Brooklyn

Brooklyn is one of the biggest districts of New York City. In 1843 Brooklyn became independent and in 1898 it became a district of New York. Brooklyn has with its 2.3 million inhabitants the largest population of the city’s five districts. Three bridges span the East River, connecting Brooklyn with Manhattan. Furthermore there is the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, beneath the river and also a lot of subway tunnels. Brooklyn’s manufactures are machinery, textiles, paper products and chemicals. The district has an extended system of parks and recreational areas. The most remarkable one are the Prospect Park, the beaches and the nightclub district of Coney Island. Nearby are the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the famous Brooklyn Academy of Music. Brooklyn has the largest African-American population in the city. There are also neighbourhoods of Caribbean blacks, Hispanics, Italians, Poles, Russian, Jews, Hasidic Jews, Arabs, Chinese, and others. In the eighties and nineties there were violent racial riots, chiefly in the districts called Bensonhurst and Crown Hights

The Dutch and English settled down in Brooklyn (previously home to the Canarsie) and founded the first European housing estates in 1636 and 1637. In 1664, six towns had been established: Breuckelen, Bushwick, Flatbush, Nieuw Amersfoort, Gravesend and New Utrecht. After annexing Williamsburg and Bushwick in 1854, Brooklyn became the third largest city in America. In 1898 its population was 830,000 people, in the next twenty years however, the population doubled because of the immigration. Today about 2.3 million people live in Brooklyn