History
Until the 1890s, the western portion of the neighborhood was known as Fulton Landing, after the ferry stop that connected it to Manhattan before the Brooklyn Bridge opened. Then, it was primarily a manufacturing district, housing warehouses and factories that made machinery, paper boxes and Brillo soap pads. With deindustrialization it began becoming primarily residential, when artists and other young homesteaders seeking relatively large and inexpensive loft apartment spaces for studios and homes began moving there in the late 1970s. The acronym Dumbo arose in 1978, when new residents coined it in the belief such an unattractive name would help deter developers. Near the end of the 20th century, as property became more and more expensive in Manhattan, Dumbo became increasingly gentrified. Joy Glidden is the Founding Director of the Dumbo Arts Center (DAC) and co-founder of the Dumbo Art Under the Bridge Festival in Brooklyn, where she served as the Executive Director from 1997-2006. Using art as a catalyst for change, Glidden’s efforts achieved successful development in Dumbo that is now a model for similar waterfront developments around the world.
Read more about this topic: Dumbo, Brooklyn
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It’s nice to be a part of history but people should get it right. I may not be perfect, but I’m bloody close.”
—John Lydon (formerly Johnny Rotten)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)