Gowanus, Brooklyn

Encyclopedia : G : GO : GOW : Gowanus, Brooklyn

Gowanus is a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, USA, situated roughly between Red Hook and Carroll Gardens on the west and Park Slope on the East. The neighborhood is dwarfed by the Smith-Ninth Street subway station and the Gowanus Expressway, both crossing the Gowanus Canal. The northern boundary of the neighborhood is Carroll street, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to the south and west, and the Gowanus Canal to the east.

In 1636, Gowanus Bay was the site of the first settlement by Dutch farmers in what is now Brooklyn.

In 1776, American troops retreating from the British during the Battle of Brooklyn, crossed the Gowanus Creek, located in Gowanus.

In the late 19th and early 20th century the area was largely home to immigrants, then arrviving from Ireland, Italy and Germany. The area consists of mostly frame housing in contrast to the brownstone homes found in neighboring Park Slope.

The Gowanus area has been a center of industrial activity since the 1970's, although the decline of shipping at the port of Red Hook and of manufacturing in this and other areas of New York City in the late 20th century have reduced the vibrancy of industry in Gowanus. The area's residential prospects have been constrained by city zoning decisions, which tended to allow a broad range of loud and dirty industrial and commercial use groups, and by unattractive infrastructure in the area, such as the Sanitation Department facility located on 2nd Avenue at 11th Street, the elevated MTA line running along 9th street, and the Hamilton Avenue Expressway. To make way for the 9th Street train stations, the Hamilton Avenue Expressway, and for redevelopment that took place in the 1950s, hundreds of homes were razed. In addition, much of the neighborhood's land and the water of the Gowanus Canal have been severely polluted over decades of heavy industrial use.

The neighborhood of Gowanus is not widely known, perhaps because many of the relatively few residents of Gowanus identify themselves as living in other areas that border it. For example, Lower Slope is sometimes used for the areas adjacent to the western border of Park Slope, which are technically part of Gowanus. In the past decade, some "hipster" residents of this area have attempted to reclaim the Gowanus name, either in full or through the newly coined "G-Slope."

Links:

[link]Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation

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