one that best reflects its meaning.
The county's name, Kings County, was named after King Charles II of England, who ruled from 1660 to 1685.
History
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 sizeable city in the 19th century and was consolidated in 1898 with New York City, 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
New Netherland
The Dutch were the first Europeans to settle Long Island's western edge, which was then largely inhabited by the Lenape, an Algonquian-speaking American Indian tribe often referred to in European documents by a variation of the place name "Canarsie". Bands were associated with place names, but the colonists thought their names represented different tribes. The Breuckelen settlement was named after Breukelen in the Netherlands; it was part of New Netherland. The Dutch West India Company lost little time in chartering the six original parishes :- Gravesend: in 1645, settled under Dutch patent by English followers of Anabaptist Deborah Moody, named for 's-Gravenzande, Netherlands, or Gravesend, England;
- Brooklyn Heights: chartered as Breuckelen in 1646, after the town now spelled Breukelen, Netherlands. Breuckelen was along Fulton Street between Hoyt Street and Smith Street. Brooklyn Heights, or Clover Hill, is where the village of Brooklyn was founded in 1816;
- Flatlands: chartered as Nieuw Amersfoort in 1647;
- Flatbush: chartered as Midwout in 1652;
- Nieuw Utrecht in 1652, named after the city of Utrecht, Netherlands; and
- Bushwick: chartered as Boswijck in 1661.
Province of New York
Present-day Brooklyn left Dutch hands after the English conquest of New Netherland in 1664, which sparked the Second Anglo-Dutch War. New Netherland was taken in a naval action, and the English renamed the new capture for their naval commander, James, Duke of York, brother of the then monarch King Charles II and future king himself as King James II. Brooklyn became a part of the West Riding of York Shire in the Province of New York, one of the Middle Colonies in England's North American colonies.On November 1, 1683, Kings County was partitioned from the West Riding of York Shire, containing the six old Dutch towns on southwestern Long Island, as one of the "original twelve counties". 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 a 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 slaves among the population in the "Original Thirteen Colonies" along the Atlantic Ocean eastern coast of North America.
Revolutionary War
On August 27, 1776, the Battle of Long Island was fought, the first major engagement fought in the American Revolutionary War after independence was declared, and the largest of the entire conflict. British troops forced the Continental Army under George Washington off the heights near the modern sites of Green-Wood Cemetery, Prospect Park, and Grand Army Plaza.Washington, viewing particularly fierce fighting at the Gowanus Creek and Old Stone House from atop a hill near the west end of present-day Atlantic Avenue, was reported to have emotionally exclaimed: "What brave men I must this day lose!".
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.
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 British-held North America for the remainder of the conflict. The Patriot residents largely fled or changed their political sentiments, and afterward 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—Patriot intelligence network, headed by Washington himself.
The British set up a system of prison ships off the coast of Brooklyn in Wallabout Bay. More American prisoners of war died on these prison ships than were killed in action on all the battlefield engagements of the war combined. One result of the Treaty of Paris in 1783 was the evacuation of the British from New York City, which was celebrated by New Yorkers into the 20th century.
Post-independence era
Urbanization
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 during the 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 1816. 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 a parallel development, the Town of Bushwick, 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 the 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 Williamsburg; it, along with its Town of Bushwick hinterland, was subsumed within a greater City of Brooklyn in 1855, subsequently dropping the 'h' from its name.
By 1841, with the appearance of 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. It later became the most popular and highest circulation afternoon paper in America. The publisher changed to L. Van Anden on April 19, 1842, and the paper was renamed The Brooklyn Daily Eagle and Kings County Democrat on June 1, 1846. On May 14, 1849, the name was shortened to The Brooklyn Daily Eagle; on September 5, 1938, it was further shortened to Brooklyn Eagle. 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 number of people living in Brooklyn grew rapidly early in the 19th century. There were 4,402 by 1810, 7,175 in 1820 and 15,396 by 1830. The city's population was 25,000 in 1834, but the police department comprised only 12 men on the day shift and another 12 on the night shift. Every time a rash of burglaries broke out, officials blamed burglars 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.