Sometimes referred to as the Far East Village, Williamsburg today is undoubtedly the ‘hipster’ capital of Brooklyn, if not New York City. Densely packed with restaurants, cafes, shops, music venues, bars, nightclubs, and even a bowling alley, there’s probably nothing you can’t find to entertain you in this neighborhood.  In 2005 New York City rezoned the formerly industrial north-side Williamsburg waterfront and Greenpoint to accommodate mixed-use high density residential buildings with a string of public waterfront esplanades.  As with Manhattan’s Soho, modern and vintage buildings live side-by-side in Williamsburg. There’s an air of history with echos of its industrial heritage, forming a distinctive part of its character in the present. Today’s Williamsburg is quite different from its industrial past, although zoning still permits a mix of light manufacturing, commercial, residential, and mixed-use buildings. Complexes like Northside Piers, The Edge, Schaffer’s Landing, and more recently Domino Park, have sprouted up offering views and a luxury lifestyle previously unknown in the neighborhood. The influx of new residents has spurred a culinary scene here second to none in the city.

In 1638, the Dutch West India Company purchased the area’s land from the indigenous Lenape people. They chartered the Town of Boswijck in 1661 including land that would later become Williamsburg. After the English took over the region in 1664 it became known as Bushwick Shore to the English speaking colonists. It operated for 140 years as farmland and a marketplace for agricultural goods ferried across the river to Manhattan. In 1802 Richard M. Woodhull acquired 13 acres near the current area of Metropolitan Avenue and North 2nd Street. He had Colonel Jonathan Williams survey the property, and named it Williamsburg in his honor. His purchase began a 19th century period of economic, industrial, cultural, and residential development of the waterfront area, with wealthy New Yorkers such as Cornelius Vanderbuilt, Charles Pratt, and Charles Pfizer investing in homes and businesses here. The headquarters and factories of companies like Domino Sugar, Esquire Shoe Polish, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, and Corning Glassworks, among many others, were located here.

With the construction of the Williamsburg bridge in 1904 it became a melting pot of immigrants, second generation Americans, and refugees who migrated from Manhattan’s Lower East Side to become the most densely populated neighborhood in NYC. Williamsburg was a separate city until 1855, when it was annexed by the City of Brooklyn which itself was later absorbed into the City of New York in 1898. As manufacturing declined and moved out of NYC in the 1960s, the area fell into a period of economic decline and many of the industrial buildings were abandoned and fell into various states of ruin.