Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is a haven for art, music, shopping and fine dining.
By: Ilene Dube
Growing up in Brooklyn, I knew much of the borough like the back of my hand. I would ride my bicycle to Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Prospect Park and along the Ocean Parkway bridal path to Coney Island and Brighton Beach.
One place we never biked to, though, was Williamsburg back in the ’60s and ’70s, it had a derelict reputation, a section of the borough where crime, drug abuse and violence ran rampant. From my Kensington neighborhood (these days known as the fashionable Prospect Park South), you’d only go so far riding a bike on Bedford Avenue.
Today, Bedford Avenue takes you to one of the hippest neighborhoods in New York. Williamsburg has superseded Manhattan as the place to hear live bands and new music. Abandoned manufacturing facilities have become venues for music, theater and performance art. In the late 1970s, low rents enabled artists to move in, opening studios and galleries here.
Grand Street is the main thoroughfare for eating, drinking and listening to music; Williamsburg’s Commodore Theater has hosted the Brooklyn International Film Festival; and McCarren Park offers a greenmarket in the summer months. According to one article in The Washington Post (yes, Williamsburg even attracts tourists from the nation’s capital), Manhattanites seeking cutting-edge style shop "the ‘Burg’s" trendy shops. In fact, no longer is Williamsburg the art community it became known as at the end of the 20th century it’s fully gentrified, with luxury condominiums towering over the remaining row houses. Stroller-pushing parents have taken over the streets, and true Bohemians are moving to neighboring Bushwick (the "new Williamsburg," according to an article in The New York Times) and Red Hook.
Recently, the Arts Council of Princeton offered a bus tour to Williamsburg to visit artists in their studios and several new galleries. On a bitterly cold day, fashionably dressed Brooklynites could be seen walking the streets, shopping in artsy stores and dining in upscale restaurants. You know the neighborhood-as-arts-community is "over" when you see pet boutiques, said tour leader Eva Mantell.
Graffiti is everywhere, but this is graffiti as art form, not vandalism. In some instances, it is apparent building owners have commissioned the graffiti.
From its beginnings, Williamsburg’s population has been diverse. Incorporated as the Village of Williamsburgh in 1827, proximity to the East River meant raw goods could be shipped in, manufactured in factories, then shipped out as product. German immigrants built shipyards, and sugar processing refineries and breweries proliferated think Schaefer, Rheingold and Schlitz. By 1855, Williamsburg was a wealthy business district and Cornelius Vanderbuilt lived in a waterfront mansion here. Corning Glass, Standard Oil and Pfizer Pharmaceutical started their operations in Williamsburg, and it became the home of Pratt Institute, where many of the world’s leading architects and artists were schooled.
In 1903, the Williamsburg Bridge opened, connecting Williamsburg to Manhattan. That bridge, an alternative to the already overcrowded Brooklyn Bridge, was designed to carry both rail and vehicular traffic. It displaced many residents and landmarks, and workers lost their lives during its construction. Upwardly mobile Manhattanites, fleeing tenements, settled in Williamsburg, and Williamsburg became the most densely populated neighborhood in New York.
The classic novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith details the struggle against poverty in Williamsburg during the beginning of the 20th century. Overcrowding grew worse after World War II, as many Europeans, Hispanics (from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic) and Hasidic Jews settled where they could afford the rent.
In 1957, Robert Moses sealed the neighborhood’s fate when he ran the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway right through its heart, leading to a decline in property values. And so it was until the end of the 1970s, when artists rediscovered Williamsburg. As SoHo and other New York neighborhoods grew more expensive, this enclave just one subway stop from Manhattan grew more and more popular. Today, the ethnic mix includes Asians and Mexicans.
History aside, our first visit was to the Jane Fine Studio, where the Harvard-educated artist talked about her paint pouring and dripping technique. After creating paint patterns on birch panels, she creates illustrations with an archival Sharpie-like pen. Many of the paintings make a statement about the Iraq War and can be seen at the Pierogi Gallery on North 9th Street.
Next we visited the studio of Charleston, S.C., native Jay Davis, who applies 50 or more coats of acrylic paint to his vinyl canvases. One painting of the view through a paned window included some of the mundane objects of his life on the grilles, gaining beauty by their position and through the painting method.
Aron Namenwirth’s paintings are largely inspired by those of Chuck Close, and are instantly reminiscent of that artist. Mr. Namenwirth works by blowing up images with PhotoShop so that the pixels become large squares. He painstakingly tapes his canvases to create squares for paint. Some of these are abstractions, but one painting was identifiable as George W. Bush.
Susanna Harwood Rubin, a yoga teacher, uses the human body in yogic poses in her drawings and sculptural cutouts. These are pieced together in a way that ultimately looks like snowflakes.
As we walked along the streets, passing upscale bagel shops and the Roebling Café, one of the tour-goers asked where the Hasidic Jews lived.
The Satmar Hasidim live in South Williamsburg, and we didn’t see them until our bus driver took an accidental detour. They were easily recognizable by the large cylindrical fur hats the men wore, brushed smoothly in a circle around their heads. (Called a streimel, these hats cost several thousand dollars and were originally designed to hide a yarmulke banned in Russia; for an interesting Web site about different hats of the Hasidim with photo illustrations, see http://wernercohn.com/hats.html.) They were undoubtedly warm on this frigid day, but must be unbearably hot in the summer. The men’s colorful attire included black satiny coats, white tights and what looked like large black ballet shoes.
On the trip back to New Jersey, as the bare limbs of trees cast moving shadows over the bus, I had a déjà vu of one of the very first times I visited Princeton. It was shortly after I graduated from college and had a one-day job through a temp agency to deliver a package to Princeton. On that day more than 30 years ago, I’d never have dreamed I’d be returning to Brooklyn on a tour bus.
If you go: For a gallery guide to Williamsburg, visit www.freewilliamsburg.com
for places to dine, see www.billburg.com.
For a printable map of Williamsburg galleries: www.williamsburggalleryassociation.com