It is known for its high population ofRussian-speaking immigrants, and as a summer destination for New York City residents due to its beaches along the Atlantic Ocean and its proximity to the amusement parks in Coney Island.
Brighton Beach is included in an area from Sheepshead Bay to Sea Gate that was purchased from the Native Americans in 1645 for a gun, a blanket and a kettle.[7]
Brighton Beach was located on sandy terrain, and before development in the 1860s, had mostly farms. The area was part of the "Middle Division" of the town ofGravesend, which was the sole English settlement out of the original six towns inKings County. By the mid-18th century, thirty-nine lots in the division had been distributed to the descendants of English colonists.[8]
In 1868,William A. Engeman built a resort in the area.[9] The resort was given the name "Brighton Beach" in 1878 byHenry C. Murphy and a group of businessmen, who chose the name as an allusion to the English resort city ofBrighton.[10][11] With the help of Gravesend's surveyorWilliam Stillwell, Engeman acquired all 39 lots for the relatively low cost of $20,000.[12][13]: 38 Mostly patronized by the upper middle class, this 460-by-210-foot (140 by 64 m) hotel close to the then-rundown western Coney Island had rooms for up to 5,000 guests nightly and served meals for up to 20,000 people daily.[8] The 400-foot (120 m), double-decker Brighton Beach Bathing Pavilion was also built nearby and opened in 1878, with the capacity for 1,200 bathers.[11][13]: 38 [14] "Hotel Brighton", also known as the "Brighton Beach Hotel", was situated on the beach at what is now the foot ofConey Island Avenue.[9] TheBrooklyn, Flatbush, and Coney Island Railway, the predecessor to theNew York City Subway's present-dayBrighton Line, opened on July 2, 1878, and provided access to the hotel.[13]: 38 [15][16]
Adjacent to the hotel, Engeman built theBrighton Beach Race Course forthoroughbredhorse racing.[9] In December 1887, an extremely high tide washed over the area, creating a new, temporary connection between Sheepshead Bay and the ocean. Wrote theBrooklyn Daily Eagle: "Unless [Engeman] is very lucky the next races on the Brighton Beach track will be conducted by the white crested horses ofNeptune."[17]
After that extremely high tide, and a decade ofbeach erosion, the Brighton Beach Hotel, by then owned by the Railway, faced the possibility of being "undermined and carried away."[18][19] A "highly ingenious and novel" plan to elevate and move the entire building was begun by railway Superintendent J.L. Morrow and Secretary E.L. Langford. It was accomplished by lifting the entire estimated 5000-ton 460 by 150 feet (140 m × 46 m) hotel on 13 hydraulic jacks, raising the building above its plot, and then laying 24 lines of railroad track – a mile and a half long altogether – under it; then the building temporarily on 112 railroad "platform cars" (flat cars) was pulled by six steamlocomotives and relocated another 495 feet inland.[18] This careful engineering (by B.C. Miller) made the move successful; it began on April 2, 1888, and continued for nine days, and was the largest building relocation of the 19th century.[20]
Anton Seidl and theMetropolitan Opera brought their popular interpretations ofWagner to the Brighton Beach Music Hall, whereJohn Philip Sousa was in residence, and the New Brighton Theater was a hotspot for vaudeville. Visitors for tea atReisenweber's Brighton Beach Casino would be served by Japanese waitresses in full costume. At an enormous private club, the Brighton Beach Baths, members could swim, access a private beach, and playhandball,mah-jongg, and cards.[8]
The village, along with the rest of Gravesend, was annexed into the 31st Ward of theCity of Brooklyn in 1894.[21]
In 1905, Brighton Beach Park opened its own area of amusements, called Brighton Pike. Brighton Pike offered a boardwalk, games, live entertainment (including theMiller Brothers' wild-west show:101 Ranch), and a huge steel roller coaster. In May 1919, most of the park was burned down, including the roller coaster.[8][6] The beach remained popular.[11]
Brighton Beach was re-developed as a fairly dense residential community with the final rebuilding of the Brighton Beach railway torapid transit standards, becoming theBrooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT)'s Brighton Line, which opened as a subway line in August 1920 (the line is now served by theNew York City Subway'sB and Q services). The subway line within the neighborhood is above ground on an elevated structure. The opening of the BMT Brighton Line had conflicting consequences: although it made Brighton Beach viable as a year-round community, it was now much more feasible for visitors to return home in the evening rather than spend the night. This led to the closure of the Brighton Beach Hotel in 1924.[8]
