Brooklyn is in perpetual bloom. As old institutions left the borough, new establishments have cropped up to stake their claim in the best borough ever. The chapter covering Kings County between 1945 and 2015 could be characterized by immense growth in general, but we would be remiss to exclude new institutions and the rebirth of a few old ones. Here are some of our favorite new arrivals over the last 70 years.
Barclays Center and the Nets
Brooklyn waited decades since the Dodgers took the last trolley west, but in 2012, we got a new professional sports team and an arena to boot. The massive complex plopped down on top of an old rail yard ruffled some residents’ feathers, but there is no denying the entertainment Mecca is an indelible part of Brooklyn today.
Junior’s
It’s not as senior as you think. One of Brooklyn’s favorite restaurants — reputed to serve the best cheesecake in New York — opened its doors five years after the Bay News started printing in 1945. Since then, thousands of Brooklynites (and tourists) have passed through Junior’s for a gut-busting burger and a slice of its famed dessert.
The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge
It was the most divisive connector in Brooklyn when it was being built in the 1960s. Maligned by Bay Ridgites who lost hundreds of homes and businesses to eminent domain, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, which connects Bay Ridge and Staten Island, is now an icon of Southern Brooklyn loved by just about everyone (despite the span’s dizzying $16 toll). As trolleys were on their way out, city planners (i.e. Robert Moses) were laying bets on the next big transportation revolution, and they were putting all their money on cars. At its completion in 1964, the 13,700-foot span was the longest suspension bridge in the world.
A development boom
When the first Bay News rolled off the presses in 1945, the borough’s tallest building was the 512-foot Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower in Fort Greene. And it reigned supreme until 2010, when The Brooklyner topped off at 515 feet. Since then, half a dozen taller towers have cropped up in Downtown alone — and the Williamsburg and Greenpoint waterfronts have undergone an awkward growth spurt as condos have sprouted in the one-time hipster havens.
Clean-up cash
Brooklyn’s manufacturing heyday left us with more than a collective sense of nostalgia — we’re talking toxic sludge, and lots of it. But a 1980 federal law nicknamed the “Superfund” created a process for remediating toxic sites using money from polluters’ pockets. Now the Feds are planning to spend $500 million to clean up the fetid Gowanus Canal — known to many as Brooklyn’s nautical purgatory — starting in 2017, and $16 million is expected to flow into Newtown Creek, the seriously sludgy waterway separating Greenpoint from the northern hinterland knows as Queens. Now pols are pushing to designate the former Southwest Brooklyn Incinerator as a Superfund site. Make it rain, Uncle Sam.
