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Brooklyn |
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Address
City Hall
Brooklyn, NY 10007
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Phone
212-NEW-YORK |
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Brooklyn is the most populous of the five boroughs of New York City with about 2.5 million inhabitants. An independent city prior to 1898, Brooklyn developed out of the small Dutch-founded town of "Breuckelen" on the East River shore of Long Island, named after Breukelen in the Netherlands. Were it still a city, and not a borough, it would be the fourth-largest city in the United States after New York City itself, Los Angeles and Chicago. Despite being part of the City of New York, Brooklyn in character is its own city, as opposed to the Bronx which historically and characteristically could be better described as a northern extension of Manhattan.
The Dutch were the first Europeans to settle in the area that is today Brooklyn, a western part of Long Island then largely inhabited by the Canarsie Native American tribe.
What is today Brooklyn left Dutch hands after the English conquest of New Netherland in 1664, to become a part of the colony of New York.
On August 27, 1776, the Battle of Long Island (also known as the Battle of Brooklyn) was one of the first major engagements fought in the American Revolutionary War. British troops forced Continental troops off the heights near the modern site of Green-Wood Cemetery, Prospect Park, and Grand Army Plaza. The American positions at Brooklyn Heights consequently became untenable and were evacuated a few days later, leaving the British in control of New York Harbor.
The surrounding region was controlled by the British for the duration of the war, and the British military was largely supported by a dominant Loyalist sentiment in Kings County. New York only changed from a British colony to an American state with the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
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 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. 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, only to form the short-lived City of Williamsburgh in 1851.
But the East River shore was growing too fast for the three-year-old infant City of Williamsburgh, which, along with its Town of Bushwick hinterland, was subsumed within a greater City of Brooklyn in 1854.
Taking a thirty-year break from municipal expansionism, this well-situated coastal city established itself as the third-most-populous American city for much of the 19th century. As 'Twin City' to New York, it played a role in national affairs that is only now shadowed by its modern submergence into its old partner/rival.
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.
The City of Brooklyn thrived in the 1890s, with consolidation in Kings County and Greater New York
Enlarge
The City of Brooklyn thrived in the 1890s, with consolidation in Kings County and Greater New York
Toward the end of the 19th century, the City of Brooklyn experienced its final, explosive growth spurt. In the space of a decade, it annexed the Town of New Lots in 1886, the Town of Flatbush, the Town of Gravesend, and 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. The question was now whether it was prepared to engage in the still-grander process of consolidation now developing throughout the region.
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