Now, she says, hundreds of people are participating in mutual aid networks, including park stewardship, community food networks, an oral history project, a women’s hygiene project, and more.

Everything we have, we’ve had to fight for.” It has been environmentally compromised for decades and it’s been a long struggle. Gallagher, a longtime activist, says “a lot of the things that are great about Greenpoint today are due to the work of activists, the result of ‘people power.’ Ours is a real community with real problems. The pandemic compounded existing issues in the neighborhood, but residents have continued a tradition of pulling together. She estimates there have been “over 100 small businesses closing in our district and many of my neighbors who work in the service industry are really struggling.” “There have been pandemic-related suicides in our community by folks out of work,” Gallagher says. There have been other, more tragic effects of the pandemic. The pandemic has changed that.Įmily Gallagher, who has lived in Greenpoint for 13 years and just began her first term representing the area, says that that trend has reversed and instead “a lot of people with means have left the neighborhood.” New development went up along the waterfront, bringing newcomers to this under-the-radar Brooklyn neighborhood.

That may still be true for the landmark-protected slice of Greenpoint, but in 2005, when Greenpoint was rezoned, the vistas began to change.

Back in 1982, a few core blocks of Greenpoint, Brooklyn’s northernmost neighborhood, were designated a historic district by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in part because “the streets present vistas unchanged since the turn of the century.”

Seamless greenpoint