A Neighborhood, Authored
The New Yorker|August 28, 2023
Revisiting "The Making of Boerum Fill.”
By Jonathan Lethem
A Neighborhood, Authored

In 1977, Jervis Anderson described the way brownstoners like Helen Buckler and L.J. Davis created Boerum Hill.

In 1977, a staff writer for The New Yorker named Jervis Anderson journeyed to Dean Street in Brooklyn, to the neighborhood now known as Boerum Hill, to interview the people who lived there. His article in the November 14th issue, titled “The Making of Boerum Hill,” portrayed the place as a microcosm of “one of the remarkable urban developments in recent times— the brownstone-renovation movement.” What drew Anderson to Boerum Hill isn’t certain. It’s possible he’d lived there when he first moved to the city from Jamaica, in 1958, to study at N.Y.U. In an autobiographical essay from 1966, he wrote, “In those early days, New York was to me Washington Square, the A train, and Brooklyn.”

What seems to have fascinated Anderson about Boerum Hill was the tenuousness of the neighborhood’s creation. “The name had been coined so recently, and by such a small number of the residents, that people who had been living in the area all their lives had never heard of Boerum Hill and hadn’t the slightest idea where it was,” Anderson writes. Initially, he explains, the campaign to establish the neighborhood, undertaken in order to protect dilapidated row houses from being condemned and demolished, “faltered in the face of a firm conviction that Boerum Hill existed only in the heads of the people who had thought it up.”

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة August 28, 2023 من The New Yorker.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة August 28, 2023 من The New Yorker.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

المزيد من القصص من THE NEW YORKER مشاهدة الكل
YULE RULES
The New Yorker

YULE RULES

“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”

time-read
6 mins  |
November 18, 2024
COLLISION COURSE
The New Yorker

COLLISION COURSE

In Devika Rege’ first novel, India enters a troubling new era.

time-read
8 mins  |
November 18, 2024
NEW CHAPTER
The New Yorker

NEW CHAPTER

Is the twentieth-century novel a genre unto itself?

time-read
10+ mins  |
November 18, 2024
STUCK ON YOU
The New Yorker

STUCK ON YOU

Pain and pleasure at a tattoo convention.

time-read
10+ mins  |
November 18, 2024
HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG
The New Yorker

HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG

Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseon’s message: my name.

time-read
10+ mins  |
November 18, 2024
REPRISE
The New Yorker

REPRISE

Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.

time-read
10 mins  |
November 18, 2024
WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?
The New Yorker

WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?

Whether you’re horrifying your teen with nauseating sex-ed analogies or watching TikToks while your toddler eats a bagel from the subway floor, face it: you’re flailing in the vast chasm of your child’s relentless needs.

time-read
2 mins  |
November 18, 2024
COLOR INSTINCT
The New Yorker

COLOR INSTINCT

Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.

time-read
10+ mins  |
November 18, 2024
THE FAMILY PLAN
The New Yorker

THE FAMILY PLAN

The pro-life movement’ new playbook.

time-read
10+ mins  |
November 18, 2024
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
The New Yorker

President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.

On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.

time-read
8 mins  |
November 11, 2024