Bushwick, Brooklyn: Eleven Breweries in Fourteen Blocks

The brewers left their buildings behind. The William Ulmer Brewery at 31 Belvidere Street, built between 1872 and 1890 in the German round-arch style — the main buildings by the architect Theobald Engelhardt, the stable-storage building by Frederick Wunder — was designated a New York City Landmark on May 10, 2010, the first brewery building in the city to receive that status, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 20, 2024. It closed in 1920 under Prohibition; the complex was adaptively reused rather than demolished and now holds residential and mixed-use space.

The brewers also left a church. St. Barbara's Roman Catholic Church at 138 Bleecker Street, completed in 1910 in the Spanish Baroque Revival style by the architects Helmle and Huberty, was founded as a national parish for German Catholic immigrants; the local brewer Leonard Eppig contributed to it, and the parish's name is tied to his daughter Barbara. Its congregation shifted from German to Italian to Hispanic across the twentieth century, and it remains an active parish under the Diocese of Brooklyn.

Bushwick's population was almost 90% white in 1960 and less than 40% white by 1970, as Puerto Rican and other Caribbean families became the predominant population amid the economic decline that followed the brewery closures. Then came the July 1977 blackout, when Bushwick suffered severe looting and arson damage; the business vacancy rate on Broadway reached 43% afterward, and the damage lingered for years.

Since the 2000s, rent pressure in Manhattan and northern Brooklyn has drawn young professionals and artists into converted warehouse lofts and the existing brownstone and limestone rowhouses. One product of that period is visible from the sidewalk: the Bushwick Collective, founded in 2012 by a neighborhood resident who donated his own wall and then coordinated with other building owners to open more walls to artists. Work by Buff Monster, Phlegm, Blek le Rat and Olek has gone up on those walls, and the collective runs an annual block party.

Bushwick's stations sit on three lines.

On the L, Jefferson Street sits at Jefferson Street and Wyckoff Avenue, DeKalb Avenue and Morgan Avenue are both recorded as being in Bushwick, and Morgan Avenue sits at Morgan Avenue and Harrison Place.

Myrtle-Wyckoff Avenues is served by both the L and the M, and serves Bushwick and Ridgewood, Queens together — Wyckoff Avenue forms the Brooklyn-Queens border at that point.

On the M alone, Central Avenue sits at Myrtle Avenue and Cedar Street and Knickerbocker Avenue at Myrtle and Knickerbocker Avenues, both in Bushwick.

On the elevated BMT Jamaica Line, four stations sit on or near the Bedford-Stuyvesant boundary. Myrtle Avenue, at Myrtle Avenue and Broadway, carries the J, M and Z. Chauncey Street carries the J and Z. Halsey Street carries the J. Gates Avenue is served by the J at all times except peak-direction rush hours and by the Z in the peak direction at rush hours only. Flushing Avenue, further west, is served by the J and M with the Z skipping it; its source places it in Bedford-Stuyvesant while noting that it also serves adjacent parts of Williamsburg and Bushwick.

No NYC Ferry landing is recorded for the neighborhood, and there is no Long Island Rail Road station in Bushwick.

No hotel is listed here; the lodging list is left empty rather than reaching into a neighboring neighborhood. The nearest verified lodging is in Williamsburg: the Wythe Hotel at 80 Wythe Avenue, in a converted 1901 brick industrial building, and The William Vale at 111 N 12th St.