In Williamsburg, a few blocks apart, live one of the largest Hasidic Jewish communities in the world, which speaks Yiddish and dresses like Eastern Europe two centuries ago, and the neighbourhood that made Brooklyn a byword for craft beer and artists' lofts. Between them lies the story of a German village, of immigrants who crossed a bridge and of an industrial shoreline reinvented. Twelve stops between the bridge that emptied the Lower East Side, the domed bank of the old city of Williamsburgh, the steakhouse of 1887, the avenue that works as a border, the great Satmar synagogue, the street where everything is written in Yiddish, Puerto Rican Los Sures, the old rail yard turned park, the brewery that revived a tradition, the giant pool of 1936, Greenpoint's Little Poland and the monument to the iron ship that changed naval warfare. Approximate audio duration: 22 minutes.
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Williamsburg: hasídicos, hipsters y la Brooklyn que no se entiende
En Williamsburg conviven, a pocas cuadras de distancia, una de las mayores comunidades judías hasídicas del mundo, que habla ídish y se viste como en la Europa del Este de hace dos siglos, y el barrio que convirtió a Brooklyn en sinónimo de cerveza artesanal y lofts de artistas. Entre los dos, la historia de un pueblo alemán, de inmigrantes que cruzaron un puente y de una costa industrial reconvertida. Doce paradas entre el puente que vació el Lower East Side, el banco con cúpula de la vieja ciudad de Williamsburgh, la parrilla de 1887, la avenida que funciona como frontera, la gran sinagoga de Satmar, la calle donde todo se escribe en ídish, Los Sures puertorriqueños, el antiguo patio ferroviario convertido en parque, la cervecería que resucitó una tradición, la pileta gigante de 1936, la Pequeña Polonia de Greenpoint y el monumento al barco de hierro que cambió la guerra naval. Duración aproximada de audio: 22 minutos.
Tour stops
12 stops · ~22 min of audio · 5.91 km on foot (~1 h 30 min walking) · about 2 h in total
You are standing by the Brooklyn end of the Williamsburg Bridge. Look up: the towers are not stone like the Brooklyn Bridge's but painted steel. Overhead run cars, the subway and a footpath.
The bridge opened on 19 December 1903 after seven years of work. Its main span is about 1,600 feet long. For two decades it was the longest suspension bridge in the world, until the Bear Mountain Bridge over the Hudson overtook it in 1924.
On the far side lay the Lower East Side, at the time one of the most densely populated places on earth. Hundreds of thousands of Eastern European Jewish immigrants liv…
2
The Dome of a Vanished City
Look at the building on the corner of Broadway and Driggs, with columns and a great dome. It looks like a miniature capitol squeezed under the elevated subway tracks. This is the old Williamsburgh Savings Bank, completed in 1875.
Notice the h at the end of Williamsburgh. It is not a mistake: it is the original name of this place, which was a village and then an independent city before it became a neighbourhood.
In the early nineteenth century a merchant named Richard Woodhull bought land along the East River and had it divided into lots. The surveyor was Jonathan Williams, a grandnephew of B…
3
The German Steakhouse That Outlasted Everyone
In front of you is a brick facade with an old sign: Peter Luger Steak House. From outside it looks like a village tavern. Inside are wooden tables, dark walls and waiters in aprons.
It opened in 1887. Peter Luger, a German immigrant, founded it as a café, billiard room and bowling alley. At the time much of Williamsburg spoke German, and this corner was a short walk from the ferry landing.
For decades it served neighbours and passengers stepping off the boats. But once the bridge opened and the ferries closed, the area changed and the restaurant began to fade.
In 1950 it went to auction. Th…
4
An Avenue That Works as a Border
You are at the junction of Bedford Avenue and Division Avenue. Look around and watch the people. A few blocks north, bicycles, tattoos and cafés dominate. Here the black coats, hats and baby strollers begin.
Without passing any sign, you have stepped into another world. South of Broadway and this avenue lives one of the largest Hasidic Jewish communities in the world. Its everyday language is Yiddish.
Hasidism was born in the eighteenth century in Eastern Europe, around a teacher named Israel ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov. He preached a joyful, mystical and intimate faith, organised around …
5
The Rebbe Who Arrived After the Holocaust
You are in front of the great synagogue of the Satmar community on Rodney Street. Outside it is plain, almost unadorned. On religious holidays thousands of men pack inside and the whole street fills up.
Satmar is the Yiddish name for Satu Mare, a city now in Romania that once belonged to Hungary. There Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum held his court, leader of one of the region's Hasidic dynasties.
In 1944, as the Nazis deported the Jews of Hungary, Teitelbaum escaped on the so-called Kasztner train, a convoy negotiated with the Germans. He passed through the Bergen-Belsen camp and reached Switzerland …
6
Lee Avenue, the Street That Speaks Yiddish
You are now walking along Lee Avenue, the shopping street of Hasidic Williamsburg. Look at the windows: kosher bakeries, wig shops, religious bookstores, children's clothing stores. Almost every sign is in Hebrew letters.