The years just before and following theGreat Depression brought with them a neighborhood consisting mostly of first- and second-generation Jewish-Americans and, later,Holocaustconcentration camp survivors.[22][23] Of the estimated 55,000 Holocaust survivors living in New York City as of 2011, most live in Brighton Beach.[24] To meet the bursting cultural demands, the New Brighton Theater converted itself to the States' first Yiddish theater in 1919.[8][22]
Today, Brighton Beach has many synagogues and Jewish institutions, including aChabad center,[25] aMikvah and a Jewish day school called Mazel.[26]
The "Millennium Theater", now the "Master Theater" and NetCost supermarket
AfterWorld War II, the quality of life in Brighton Beach decreased significantly as the poverty rate and the ratio of older residents to younger residents increased; this was primarily effectuated by the postwar codification ofrent regulation in New York, which incentivized middle-aged residents and retirees (particularly the aforementioned first- and second-generation Jewish-American residents, many of whom had eschewed homeownership in favor of investing their savings in family businesses or postsecondary educations for their children) to retain their units in the prewar six-story semi-fireproof elevator apartment houses that lined Brightwater Court and other nearby thoroughfares for decades.[11] During the1970s fiscal crisis, the exodus of government workers and other middle class residents to suburban areas accelerated; accordingly, many of Brighton Beach's freestanding houses and bungalows were subdivided intosingle room occupancy residences for the poor, the elderly and the mentally ill. Brighton Beach suffered from arson as much as it did from constant drug trades.[11] During the summer, however, people from all around the city continued to flock to Brighton Beach's beach next to the Atlantic Ocean.[11]
In the mid-1970s, Brighton Beach became a popular place to settle forSoviet immigrants, mostlyAshkenazi Jews fromRussia andUkraine.[11] So many Soviet Jews immigrated to Brighton Beach that the area became known as "LittleOdessa" (after the Ukrainian city on theBlack Sea with a significant Jewish population in the first half of 20th century).[11]
The 1991collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent significant changes in the social and economic circumstances of post-Soviet states led thousands of former Soviet citizens to immigrate to the United States.[11] Many more immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who primarily spokeRussian, chose Brighton Beach as a place to settle.[27] This included an influx of immigrants from theCaucasus, mostly from countries such asGeorgia andAzerbaijan.[4][28][29]
A large number of Russian immigrant firms, shops, restaurants, clubs, offices, banks, schools, and children's play centers opened in the area.[30] The value of real estate in Brighton Beach started to rise again, even though drugs remained a social issue in the area through the early 1990s.[11]
In the early 2000s, a high-income ocean-front condominium complex, the "Oceana", was constructed.[31] This address has become the destination of wealthy businessmen, entertainers, and senior officials from the former Soviet Union, and with their purchase of units at the Oceana, area housing prices have risen.[30]
Since the early 2010s, a significant number ofCentral Asian immigrants have also chosen Brighton Beach as a place to settle.[30]
Brighton Beach Avenue runs parallel to theConey Island beach and boardwalk.[32] The proximity of Brighton Beach to the city's beaches and the fact that the neighborhood is directly served bya subway station make it a popular summer weekend destination for New York City residents.[11]
Brighton Beach's culture
Russian stores in Brighton Beach
Backgammon players at Second Street Park in 2012
A Russian-language bookstore under the New York City Subway tracks onConey Island Avenue in Brighton Beach
Crowded Brighton Beach on a summer afternoon
Water sports on Brighton Beach
Brighton Beach housing
The Oceana luxury condominiums on Brighton Beach, built in the early 2000s
A Brighton Beach storefront's sign, which features both its English and Russian names.
