This is a picture of the Court Street and Atlantic Avenue intersection in 1942, now the site of a large Trader Joe’s that once was a bank.
Walking along Court Street from the Borough Hall Station has become a part of my routine over the past few weeks. On my commute home, I have become familiar with this street as I am often found walking there to meet my mom at her job. I have become familiar with transferring to the express 4 train at 59th street and staying on until Borough Hall. My routine to meet my mom has a common rhythm to it. I get off the train, walk up the stairs and down Court Street until I reach Kane street. On the walk to Kane street, my midpoint, I pass an array of stores with varying histories. Such as the large Trader Joe’s that used to be a bank and the United Artist’s movie theater that charges too much for a ticket. So, naturally, I wondered what Court Street was like before my family became familiar with it. I wondered why the rent, as business owners and residents have often told me, is extremely high. So, I thought to look into this by searching factors that would influence the people of a neighborhood to flock to and raise their families in an area such as this. Factors such as proximity to “the city,” standard and value of education and nearby zoned schools, crime levels, income, and types of businesses would impact the choice to live in Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill.
Seeing that the bakery where Rafa and I conducted our interview was opened in 1948, after changing from a toy store to a bakery, I looked into conditions of rent and age of people living in this area a few years before this. Based off of what we were told by the manager, the neighborhood was once a Sicilian Italian enclave of immigrants. Using this informati
on, I connected this to information found in a 1943 Profile of the South Brooklyn, Brooklyn Area found on www.urbanresearch.org as part of the CUNY graduate center. The map, concentrating on the area surrounding Court Street, has many people under age 30 with an expenditure under $1,800. Many of the people in this area at this time were immigrants that may not be able to afford to pay high rent. I then compared this to the income, total returns, and taxes in 1998.
Assuming that the rent has increased drastically, one can assume that people living in this area are able to afford it. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be living there anymore if the resident can’t afford the rent. Using www.infoshare.org, I was able to create an area profile under different conditions. The total returns on 1998 personal income in this community, district 6, was 50% with the total adjusted gross income of 2,170,203, 50.7%. Upon seeing this, I wanted to look into the social reasons as to why many see this neighborhood as desirable, as an ideal place to rai
se a family. Using this same website, I constructed a profile for crime in district 6. Using a crime trend format, I’ve noticed that crime has dropped over the span of years from 1985 to 2001. The total reported felonies have decreased from 7.5% to 2.1% and the total arrests from 25.8% to 20.8%. I realized that misdemeanors may have had an impact on this number and found that value to also decrease, though slightly, from 23.
6% to 22.4%. I also constructed a few more area profiles on education, businesses, and public assistance such as Medicaid. The business profiles showed the number of establishments separated by the number of employees and the number of food stores and eating and drinking places. The majority of establishments, 63.5%, employ 1-4 people. But, this does not tell us where these employees reside. So, you cannot tell if many of the people that live in this neighborhood act
ually work here. The total number of food stores in this area is 130, 34.9% of the stores here. Also, there are 20 retail bakeries, two notable bakeries being Court Pastry Shop and Caputo’s Bakery. Next, I looked into the area profile of people receiving public assistance, with 9.7% on Medicaid and 14.5% receiving some form of public assistance. This tells us that some of the people living in this area receive public assistance and do not have as high
incomes as their neighbors. Lastly, the area report of education revealed why many choose to remain in this neighborhood to raise their children. The teachers in the public schools are, on average, 27.7% licensed and permanently assigned to their schools. Many of the teachers do not take days off, only 3.3% of them did from 1999-2000. The ethnicity of st
udents is somewhat balanced between White students, 11.6%, and 13.5% Black students. The average number of days that students have attended school has increased over the three-year timespan. These numbers seem low, this may mean that the sampling pool was not large.
Court Street has a wide history that entices me and now that I’ve looked into these social factors, I will never experience my commute in the same way. I will be able to walk past Court Street Bakery and Trader Joe’s while knowing essential information about the area.
