Williamsburg in the 1930's: Eh, Don't Go

Wallabout Market: Wallabout Market: Second Largest in the World

There is no other place on earth right now that is as cool as Williamsburg, Brooklyn, except maybe Berlin, but they don’t speak English over there. As painful as it is to say, Williamsburg is home to thousands and thousands of youngsters who all look similar in their efforts to be different, and also generate a template for many young people’s fashion agenda and/or plans for the future. Bands shoot out of Williamsburg like a barrage of bullets to the blogs of America ready to snatch them up and review them. It seems every trend happens in a heartbeat in Brooklyn. One moment you’re sizing up a deer head to put above your non-working fireplace, and the next you’re cutting square holes in your grandpa’s jeans from the 1940’s. The WPA guide couldn’t have possibly seen this as an outcome for Williamsburg in the 1930’s. The “North Brooklyn” section of the guide serves more as a warning then an encouraging guide, with only four points of interest, one being a housing project for the less affluent members of depression society. In a time where the Statue of Liberty was the Goddess of Liberty, Broadway was the nation’s thoroughfare, Chinatown could be described as “little”, the Lower East Side as a “slum” and Sheridan Square was the center of the universe, going to Williamsburg was about as cool as a trip to the dentist’s office. The shining star of the list of four sights worth seeing in the WPA guide is the Wallabout Market. This star has since extinguished, but at its height, it was the world’s second largest market. The goods here were mostly food oriented, and was a hot destination for the adjoining farmland owners to sell their crop to the hungry masses. As soon as the war hit, the market was wiped out by the expansion of the Navy Yards. Another “attraction” was the Williamsburg houses, which were lauded in the book as Williamsburg’s saving grace: a huge housing project with very well recorded statistics. It seems the readers of the WPA might be put at ease to know that New York cared about those down and out members of the big apple. Then came the moment of prophesy I’d hoped for: journalist TF Hamlin declares: “In every really important matter of land usage—in air, in light, in a sense of green and growing things…in the creation of an atmosphere of humanity and dignity…[this development] has qualities that no money can buy.” Indeed, Mr. Hamlin, the air is nicer here, as I type beside my window, looking out at a dense grapevine clinging to the chain link fence that lets me see into my polish neighbor’s yard. Maybe Williamsburg hasn’t changed. It really depends on what you consider to be the dregs of society. In the 1930’s it was poor people. Maybe today it’s hipsters. Either way, the ‘burg proves to be a quiet, peaceful sanctuary where youngsters like myself can still have a good time.