As apartment buildings started to be built in large numbers in the 1930s, many of those who moved into the neighborhood were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, often by way of the Lower East Side. They came from many countries, but also set the stage for a later wave ofJewish immigration from the Soviet Union that started in the 1970s, when Brighton Beach became known as "Little Odessa,"[1][33] and "Little Russia".[34] An annual festival, the Brighton Jubilee, celebrates the area'sRussian-speaking heritage, being populated heavily byRussian andUkrainian Americans.[8] The area has also been called "the land ofpelmeni,matryoshkas,tracksuits, and...vodka" due to its large population of Soviet immigrants.[35]
Based on data from the2010 United States census, the population of Brighton Beach was 35,547, an increase of 303 (0.9%) from the 35,244 counted in2000. Covering an area of 393.32 acres (159.17 ha), the neighborhood had a population density of 90.4 inhabitants per acre (57,900/sq mi; 22,300/km2).[3] The racial makeup of the neighborhood was 69.7% (24,774)White, 1.0% (352)African American, 0.2% (61)Native American, 12.9% (4,580)Asian, 0.0% (10)Pacific Islander, 0.4% (139) fromother races, and 1.2% (442) from two or more races.Hispanic orLatino of any race were 14.6% (5,189) of the population.[37]
In 1983, Brighton Beach consisted mostly of older, middle-class Jews; 27% of Brighton Beach was of age 62 or older, compared to the national average 13.9% at the time.[38] Since the 1990s, however, the neighborhood's ethnic demographics have been changing, with a large influx ofCentral Asian immigrants—namelyUzbeks.[30] In subsequent years, the proportion of whites leveled out, the proportion of blacks decreased significantly, and the proportion of Asians increased to 14% as of 2014.[39] As of 2010[update], increasing numbers of MuslimCentral Asians were moving into Brighton Beach, and based on the historic Soviet influence over these areas, these immigrants also speak Russian.[30][40]
According to the United States Census report of 2010, Brighton Beach and Coney Island, combined, had 111,063 residents as of 2009.[41] In that year, the median age of the combined Brighton Beach and Coney Island area was 47.9 years, substantially higher than the median age in Brooklyn of 34.2 and inNew York City as a whole at 36.0.[41] As DiNapoli and Bleiwas note in a city report, "the number of residents aged 65 years and older in [this area] rose by 4.1 percent, so that senior citizens accounted for more than one-quarter of the area's population" at that date.[41] According to the census, the population density in Brighton Beach, per se (52,109 people per square mile), was almost twice the average population density of New York City (27,012 people per square mile), though the average household size was 2.1 people, lower than the city average of 2.6 people. The average income of households in the area was $36,574, while the average income in the whole city was $55,217, according to the 2010 census. In Brighton Beach, 21% of the population lives below thepoverty line,[39] compared to only 15.4% citywide.[42]
Most of the population of Brighton Beach are immigrants. Less than a quarter (23.3%) of Brighton Beach residents were born in the United States, and nearly three-quarters were born abroad (72.9%). Because of this, English language proficiency in Brighton Beach is lower than the city average. More than a third (36.1%) of the population of Brighton Beach does not speak or understand English, while citywide, only one in fourteen people (7.2%) cannot speak or understand English.[41]
TheNew York City Department of City Planning showed that in the 2020 census data that there were between 20,000 and 29,000 White residents and between 5,000 and 9,999 Asian residents, meanwhile each the Hispanic and Black populations were each less than 5000 residents.[43][44]
TheBrighton Ballet Theater, established in 1987, is one of the most famous Russian ballet schools in the United States.[45] More than 3,000 children have trained in ballet, modern and character dances, and folk dances here.[45]
A Russian-speaking theater near the waterfront,Master Theater [ru], formerly the Millennium Theater and the Oceana Theatre,[46] features performances by actors from the U.S., Russia, and other countries.[47]
