Canarsie, Brooklyn
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Canarsie is a neighborhood in the eastern portion of the borough of Brooklyn, in New York City, USA. Its name is Algonquin for "fenced land" or "fort." The Indians who made the infamous sale of the island of Manhattan for 24 guilders were from Canarsie (and thus had no right to sell the property of Manhattan in the first place.)
Canarsie was built on swamps by Jamaica Bay. It was a fishing village through the 1800s, until pollution killed the oysters and the edible fish. In the 1920s Italians settled in the area, later joined by Jews. During the 1950s, Canarsie was a kind of byword for mediocrity for elite Manhattanites. Some said all Canarsie had were three "M's" - "mud, mortgages, and malaria."
The neighborhood lies within the former town of Flatlands, one of the five original Dutch towns on Long Island. It is bordered on the east by Fresh Creek and East 108th Street, on the north by the Long Island Rail Road's Bay Ridge Line, on the west by Ralph Avenue and the Paerdegat Basin and on the south by Jamaica Bay.
Canarsie is home to approximately 96,000 people. In the mid-twentieth century, the neighborhood was primarily home to descendants of Southern Italian immigrants. Beginning in the 1970s, Black students from neighborhoods such as East New York and Brownsville were bused into the all- white schools of Canarsie, stirring up racial tensions, a process documented by sociologist Jonathan Rieder in Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn against liberalism. In the mid 1990s, many Italians and Jews left Canarsie and African-Americans rapidly began to replace them. They now form a majority of the neighborhood's population.
At one end of Canarsie is the bay with Canarsie Pier sitting prominently on it and at the other end is mostly commercial warehouses and buildings.
The majority of the structures in Canarsie are one and two family homes, although there are three large public housing developments and a number of small apartment buildings scattered throughout the community.
The neighborhood also has many parks, including a large park commonly referred to as Seaview Park, but officially named Canarsie Beach Park, which is over 100 acres.
The BMT Canarsie Line, on which the "L" train of the New York City Subway runs, terminates in Canarsie, connecting the neighborhood to Manhattan. The "L" train is a local only subway that starts at street level and proceeds above ground and then down into the interconncting tunnels of the New York City Subway. While the connection to Manhattan is direct, the trip between Canarsie's Rockaway Parkway station and Manhattan's Union Square still takes about 45 minutes.
The principal commercial streets are Rockaway Parkway and Flatlands Avenue, however, Ave. L is also fairly commercial. Canarsie is home to two highschools, Canarsie and South Shore and several junior highschools and elementary schools.
| Neighborhoods in the New York City Borough of Brooklyn
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