Early history The coastal lands around Jamaica Bay, including present-day Canarsie, were originally settled by the Canarsie Indians. The present-day neighborhood of Canarsie was one of the Canarsie tribe's main villages. They probably lived near the intersection of present-day Seaview and Remsen Avenues. As late as the 1930s, "immense shell heaps" could be found at the site. Wyckoff's house still stands along Clarendon Road, and it is believed to be the oldest structure in New York State. At the time, a group of islands extended into Jamaica Bay south of Canarsie, up to and including Barren Island. By the time the land agreement was signed, only three Native American families remained in the area. Through 1684, the Dutch and the Native Americans had signed twenty-two deeds regarding the sale of different plots of land in Flatlands. The towns of
Flatbush and Flatlands laid competing claims to the western shore of Fresh Creek, within present-day Canarsie. A 1685 confirmation of Flatlands' boundaries did not recognize this small patch of land; instead, this land was classified as part of
New Lots, then a subdivision of Flatbush. This dispute continued into the 19th century, as seen by maps from 1797 and 1873. The only way to Canarsie was by taking a train to
Jamaica and transferring to a stagecoach, where passengers would endure a "long and uncomfortable ride" through the marshy woodlands that the road winded through. offered train service from the
Long Island Rail Road at the
East New York station to a pier at Canarsie Landing, very close to the current junction of Rockaway Parkway and the
Belt Parkway. The railroad built a pier extending into Jamaica Bay, which was used for lumber deliveries and was later enlarged. The next year, an article from the
Eagle noted that although Canarsie still had a reputation for being a fisherman's village, it "will be largely patronized as soon as people get the means of going there". German, Dutch, Scottish, and Irish settlers started moving to Canarsie in large numbers during the 1870s. White's Iron Steamboats, which sailed from Manhattan directly to the Rockaways, started operating two years later. Despite the existence of two competitors, the Canarsie railroad saw a healthy continued patronage because many passengers wanted to go to Canarsie itself. In 1883, a large double-decker
barge for theatrical and musical performances, called the "Floating Pavilion", was permanently anchored off the Canarsie shore. The depth of the bay was only deep at this point, making it suitable for bathing. A stage extended into the water for the performers, while bathhouses were placed on the barge's lower tier. The steamer
Edith Peck regularly traveled between the shore and the barge. Summer
bungalows were also built along the bay shore, especially east of Canarsie Landing in an area called Sand Bay. Since the land was submerged during low tide, many of these houses were built on
stilts. Boatbuilding also became popular: the number of boatbuilders in Canarsie grew from one in 1868 to eight in 1887. Much of the boats built in Canarsie were small
rowboats, but some of them were large
sloops. Visitors could rent a rowboat and catch fish at
Ruffle Bar or other locations within Jamaica Bay. If these visitors had enough money, they could rent a large sloop and head to the open ocean to fish. The route south of Rockaway Parkway became an electric trolley
shuttle route. Golden City cost $1million to build The buildings were adorned with silver and gold. In 1909, the park was severely damaged by a fire, which also destroyed two hotels. The park was completely rebuilt for the next season. After the end of
World War I, the
New York City Department of Docks started renting piers along the Canarsie shore. These piers were transformed into summer vacation houses, boardwalks, industrial buildings, railroads, and piers, among other purposes. Some piers were used by boat yards, clubs, and builders, while other piers were rented for an expansion of Golden City Park. The shellfish in the bay began showing signs of chemical contamination in 1904, In 1915, Canarsie itself was affected when 27 residents contracted typhoid from that year's shellfish catch. Another 100 cases of
gastroenteritis were traced to that year's shellfish catch. By 1917, an estimated of sewage per day was being discharged into the bay. This brought new industrial tenants along the Jamaica Bay shore, including an asphalt company and a construction company. The first industrial export from Canarsie Pier, a 500-ton shipment of scrap metal, departed in 1933. Ultimately,
Robert Moses, the New York City Parks Commissioner at the time, disapproved of the project. He moved to transform the bay into a city park instead. The Canarsie Railroad was converted to the
