The Rise and Fall of Bed Stuy: Brooklyn’s Lost Cultural Capital

The Rise and Fall of Bed Stuy: Brooklyn’s Lost Cultural Capital Settle in for a calm, nostalgic journey through Bedford-Stuyvesant, the Brooklyn neighborhood that became one of the great cultural capitals of Black America. It began as Dutch farmland. In 1838 James Weeks founded Weeksville, a free Black village. From the 1870s on, carved brownstones went up block after block. Then, in 1936, the A train linked Bed-Stuy to Harlem and changed everything. Remember the Sunday mornings at Concord Baptist Church, and the jazz pouring out of the Blue Coronet and Putnam Central. Remember the stoop evenings, the block parties and the open fire hydrants. Meet the people who made Bed-Stuy famous, from Lena Horne and Shirley Chisholm to Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing," The Notorious B.I.G. and Jay-Z. We also look gently at the hard years, from the Navy Yard closing to the empty houses of the 1970s, and at the neighbors who refused to give up. We end with today's Bed-Stuy, where million-dollar brownstones stand beside the churches, holdouts and memories that still keep the old neighborhood alive. Sources: Kay Hymowitz, "The Blossoming of Bed-Stuy," The Bridge NYU Furman Center, Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood profile NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, Bedford Stuyvesant/Expanded Stuyvesant Heights Historic District Report Suzanne Spellen, "Saving Bedford Stuyvesant," Brownstoner Weeksville Heritage Center and NYC Parks, Weeksville history Concord Baptist Church of Christ, church history Open Sky Jazz, Brooklyn jazz oral histories New York Preservation Archive Project, Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation American Film Institute Catalog, "Do the Right Thing" 6sqft, "Historic Bed-Stuy mansion smashes neighborhood record with $6.3M sale"