But many of those words are not Hebrew. They are Yiddish, the Germanic language of Eastern European Jews. Here Yiddish is not a grandparents' relic: it is the language children play in and business is done in.
Hebrew is kept for prayer and study. English is for dealing with the rest of the city. Many children in the community only learn English at school, and secular educat…
7
Los Sures, Puerto Rican Williamsburg
You have crossed Broadway heading north and are now in the Southside, the southern stretch of the numbered streets. Its longtime residents call it Los Sures. Look at the flags, the corner bodegas, the murals on the walls.
After the Second World War thousands of Puerto Ricans arrived. As US citizens they could travel without a visa. They found work in the waterfront factories, including the huge sugar refinery by the river.
Later Dominicans and other Latin Americans joined them. For decades you heard more Spanish than English on these blocks.
In the 1970s, during New York's fiscal crisis, th…
8
The Rail Yard That Became a Park
You have reached the shore of the East River, in an open park facing the Manhattan skyline. Look down: in the grass there are still traces of cobblestones and bits of track. It was not always a place for picnics.
This land was the Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal, a rail freight yard. Freight cars arrived by barge from New Jersey, were uncoupled here, and a small fleet of locomotives distributed them to the factories of the neighbourhood.
When industry left, the Williamsburg waterfront was a strip of empty warehouses and vacant lots. In the 1990s artists and musicians moved into those spac…
9
The Beer That Came Home
You are on North 11th Street, in front of an old industrial building with a huge logo: a round B and the word Brooklyn. This is the Brooklyn Brewery, one of the best-known craft breweries in the United States.
The story starts much earlier. In the late nineteenth century Brooklyn was one of the country's brewing capitals, thanks to German immigrants. Williamsburg and Bushwick had dozens of breweries.
With Prohibition, from 1920, many closed for good. Those that survived could not withstand competition from the big national brands. In 1976 Schaefer and Rheingold, the last two big Brooklyn bre…
10
The Giant Pool of the Great Depression
You are by McCarren Park, on the edge between Williamsburg and Greenpoint. Look at the big brick building with an arch in the middle. Behind it lies one of New York's largest public pools.
The park is named after Patrick McCarren, a state senator from Williamsburg who died in 1909. The pool came much later, in the depths of the Great Depression.
In the summer of 1936 the city opened eleven giant public pools, built with federal New Deal money. The driving force was Robert Moses, the all-powerful parks commissioner. McCarren was one of the biggest: it could take thousands of swimmers at once.…
11
Greenpoint, Little Poland
You are on Manhattan Avenue, in the heart of Greenpoint, the neighbourhood just north of Williamsburg. Look at the shop windows: butchers with sausages, bakeries, signs in Polish. For more than a century this was New York's Little Poland.
In the nineteenth century Greenpoint was an area of shipyards and workshops. People spoke of its five black arts: oil refining, iron casting, printing, pottery and glassmaking. Dirty, hot and dangerous work.
On the banks of Newtown Creek, Charles Pratt set up a kerosene refinery called Astral Oil. His fortune later went into founding the Pratt Institute, on…
12
The Iron Ship Born in Greenpoint
You are in McGolrick Park, a quiet park in Greenpoint. Look at the bronze statue: a muscular sailor hauling on a rope. It is the monument to the USS Monitor, unveiled in 1938.
The Monitor was a warship unlike anything seen before. It was designed by the Swedish engineer John Ericsson for the Union during the American Civil War. It was almost entirely iron, sat very low in the water, and carried a revolving turret with two guns.
Its hull was built at the Continental Iron Works, a few blocks from here on the Greenpoint shore. It was launched on 30 January 1862, after only a few months of work.…
How long does the "Williamsburg: Hasidim, Hipsters and the Brooklyn Nobody Quite Understands" audio tour take?
It has about 22 minutes of audio across 12 stops and a 5.91 km walking route (~1 h 30 min on foot). Plan roughly 2 h in total, or split it up: you can pause and resume anytime.
Where does the tour start?
At stop 1, "The Bridge That Emptied the Lower East Side" (coordinates 40.7109, -73.9603). The app guides you from stop to stop with a map.
Is it free?
Trevurs is a free app for iOS and Android. There is also an optional Premium version, from USD 1.99, with unlimited offline downloads, access to every tour and no ads. It also helps keep an independent app alive.
Why use an audio tour instead of a guided group tour?
No group to keep up with and no guide to wait for. Start at any time of day, on your own schedule. Go at your own pace: pause, rewind or skip any stop. No need to commit 2 or 3 hours to a single tour: do one stop or the whole route. Works offline once downloaded.
What languages is this audio guide available in?
This tour is available in Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, Italian. Switch languages anytime from inside the app.
Do I need wifi to listen to this tour?
No. Download the tour over wifi before you go, then listen without any data connection.
How do I access this tour?
Download Trevurs on iPhone (App Store) or Android (Google Play), then open New York and pick "Williamsburg: Hasidim, Hipsters and the Brooklyn Nobody Quite Understands". No account required to start.