Brighton Beach is patrolled by theNYPD's 60th Precinct, located at 2950 West Eighth Street.[5] The 60th Precinct ranked 34th safest out of 69 patrol areas for per-capita crime in 2010. Between 1993 and 2010, major crimes decreased by 72%, including a 76% decrease in robberies, 71% decrease in felony assaults, and 67% decrease in shootings.[48] The 60th Precinct has a substantially lower crime rate than in the 1990s, with crimes across all categories having decreased by 77.5% between 1990 and 2022. The precinct reported five murders, 16 rapes, 179 robberies, 373 felony assaults, 159 burglaries, 527 grand larcenies, and 121 grand larcenies auto in 2022.[49]
Brighton Beach is considered a hot spot for theRussian Bratva,[50] though public perception has been that organized crime "has largely gone away."[51] In the 1970s, the most notorious leg of the mafia was thePotato Bag Gang,[52] which served as a robbery gang for larger Russian crime syndicates in New York City.Marat Balagula was a crime boss from Brighton Beach who denies having any connection to theAmerican Mafia or the Russian-speaking Mafia.[citation needed] The major Russian criminal element in Brighton Beach was the international Russian mafia group, known asvor v zakone or "vory," and the first vory crime boss in Brighton Beach wasEvsei Agron, who controlled the area's crime during the 1970s and 1980s until his death in 1985.[53] After thefall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, many ethnic Russian criminals illegally entered theUnited States, coming especially to Brighton Beach.[citation needed] The infamous vorVyacheslav Ivankov, who dominated the Brighton Beach underworld until his arrest in 1995, arrived during this wave.[54]
Brighton Beach Playground, located on the Boardwalk at Brighton 2nd Street and Brightwater Court, was built in 1950 and renovated in the late 1990s.[59]
Asser Levy Park located near the Boardwalk between Surf Avenue and Sea Breeze Avenue.[60]
Century Playground, located on the site of former summer bungalows near PS 370, was built in the late 1960s and renovated in 2012.[61]
Grady Playground, located on an irregular area between Shore Parkway, Brighton 3rd Street, and Brighton 4th Street. It contains baseball fields, basketball courts, handball courts, playgrounds, and water spray showers.[62]
A traffic island at Brighton 14th Street, Corbin Place, and Ocean View Avenue was dedicated as Babi Yar Triangle in 1981, in honor of the victims of theBabi Yar massacre, and renovated in 1988.[63]
Brighton Beach is served by theNew York City Department of Education. Primary and middle schools within Brighton Beach include P.S. 225 The Eileen E. Zaglin School for grades K–8,[66][67] and P.S. 253 the Ezra Jack Keats International School.[68] In 1983, the Community School District 21 operated PS 225, PS 253, and Junior High School 302.[38] During that year, over 62% of its students read at or above their grade level, far above the national average.[38] PS 100, The Coney Island School for grades K–5[69][70][71][72] and 303 Herbert S. Eisenberg are both located nearby in Coney Island.[71][73][74]
TheBrooklyn Public Library's Brighton Beach branch is located at 16 Brighton First Road, near Brighton Beach Avenue. The branch contains a large collection of media in Russian. The branch opened in December 1949, but due to high patronage, moved to its current location in 1964. The branch was renovated in the early 1990s.[79]
Brighton Beach is featured in the Russian crime filmBrother 2 (2000).[84]
Brighton Beach is featured in the dramaLord of War (2005), starringNicolas Cage, where the protagonist and his family immigrated to from Ukraine in order to escape the Soviet Union.[85]
In the filmTwo Lovers (2008), the action takes place in Brighton Beach.[86]
The Georgian filmBrighton 4th (2021) is set largely in Brighton Beach, telling the story of immigrants from the country of Georgia.
The filmAnora (2024) is set against the backdrop of Brighton Beach, which is the Russian-speaking protagonist's hometown.[87]
Literature
InRobin Cook's novelVector (2000), disillusioned former Russian biochemical worker Yuri Davydov develops weapons-grade anthrax in the basement of his Brighton Beach home.[88]
A Lifetime reality TV show calledRussian Dolls, documenting the lives of young Russian-Americans and a group of Brighton Beach housewives spending time in a popular Russian nightclub, Rasputin Restaurant, premiered August 11, 2011.[91]
Video games
Brighton Beach is prominently featured as a fictionalised version in the video gameGrand Theft Auto IV (as "Hove Beach"), and is where the player's first safe-house is.
