Greenpoint | |
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Neighborhood of Brooklyn | |
Greenpoint streetscape on Manhattan Avenue
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Aerial picture of Greenpoint's East River waterfront, with Manhattan in background |
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Country | United States |
State | New York |
City | New York City |
Borough | Brooklyn |
Languages | |
Area | |
• Total | 2.754 sq mi (7.13 km2) |
Population (2010) | |
• Total | 34,719 |
• Density | 13,000/sq mi (4,900/km2) |
Demographics 2010 | |
• White | 76.9% |
• Black | 1.2% |
• Hispanic (of any race) | 14.7% |
• Asian | 4.9% |
• Other | 2.3% |
ZIP Codes | 11211, 11222 |
Median household income | $60,523 |
Greenpoint is the northernmost neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, in the U.S. state of New York. It is bordered on the southwest by Williamsburg at the Bushwick inlet, on the southeast by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and East Williamsburg, on the north by Newtown Creek and Long Island City, Queens at the Pulaski Bridge, and on the west by the East River.
The neighborhood has a large Polish immigrant and Polish-American community, containing many Polish restaurants, markets, and businesses, and it has often been referred to as Little Poland.
Originally farmland – many of the farm owners' family names, such as Meserole and Calyer, are current street names – the residential core of Greenpoint was built on parcels divided during the 19th century, with rope factories and lumber yards lining the East River to the west, while the northeastern section along the Newtown Creek through East Williamsburg became an industrial maritime area.
Greenpoint has long held a reputation of being a working class and immigrant neighborhood, and it initially attracted families and workers with its abundance of factory jobs and longshoreman or dock work. Since the early 2000s, a building boom in the neighborhood, especially of multifamily dwellings, has made the neighborhood increasingly a center of nightlife, attracting more bohemian residents. However, there have been efforts to reclaim the rezoned Greenpoint / Williamsburg East River waterfront for recreational use and also to extend a continuous promenade into the Newtown Creek area.