The Eternal Newcomer

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Brooklyn's Bastardization

I am used to being a newcomer. I was a newcomer in France when my family moved me there as a child. Later, I was a newcomer when I came to the States as a teenager. Twenty years ago, I became a newcomer one more time when my husband and I bought a hundred year old brownstone in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. After so many beginnings in my life, I have learned to assimilate.
To our Brooklyn Italian neighbors, we were intruders into their tight knit neighborhood. It did not seem to matter after five years or after even ten years that we were raising a family here and that we had no intentions of moving, we were the newcomers. But as they saw us week-end after week-end, faithfully restoring our old house to its original loveliness, our neighbors opened up to us. Tentatively at first, they would give us some information about the Crupi Family who had lived in our brownstone for decades. Then they included us in their discussions as they gathered in little groups at the corner. Now, after twenty years, we are privy to our block’s gossip. In other words, we have been accepted by those who have been here before us. We have assimilated.
The reason why I bring this up is because I have always come to a new place and adapted. I learned to fit in and when I moved on, I left the place unchanged. So if one day, I were to leave my little neighborhood, my house would stand restored, but unaltered. I owe it to the neighborhood, but more importantly, I feel that I need to preserve the house for history’s sake.
Not so with the new “newcomers.” My beautiful brownstone neighborhood is being targeted by developers and by homeowners who want more. Turning brownstones into MacMansions seem to be their agenda. Building up and building back, they don’t seem to mind if they break an uninterrupted line of row houses. They want what they want, and God damn it, they get it. They think history is for dreamers. They want change and their architects have the plans. Makes me sad...and mad. And makes me wonder if anything is sacred in this country.


The Brooklyn I Love