Canarsie subway line in 1928, providing direct access to Manhattan. After the subway line opened, officials began calling for a new ferry service between Canarsie and Rockaway Beach. The subway line was also supposed to help improve access to the proposed seaport, Golden City was severely damaged by another fire in January 1934, This time, the amusement park's operators decided not to rebuild, and the area spent its last days as a boat dock. This did not happen, mainly because Robert Moses wanted to build the parkway through the amusement park. Golden City was demolished in 1939 to make way for the Belt Parkway. when the Belt Parkway was built through the area, the carousel was moved to
Baldwin, on the border abutting
Freeport, on
Long Island. In 1939, the WPA Guide to New York City mentioned that Canarsie was a "sparsely settled community located on dispiriting flatlands". The Guide further described the burned-down amusement park, the ramshackle shacks, and Canarsie's "weedy lots and small truck farms cultivated by Italians". The book stated that riders on the Canarsie Pier trolley could see "great stenches of dump and marsh" interspersed between the "unkempt gardens of run-down houses" that the trolley's route adjoined. Until 1939, dozens of disused trolley cars from around the city were dumped into a , lake in Canarsie. The Canarsie Pier trolley route was discontinued in 1942 and was replaced by the
B42 streetcar (later bus) route, despite residents' protests. The
right-of-way of the old Canarsie Pier trolley was abandoned. In 1940, plans for a 14,000-seat arena in Canarsie were filed. This arena was apparently not built for several decades, because in 1974, many Canarsie residents announced their opposition to a proposed 15,000-seat arena in Brooklyn. One of the proposed sites of the arena was in Canarsie. In 1941, the city announced that a new sewage plant would be built in Canarsie in order to reduce the amount of raw sewage going in Jamaica Bay.
Residential development Canarsie only saw large residential development after
World War II. Marshland in the area was filled in. The first huts were delivered in February 1946, and they were ready for occupancy by June of that year. Starting in the 1950s, a series of suburban waterfront communities were being rapidly developed in Southeast Brooklyn, including in present-day Bergen Beach, Canarsie, and Mill Basin. In August 1951, work started on the
Breukelen Houses, a 1,600-unit
New York City Housing Authority development between East 103rd and East 105th Streets. The development was completed in October 1952. The
Bayview Houses, another NYCHA development, started construction in 1954 and opened in 1955. The latter NYCHA development included a shopping center. Houses were also constructed by private developers, but due to zoning laws, these residences were limited to three stories high. Vacant lots remained, but they were being very quickly developed at the time. This plot ultimately became a middle-income housing development with units for 6,000 families, built by the city under the
Mitchell-Lama Housing Program. In conjunction with this development, the federal and city governments each awarded hundreds of thousands of money toward improving parks and beaches in Canarsie. Many young families moved to Canarsie, and
Canarsie High School was built to handle the newcomers. , a 1970s-era development east of Canarsie The city proposed the construction of
Flatlands Industrial Park, an
industrial park, in Canarsie in 1959. The city took over the project after a previous attempt by a private developer had been canceled in 1958 due to a lack of tenants. The industrial park was to be located on a plot between East 99th and 108th Streets between Farragut Road and the
Long Island Rail Road. Permission to clear the land was granted in 1962. East Brooklyn residents wished to see an educational complex on the site instead, on the grounds that not building an educational complex would prolong the
school segregation prevalent in Eastern Brooklyn. The
New York City Department of City Planning approved the plan anyway in 1965. The city added of land to the proposed industrial area by deleting plans for the side streets that were supposed to run through the area. These delays held up construction for nine years: in March 1966, an aide to Mayor
John Lindsay reported that "not one spadeful of dirt" had been excavated on the site. Construction on the project started in summer 1966, and when the Flatlands Industrial Park opened in 1969, The complex is located east of Fresh Creek between Belt Parkway and Vandalia Avenue. In 1962, the California-based
Thompson–Starrett Co. bought of land, upon which they proposed to construct apartment buildings. However, this did not occur due to a lack of funds, The project's new developers were a joint venture by the
Starrett Corporation and the
National Kinney Corporation, who renamed the project "Starrett City". In 1967, the
United Housing Foundation (UHF) announced a plan and the first residents started moving in by the end of the year. At the time of opening, it had 5,881 units in 46 eleven- to twenty-story buildings. The racial tensions began in 1964, when the NYCDOE zoned some Brownsville students to Canarsie High School.
