The Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic Jewish Community in Eastern Parkway History

History

Crown Heights:

Crown Heights is located in northern Brooklyn of New York. Tree-lined streets characterize the collection of cultural institutions, parks, various fraternal, social, and community organizations.

Walkway

Eastern Parkway, the main roadway through Crown Heights, runs two miles in an eastward direction from Grand Army Plaza to Ralph Avenue. Envisioned by Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux in 1866 and constructed between 1870 and 1874, Eastern Parkway became the world’s first parkway. The roadway consists of six center lanes, medians of trees, benches, and pathways for walkers and bicycle riders, and two one-lane side streets parallel to the main road. This design is intended to bring the countryside to the city.

For most of history the Crown Heights area was known as Crow Hill, as its landscape consisted of a chain of hills. The name changed to Crown Heights in 1916 when Crown Street cut through the neighborhood.

Prior to European colonization the Lenape Native Americans occupied present-day Crown Heights. Crown Heights saw its first European settlements around the early 1660s when Governor Stuyvesant and the Directors of the Dutch West India Company gave land to several men. Each man received what was described as, “a parcel of free (unoccupied) woodland there,” on the basis that they build their residence, “within on of the other concentration, which would suit them best, but not to make a hamlet.”

Rowhouses in Crown Heights

Crown Heights, in the 1880s, consisted of upper class residences that included brownstone buildings, which were constructed along Eastern Parkway (many of which still stand today). A mixture of lower and middle-class houses was created away from the parkway. In the 1920’s development and progress in the area peaked, making Crown Heights a premier neighborhood in NYC.

In the 1930’s immigrants form Jamaica and Eastern European Jewish immigrants began to settle in the area. African Americans from the South started to immigrate a decade later. Haitians entered the area in the 1970s. During the mid-twentieth century many of the upper-class residents moved to newer housing and jobs in the suburbs. Property values dropped, thus creating affordable housing for a new class of people.

Source: Crown Heights: Blacks, Jews , and the 1991 Brooklyn Riot, by Edward Shapiro (Brandeis University Press, 2006)

Crown Heights Riot

Blacks and Hasidic Jews feel threatened by one another, and racial tensions have festered in the area for some time. It is a community divided by race, religion and culture. The ill ease between the two groups has several sources. The communities are like two foreign countries sharing the same crowded terrain. The lines are sharply drawn. The public schools are largely black, and the communities do not generally mix socially. The differences and apprehensiveness between the two cultures have led to violent events.

"While Mayor Dinkins pleaded for peace on Wed., Aug. 21, angry young blacks hurled bottles and rocks at Jews and other whites." John Peraskevas of Newsday, 1991

For example, on August 19, 1991 Yosef Lifsh, a Hasidic Jewish man, crashed his car into a stone building pillar, which in turn fell on top of two Guyanese children, Gavin and Angelo Cato. After the accident, three or four black men pulled Lifsh out of his vehicle and began to beat him. While the children were being pulled from under the vehicle, more than 200 residents, mostly black teenagers, began shouting, “Jews! Jews! Jews!” The residents’ anger toward Lifsh shifted from him onto the police. The residents were angered because Gavin Gato’s eventual death was blamed upon the Hatzolah Ambulance workers’ unwillingness to help non-Jews. False rumors about Lifsh’s ability to legally drive began to spread which further ignited anger.

Later on that evening, as the crowd and rumors grew, people threw bottles and rocks to protest the treatment of the children. At about 11:00 p.m., someone shouted, “Let's go to Kingston Avenue and get a Jew!” A number of black youths then set off toward Kingston, a street of predominantly Jewish residents several blocks away, vandalizing cars and heaving rocks and bottles as they went. The riot lasted for three days.

By the time the three days of rioting ended, 152 police officers and 38 civilians were injured, 1 person died, 27 vehicles were destroyed, seven stores were looted or burned, and 225 cases of robbery and burglary were committed. At least 129 arrests were made during the riot, including 122 blacks and seven whites. Property damage was estimated at one million dollars.

Source: Crown Heights: Blacks, Jews , and the 1991 Brooklyn Riot, by Edward Shapiro (Brandeis University Press, 2006)