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The Bowery Boys: New York City History

#256 DUMBO: Life on Brooklyn's Waterfront

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Places & Travel, History, Documentary, Society & Culture

4.73.9K Ratings

🗓️ 2 March 2018

⏱️ 59 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass (DUMBO) is, we think, a rather drab name for a historically significant place in Brooklyn where some of the daily habits of everyday Americans were invented.  This industrial area between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges traces its story to the birth of Brooklyn itself, to the vital ferry service that linked the first residents to the marketplaces of New York. Two early (lesser) Founding Fathers even attempted to build a utopian society here called Olympia. Instead the coastline's fate would turn to industrial and shipping concerns. Its waterfront was lined with brick warehouses, so impressive and uniform that Brooklyn received the nickname "the Walled City". The industries based directly behind the warehouses were equally as important to the American economy. Most of their factories comprise the architecture of today's DUMBO, grand industrial fortresses of brick and concrete, towering above cobbled streets etched with railroad tracks. The cardboard-box titan Robert Gair was so dominant in this region that his many buildings were collectively referred to as Gairville. But coffee and tea traditions also came here -- not just the manufacture, but the revolutionary ways in which people with buy and drink those beverages. How did this early New York manufacturing district become a modern American tech hub, with luxury loft apartments and splendid coffee shops? This story of repurpose and gentrification is very different from those told in other neighborhoods. PLUS: And, no, really, what is up with that name? Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0

Episode 256 of the Bowry Boys.

0:02.6

Dumb Bo.

0:03.8

Life on the Brooklyn Waterfront.

0:06.0

Hey, it's the Bowry Boys.

0:07.6

Hey.

0:08.6

Support for the Bowry Boys is provided by our listeners.

0:12.3

Join us for as little as a dollar a month

0:14.9

by visiting patreon.com slash Bowry Boys.

0:20.3

Hi there, welcome to the Bowry Boys. This is Greg Young.

0:23.0

And this is Tom Myers.

0:24.6

And today we're going to a very hip neighborhood

0:27.5

in Brooklyn between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge.

0:31.5

A neighborhood named seemingly after a flying elephant.

0:36.3

Dumb Bo.

0:38.3

But it ain't Greg, it ain't.

0:40.3

But it's true that it is one of the city's hippest neighborhoods.

0:43.0

I would even say it is one of the city's premier post-industrial tech hubby

0:49.4

constantly Instagrammed neighborhoods.

0:52.6

But Dumb Bo, of course, was not named for Disney's flying elephant.

0:57.1

But it's rather an acronym, a cute way of abbreviating down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass.

1:04.7

So this will be the story of this particular neighborhood's history.

1:08.8

Part of this story will focus in particular on the area's glorious industrial years.

...

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