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.”

Esta historia es de la edición August 28, 2023 de The New Yorker.

Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.

Esta historia es de la edición August 28, 2023 de The New Yorker.

Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.

MÁS HISTORIAS DE THE NEW YORKERVer todo
BADDIE ISSUES
The New Yorker

BADDIE ISSUES

\"Wicked\" and \"Gladiator II.\"

time-read
6 minutos  |
December 02, 2024
LET'S MAKE A DEAL
The New Yorker

LET'S MAKE A DEAL

\"Death Becomes Her\" and \"Burnout Paradise.\"

time-read
5 minutos  |
December 02, 2024
ANTI HEROES
The New Yorker

ANTI HEROES

\"The Franchise,\" on HBO.

time-read
5 minutos  |
December 02, 2024
FELLOW-TRAVELLERS
The New Yorker

FELLOW-TRAVELLERS

The surprisingly sunny origins of the Frankfurt School.

time-read
10+ minutos  |
December 02, 2024
NOW YOU SEE ME
The New Yorker

NOW YOU SEE ME

John Singer Sargent's strange, slippery portraits of an art dealer's family.

time-read
10+ minutos  |
December 02, 2024
PARIS FRIEND - SHUANG XUETAO
The New Yorker

PARIS FRIEND - SHUANG XUETAO

Xiaoguo had a terror of thirst, so he kept a glass of water on the table beside his hospital bed. As soon as it was empty, he asked me to refill it. I wanted to warn him that this was unhealthy - guzzling water all night long puts pressure on the kidneys, and pissing that much couldn't be good for his injury. He was tall, though, so I decided his insides could probably cope.

time-read
10+ minutos  |
December 02, 2024
WILD SIDE
The New Yorker

WILD SIDE

Is Lake Tahoe's bear boom getting out of hand?

time-read
10+ minutos  |
December 02, 2024
GETTING A GRIP
The New Yorker

GETTING A GRIP

Robots learn to use their hands.

time-read
10+ minutos  |
December 02, 2024
WITHHOLDING SEX FROM MY WIFE
The New Yorker

WITHHOLDING SEX FROM MY WIFE

In the wake of [the] election, progressive women, who are outraged over Donald Trump's victory at the ballot box, have taken to social media with public, vengeful vows of chastity. - The Free Press.

time-read
4 minutos  |
December 02, 2024
DEADLINE EXTENSION
The New Yorker

DEADLINE EXTENSION

Old age, reborn.

time-read
10+ minutos  |
December 02, 2024