Music
The Russian metal bandE.S.T. has a song calledBrighton Beach about the neighborhood and its history.
Vladimir Reznikov, Russian-American hitman, murdered outside of the infamous Odessa Restaurant in 1986[107]
Gene Russianoff, chief spokesman for theStraphangers Campaign, a public transport advocacy group that focuses primarily on subway and bus services run by New York City Transit[108]
Seymour Siwoff (1920–2019), president and chief executive of the Elias Sports Bureau for seven decades[110]
Peter Steele (1962–2010), lead singer and bassist of the metal bandType O Negative, who grew up in Brighton Beach, and has Brighton Beach as a returning symbol in several of his songs with Type O Negative.
In addition, Disco Freddy (also called Larry the Unbelievable at the beginning of his public career), was one of the notable characters on the Riegelmann Boardwalk during the late 1970s through the early 1980s. During his performing heyday, he was about 60 years old.[114]
^ab"NYC Planning | Community Profiles".communityprofiles.planning.nyc.gov. New York City Department of City Planning.Archived from the original on March 30, 2019. RetrievedMarch 18, 2019.
^Weinstein, Stephen (2000). "Brighton Beach". InJackson, Kenneth T.; Keller, Lisa; Flood, Nancy (eds.).The Encyclopedia of New York City (2nd ed.). New York, NY, and New Haven, CT, USA: The New York Historical Society and Yale University Press. pp. 139–140.ISBN0-300-11465-6. RetrievedNovember 11, 2015.
^"Engeman's New Bathing Hotel".Brooklyn Daily Eagle. July 1, 1878. p. 1.Archived from the original on July 24, 2018. RetrievedJuly 23, 2018 – via Brooklyn Public Library; newspapers.com.
^"High Tides".Brooklyn Daily Eagle. December 10, 1887. RetrievedJuly 29, 2012.
^ab"Moving the Brighton Beach Hotel".Scientific American. New York: Scientificamerican.com. April 14, 1888.Archived from the original on November 12, 2015. RetrievedNovember 12, 2015.Reprinted as "A Hotel on Wheels," inThe Engineer (London, ENG), April 27, 1888(subscription required)
^"Brighton Beach". Arrts-arrchives.com. May 11, 2004.Archived from the original on January 19, 2016. RetrievedNovember 12, 2015.
^Brighton Beach: Strengthening Community Resiliency – Final ReportArchived April 20, 2024, at theWayback Machine, Hester Street, February 2016. Accessed August 16, 2024. "Brighton Beach, located on one of the nation’s most iconic urban beach fronts, has long been a neighborhood of immigrants. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, a wave of Russian immigrants settled in Brighton Beach."
^"Map of Brighton Beach environs"(JPG). Graphics8.nytimes.com.Archived from the original on March 7, 2008. RetrievedNovember 11, 2015.Coney Island, which has a residential population of about 53,000, is bounded by the Belt Parkway to the north, Ocean Parkway to the east and the Atlantic Ocean to the south.
^Fairbanks, Amanda M."Brighton Beach, N.J."Archived February 27, 2017, at theWayback Machine,The New York Times, February 27, 2009. Accessed February 26, 2017. "IN scene after scene inTwo Lovers, the new movie starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Joaquin Phoenix as a star-crossed couple, the Brooklyn neighborhood of Brighton Beach is on lush display."
^"Vector by Robin Cook",Kirkus Reviews. Accessed February 26, 2017. "An anti-Semite, Yuri feels dismissed as a human being by American Zionists and has set up a bioweapons lab in his basement in Brighton Beach, undertaking what he calls Operation Revenge."
^"In New York, the 'father of the Russian mafia' died: who was Marat Balagula", Forum Daily, December 28, 2019. Accessed November 9, 2021. "Balagula emigrated to the USA from Odessa in 1977 and settled in the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn, where he became a co-owner of one of the first Russian restaurants 'Sadko', and then 'Odessa', where Willie Tokarev sang for many years."
