Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood gets its first official historic district, New York’s Landmark Preservation Commission (LPC). announcement this week. The new neighborhood includes a block of 32 townhouses on Linden Street at its intersection with Bushwick Avenue, close to the Gates Avenue subway station.
An elevated subway line came to the Gates stop in 1885, transforming Bushwick from a rural outskirts into a city-bound neighborhood. Bushwick was one of the first New York neighborhoods to be settled by the Dutch, and in 1661 it was one of the first six towns in Brooklyn to be chartered. After the arrival of the subway line, developers built houses in a speculative boom, including those in the new Linden Street Historic District, which were built between 1885 and 1901. The first people who lived in the houses were middle- and lower-class natives of New York. or immigrants from Ireland, England, Scotland, Germany or Australia, depending on the LPC.
An Italian population settled in the block in the 1950s, then people from the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Ecuador, among other nations, immigrant to the region.
The LPC calls the townhouses “remarkably intact” and notes their intricate cornices and terracotta exteriors. The houses were all created by the same developer, but designed by different architects, each of whom rendered the houses according to their tastes. Ultimately, the 32 houses represent a hodgepodge of styles: Greek Revival, Queen Anne, Renaissance Revival and Romanesque Revival. The LDC, however, calls the group a “cohesive” streetscape.
“Bushwick’s rich history is sadly often overlooked,” city council member Jennifer Gutiérrez said in the LDC announcement.
“With so few monuments remaining in Bushwick, lost to fires, gentrification and speculation, it is all the more important that we protect and celebrate those that remain,” she added. “I am delighted that this harmonious streetscape will be recognized as a landmark for generations to come.”
