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City Living: Greenpoint

By Patrick Verel | Special to amNewYork

September 5, 2007

Living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. (amNewYork Photo/Jonathan Scheff / September 5, 2007)

Mowimy po polsku. Walk around Greenpoint enough, and you'll become familiar with this sign -- which means "we speak Polish" -- and is often placed in businesses lining Manhattan or Nassau avenues.

Even though Brooklyn's northernmost neighborhood is practically joined at the hip with Williamsburg, arguably the fastest changing neighborhood in New York, Greenpoint holds on to its Eastern European roots.

It's part of the reason Christopher Olechowski, a member of the Community Board 1's executive committee and chairman of the board's waterfront committee, moved back to the area for good in 1990 after growing up there in the 1950s and later moving around the city.

"It really is centrally located, and there's this diversity that it's built over the years," he said. "It's a very unique community in that way."

Sarah Burke, vice president of sales and marketing for Brooklyn-based The Developers Group, agrees.

"Greenpoint has an amazing feel. It still has an old New York charm to it, which I think is endearing."

Greenpoint is also home to large numbers of middle-class Latinos, Irish and Italians. Its history as a home of industry dates back to the early 19th century, and although there are no traces of the pier that the Civil War battleship USS Monitor launched from in 1862, oil refineries there have left an indelible mark. In 1950, the predecessor of ExxonMobil Corp. spilled 17 million to 30 million gallons into Newtown Creek, and in the years since, a large portion of it has seeped underground and migrated west. In July, state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil to force a comprehensive cleanup of the spill, which is centered in the industrial section.

Oddly enough, the cleanup may be helped by the recent decision by the city to rezone 180 acres of Greenpoint and Williamsburg to allow for waterfront housing. Changes have already been seen on the Williamsburg border, and Olechowski said newer residents are lending their voices.

"McCarren Park is a great example; it used to have all these low warehouses around it," he said. "Now it looks like Fifth Avenue, with these towers along side it."

So as more industrial space is converted into housing and the forces of gentrification exert themselves, Mowimy po polsku signs are sort of a canary in the coal mine that is an old world-style community.

Olechowski cites the Polish National Home, which hosts rock shows at its club, Warsaw, as an example of how he hopes old-time residents can co-exist with newcomers.

"Will there be a few churches and a few stores, which are really just the last vestiges, or will there be a community that will have a foothold and be part of the change," he asked. "That all depends on whether the community can reevaluate itself and say 'We're never going to be what we were in the past, with all the transition.'"

The Basics

Find it

Greenpoint is bounded by Newtown Creek to the north and east, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and North 12th Street to the south, and the East River to the west.

Transportation

Subway: G, Greenpoint Avenue, Nassau Avenue
Bus: B24, B43, B48, B61

Crime

The 94th Precinct has had no murders, four rapes and 93 robberies this year, compared to one murder, one rape and 93 robberies at this time last year. There was a total of one murder, three rapes and 146 robberies last year.