^Hicks, Jonathan P."Two Comptroller Candidates Try to Make No. 3 Job Visible"Archived September 3, 2019, at theWayback Machine,The New York Times, March 14, 2001. Accessed September 3, 2019. "Over three recent days, Councilman Herbert E. Berman took his quest to a civic association dinner in Queens, a church organization dinner in Brooklyn, appearances before political clubs and an interview by the Working Families Party.... Mr. Berman, 67, grew up in Brighton Beach and Coney Island."
^Berger, Joseph (2004)."Vintage Pop Star With the Soul of a Bar Mitzvah Boy".The New York Times.Archived from the original on December 10, 2018. RetrievedSeptember 23, 2009.Several years before enrolling in Juilliard, he had been introduced to a neighbor with a touch of the poet, Howard Greenfield, and they became a songwriting team for the next 20 years.
^Zaklikowski, Dovid."Rabbi David B. Hollander, Defender of Jewish Faith and Practice, Passes Away"Archived October 9, 2016, at theWayback Machine,Chabad, February 18, 2009. Accessed February 26, 2017. "Hollander remained at the Mount Eden Jewish Center until its closing in 1980 due to the migration of Jews to other areas of the city. His next pulpit, which he held until his passing, was at the Hebrew Alliance Congregation in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn."
^Julius, David."Biographical"Archived October 8, 2024, at theWayback Machine,Nobel Prize, 2023. Accessed October 27, 2024. "Born in 1955, I grew up in a seaside Brooklyn neighborhood − immortalized by Neil Simon’s play ‘Brighton Beach Memoirs’ "
^Rondeaux, Candace."The Murder of a Russian Boxer" ,The Village Voice, February 19, 2002. Accessed September 3, 2019. "There definitely was more to Sergei Kobozev than his violent end. He first earned his rep fighting for the Soviet national boxing team at the Seoul Olympics in 1988. When he moved to Brighton Beach in 1991 he was part of a wave of Soviet bloc boxers recruited by Gallagher to go pro in the States."
^Haberman, Clyde."For Voice of Straphangers, a Journey Without Stops"Archived September 3, 2019, at theWayback Machine,The New York Times, August 25, 2013. Accessed September 3, 2019. "Gene Russianoff, who has spent most of his adult life reflecting upon and fretting about New York City's subways, remembers the first time he rode a train alone.... 'We lived in Brighton Beach, exactly where the el is — now the B, then the D,' he said over breakfast at a diner near his office in Lower Manhattan."
^Dettelbach, Cynthia (2004)."From angst-ridden teenager to world-class music star".Cleveland Jewish News. Archived fromthe original on November 3, 2012. RetrievedSeptember 23, 2009.That includes instant face and name recognition, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a place in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and even a street named after him in his native Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.
^Serrin, William."A Leader For The Little Guy"Archived September 3, 2019, at theWayback Machine,The New York Times, September 12, 1982. Accessed September 3, 2019. "Jerry Wurf was one of the most remarkable union men of this century. Born in New York City in 1919 to immigrant parents from Austria and Hungary, he was stricken with polio when he was 4 years old, spent much of his youth in a wheelchair and always walked with a limp. The family settled in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn where the bookish boy came into early contact with the politically militant left-wing groups of the Depression Era, including the Young People's Socialist League, in which he was active before the war."
^Abramovitch, Ilana; Galvin, Seán (2001).The Jews of Brooklyn. Hanover, N.H.: Brandeis University Press, University Press of New England. p. 99.ISBN978-1-58465-003-4. RetrievedMay 15, 2015.
Weinstein, Stephen (2000). "Brighton Beach". InJackson, Kenneth T.; Keller, Lisa; Flood, Nancy (eds.).The Encyclopedia of New York City (2nd ed.). New York, NY, and New Haven, CT, USA: New-York Historical Society and Yale University Press. pp. 139–140.ISBN0-300-11465-6. RetrievedNovember 11, 2015.
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