Even Assemblyman Lentol lives in the house where he was raised. David Reiss, who is running for City Council, was canvassing the area one day when he met a man who had “been here for 71 years.” Reiss, who hoped to learn more about the neighborhood, inquired, “You’ve been in Greenpoint for 71 years?” “No,” the man replied, “I’ve been in this house for 71 years.” Change comes slowly to the north tip of Brooklyn.
![david reiss brooklyn zoning david reiss brooklyn zoning](https://www.viaggidiarchitettura.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/David-Adjaye-.-Sugar-Hill-affordable-housing-.-NYC-1.jpg)
Greenpoint is an area where people traditionally have been quite strongly rooted. Williamsburg, most obviously, is changing, but so are the other neighborhoods. Assemblyman Joseph Lentol, who represents the 50th District, boasts that “I probably have the most diverse district in the state.” It is diverse and it is changing. There are new Asian immigrants as well as descendents of Irish and German immigrants. Polish families patronize the local stores and restaurants where English is unnecessary Italians, Latinos, and African Americans raise their families in neighborhoods they preserved when no one else was interested. The interlaced neighborhoods of Greenpoint, Williamsburg, and Bushwick house a precarious balance of Hasidic Jews, working artists, trend watchers, and real estate agents. Stop a random person on the street and ask them what is worth more than money, what would they fight and die to protect. They can be passionate to the point of zealotry over art, community, family, or religion. “The people” in North Brooklyn are, with the possible exception of a few hipsters hot off the L train, not wealthy. Shout it out: We will not let our houses burn! I love unambiguous images because reality is so messy. It’s a great story, and not just because “the people” actually won but also because they saved a Firehouse. After protestors took over the Firehouse, the city relented and the Barry Street Firehouse came to be known as the People’s Firehouse. In 1975 Adam Venesky led a protest against the closing of Greenpoint’s Barry Street Firehouse.
#DAVID REISS BROOKLYN ZONING FULL#
North Brooklyn is full of people with meager to moderate resources fighting to save a way of life. My 3–year–old son just can’t accept that he is not Polish. We’re all running from one thing and trying to grab something else. North Brooklyn is a mixed-up place right now. Worse yet, I became a landlord-a word I couldn’t say without spitting until my mid-20s. A child of rent control, I was reared in a small Manhattan apartment with a trapeze in the living room. I paid my rent dutifully and haunted hardware stores for mousetraps. And we could afford the rent without having to diaper the baby in old copies of the New York Times.įor a few years, I was woken up every two hours by garbage trucks. The sun was brighter, the trees remaining after the unfortunate Beetle incident were majestic in their isolation.
![david reiss brooklyn zoning david reiss brooklyn zoning](https://ccl.yale.edu/sites/default/files/040111-corplaw-560.jpg)
Luckily Greenpoint had acquired a discrete charm. Like many other trust fund-deficient Brooklynites, I was moving north. By September I was tripping over mice in my new Greenpoint apartment. The woman I rented from-who, oddly enough, was eight months pregnant-told me she was being threatened by the landlord. Being eight months pregnant, I didn’t fight it. During the excessively hot summer of 1997, I was evicted from my illegal loft in Williamsburg.