Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn

Gerritsen Beach is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, located between Sheepshead Bay to the west and Marine Park to the east. The area is served by Brooklyn Community Board 15. The population of the neighborhood is 8,353 as of the 2010 U.S. census.

The neighborhood is named for Wolphert Gerretse, a Dutch settler, who, in the early seventeenth century, built a house and mill on Gerritsen Creek, which is now part of the nearby Marine Park neighborhood. The three-hundred-year-old mill was destroyed by fire in 1931. The famous Whitney family owned property by the mill and built a mansion. The Mansion had horse stables, servant quarters, a carriage house, and a private race track. The Mansion was knocked down in 1936 for the Marine Park Building Developments but the carriage house was still left standing. The Carriage house was converted into a private home that is still standing today.

Until the early twentieth century, the area remained undeveloped except for a few squatters’ bungalows clustered at the foot of Gerritsen Avenue. In 1920, Realty Associates, a speculative real-estate builder, began constructing a middle-class summer resort there. The southwestern section of Gerritsen’s meadow was soon covered to one-story bungalows with peaked roofs and no backyards. The popularity of this venture spurred further growth. Some bungalow-owners made them suitable for year-round habitation; others built two-story houses with backyards; and, within a decade, there were fifteen hundred houses in Gerritsen Beach. After WWII, there were apartments for returning veterans and their families. They were located on the opposite side of Gerritsen Avenue in what is now park land. They were demolished around 1955 after all the residents had relocated.

Almost all homes in the Gerritsen Beach area were damaged and/or affected by seawater on October 29, 2012 from Hurricane Sandy due to its peninsula characteristics. Almost all of the residents did not leave the neighborhood before the flooding began. The flood waters reached a record 10–12 ft in some parts of the neighborhood. A bar from Deep Creek Marina, two miles away, floated into the neighborhood, with bottles and seating intact. The damage was so severe, that it led Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to reclassify Gerritsen Beach as Zone A.

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