Ever since Robert Gair discovered a location with access to shipping just north of the new Brooklyn Bridge in the 1880’s, the neighborhood saw a rise of factories, warehouses, and dock storehouses. Although the area has been known in the past as Rapailie, Olympia, Gairville, or Walentasville, it is now known as Dumbo (which stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) and these old factories have been converted into luxury lofts and old warehouses into art galleries and theaters. The area’s industrial buildings were recognized by inclusion on the State and National Registers of Historic Places in September of 2000. Dumbo is not quite Brooklyn brownstone and not quite Manhattan glass condo. With its exposed Belgian block streets anchored by massive bridge structures, Dumbo has a unique character all its own.
In 1978, the naming of Dumbo was conceived by resident artists as a way to make the area sound silly and unattractive to people looking to buy real estate here. To read more about the origin of Dumbo’s name, read the story written for the first time on DumboNYC.com by the person who named Dumbo.
On December 18, 2007, the Landmarks Preservation Commission granted landmark status to the Dumbo Historic District. (more here) The historic district is bound by John Street to the north, York Street to the south, Main Street to the west and Bridge Street to the east. (PDF map of Dumbo Historic District boundary). According to the LPC, the Dumbo area was “essential to Brooklyn’s rise as a major American industrial center and was the home of some of the most important industrial firms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century America including Arbuckle Brothers (coffee and sugar), J. W. Masury & Son (paint), Robert Gair (paper boxes), E. W. Bliss (machinery), and Brillo (steel wool). The buildings in the district reflect the extraordinary diversity of Brooklyn’s industrial development, with manufactured and processed goods including coffee, tea, sugar, machinery, paint, varnish, paper boxes, shoes, soap, ale, and steel wool. By the early twentieth century, Brooklyn was the fourth largest manufacturing center in the entire country and a significant portion of this manufacturing was done in DUMBO.”
This website is for those who want to keep up with the many changes in the Dumbo neighborhood or real estate, for residents of Dumbo and its surrounding areas (Brooklyn Heights, Fulton Ferry, Vinegar Hill and Bridge Plaza), and for those interested in learning more about the Dumbo neighborhood and community.
Contact us if you have any tips, info or news about Dumbo. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks!
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August 23rd, 2006 at 2:31 pm
Great to see a blog exclusively about Dumbo. You may be interested to know that the neighborhood’s heritage goes back much farther than Robert Gair, and is in fact much more historically significant than most people realize. The neighborhood now known as Dumbo was in fact the very first neighborhood in all of Brooklyn–preceding even Brooklyn Heights–due to its poximity to the ferry landing at Fulton street (then the Ferry Road). Today’s residential evolution is in fact a return to the neighborhood’s roots in the 18th and early 19th Century, when there was a mix of prominent and working class homes, shops, light manufacturing, shipping businesses, and taverns. Francis Guy’s famous paintings of Brooklyn in the 1820s were done looking south from the corner of Front and Main–right in the heart of today’s Dumbo. The neighborood went into decline during and after the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, when it was characterized in the press as being as bad as Five Points in Manhattan. Gair came in around the turn of the century and through the next 20 years replaced the old wood frame houses and many crumbling brick structures with what we see there today. Some earlier remnants remain, including the building that now houses Almondine Bakery, which has been dated to the 1840s.
August 23rd, 2006 at 2:44 pm
Rascal, I agree, most people don’t realize the area now known as Dumbo is the first neighborhood in Brooklyn. Many of the buildings were built by Gair, and there probably were buildings that were demolished to clear the way for the current pre-war Gair buildings. In today’s Dumbo, I think Walentas’ vision of Dumbo is to maintain its neighborhood culture. My hope is that Dumbo’s streetscape as it is now is not modified too much that the neighborhood roots aren’t evident (Empire buildings, Belgian block streets, the Gair railways on the streets, old company logos on the existing buildings, etc). I haven’t seen Francis Guy’s paintings, but would like to take a look at them.
January 23rd, 2007 at 4:27 pm
I read about you and your blog in the NYTimes and wanted to congratulate you on the publicity. I\’m in Billyburg now but would love to move to DUMBO so who knows maybe we\’ll be neighbors. Keep up the great work!
Best,
Jean
May 15th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
[...] Dumbo: Based on an actual warehouse in NYC’s D.U.M.B.O. neighborhood –get used to stairs and grinds cuz that is the only way you can win. [...]
July 19th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Hi i was wondering if you could tell me abt. vacant buildings in manhatten that would be great for condo conversions please email me @frum_ny@hotmail.com
July 19th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
moshe - 133 water street is just begging to be made into a nice condo
November 15th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
I hate having to write this (given how much I enjoy following your blog) but you’re really let the inmates run the asylum with all the off-topic, off-color, and just plain obsessive/obnoxious commentary that’s become standard fare on so many threads (is EVERYTHING about panhandlers or whether Adam is or is not condescending?). PLEASE, some degree of moderation is needed: the vitality and respectability of your blog depends on it. Thank you.
November 18th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
I just used Dumbo Moving to move me into the neighborhood, and had such a great experience, I had to spread the word. I had to move the end of October and everyone was booked. A friend of mine recomended Dumbo Moving, which I thought was cute because I was moving to Dumbo, after all. I called expecting them to be fully booked, but they were super accomodating and squeezed me in. AND the price was super affordable. I thought that it was all too good to be true and expected the move to be a disaster, but … I was SO pleasantly surprised. The crew was early! AND they were super careful with my stuff- nothing broke! AND they finished in record time. AND now I am living happuily in Dumb. SO … for all you Dumbo foks out there looking for a moving company, don’t look far, look near, to your own neighborhood to find an A-class mover: Dumbo Moving.
December 25th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
I also used Dumbo Moving to move into the neighborhood- I read a lot of good feedback about them on the web. I can’t express my gratitude to these guys who moved me - they were so fast, and professional. It was really outstanding. And now that I am a Dumbo resident, I was very happy to support a local Dumbo business. Btw, Dumbo’s office is located on the corner of Jay and Front street, right next door to that delicious new Indian restuaurant, D Space.”" They have the best samosas in town.