South Shore High School opened in 1970, albeit in a physically incomplete state: many rooms did not have furniture, plumbing, or public announcement systems until the middle of the school year. Major conflicts between white and black students occurred in September 1970 and April 1971. By the end of its first year, the principal was stepping down, and a coalition called "Friends of South Shore" had formed to protest the lack of resources or opportunities available at that school. By the start of October, these students had still not been able to start school. On October 14, the NYCDOE came up with a solution regarding approximately 40 of these students: send eleven to IS 285, and enroll the rest within IS 211 in Canarsie. (The number of Brownsville students enrolled in IS 211 was variously given as either 29 That number later rose to 32.) In response, on October 17, hundreds of white parents from Canarsie showed up to protest outside IS 211 and IS 267. They announced their intention to keep protesting unless the black students were reassigned to another school. Because the parents' protests blocked these schools' entrances, the schools were closed for the rest of that day. These protests went on for three days until the NYCDOE threatened a
writ of court action against these parents. On October 24, 1972, NYCDOE Chairman
Harvey B. Scribner withdrew enrollment for the Brownsville students who were going to IS 211. The Brownsville parents brought their students to IS 211 the next day and started protesting outside the school. On October 26, the NYCDOE reversed Scribner's order, re-enrolling the black students from Brownsville. Due to low attendance, six Canarsie schools were closed for that day. By November 1, the fifth day of the boycott, the number of protesters had subsided, but the boycott was still ongoing. The boycott was broken on November 10, twelve days after it started. As part of the terms to end the boycott, a new zoning plan for the area was ordered. The new plan, released on December 6, was also controversial because it involved rezoning many black students. A second new plan was then ordered. Many Canarsie parents, who complained that it was taking too long to come up with a new zoning plan, initiated a second boycott on March 1, 1973. This boycott spread to a school in Mill Basin, but a similar one in
Gravesend was unsuccessful. The boycott ended on April 1, after parents agreed almost unanimously to prohibit any more Brownsville students from enrolling in Canarsie schools. Students who were already enrolled were allowed to stay until they graduated. In total, white students boycotted their schools for seven weeks of the 1972–1973 school year. In 1978, a NYCDOE integration plan was tentatively approved by the state. Black students from Brownsville could enroll in Canarsie schools as long as they did not make up a majority of the student population there. Of the 80,000 Canarsie residents in 1972, about 2.5% were black. Canarsie's black residents were mostly concentrated in the NYCHA developments, which were integrated with the detached houses in the rest of the neighborhood. The elected leadership of District 18 became ethnically disproportionate to the student body: by 1983, most of the District 18 board members were white, even though 75% of the district's students were black. This disproportionate representation continued through 1994, when the mostly-white members of District 18 opposed a plan to split off several schools into a nearby district in order to increase the proportion of black votes in both districts. That plan was subsequently canceled. In 1989, construction commenced on the Seaview Estates
condominiums. The project was characterized as Canarsie's first large new residential development in decades. The development opened in 2003. In the 1980s, the white residents of Canarsie started moving away, Much of Canarsie's white population left for the suburbs of Staten Island,
Queens,
Long Island, and
New Jersey, part of a national phenomenon referred to as "
white flight". This culminated in a spate of racial conflicts in 1991, where 14 racial-bias incidents were recorded within a month and a half. These incidents were committed by both blacks against whites, and by whites against blacks. By 2010, the neighborhood was 78% black, and between 47% and 60% of the total residents were immigrants from the Caribbean. During
Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, the basements of many homes in Canarsie were flooded. By June 2013, more than 10% of the residential buildings within Canarsie's zip code, 11236, were being foreclosed upon. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the
Federal Emergency Management Agency started redrawing flood-risk maps in New York City to account for
climate change. The original flood map in 1983 labeled 26 buildings under the FEMA "flood zone", but the new flood map proposed increasing that total to 5,000 buildings. Many area homeowners opposed the maps because they could not afford
flood insurance if they were rezoned under the FEMA flood zone. ==Community==