Up From the Flames in Bushwick

New Yorkers of a certain age remember when "Bushwick" evoked visions of urban doom. In the 1970s, the South Bronx grabbed the headlines — what with smoke rising in the background during Yankees' World Series telecasts. Bushwick, in Brooklyn, suffered the same spate of arson fires leaving block after block looking as if it had been bombed. The story of Bushwick's tragic demise — and of its inspiring rebirth — is told compellingly in "Up From Flames: Mapping Bushwick's Recovery 1977–2007," on view through August 26 at the Independence Community Gallery of the Brooklyn Historical Society at Pierrepont and Clinton streets in Brooklyn Heights.

Kings County, today coterminous with the borough of Brooklyn, once comprised six towns: Brooklyn, Bushwick, Flatbush, Flatlands, New Utrecht, and Gravesend. Bushwick in turn comprised present-day Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and Bushwick. These joined the city of Brooklyn in 1855, and for several decades formed Brooklyn's main manufacturing district. As a neighborhood, Bushwick won particular renown as a center of brewing. Many German immigrants settled in the area. "Brewers' Row" formed near the border of Bushwick and Williamsburg. Most of the German breweries failed to survive Prohibition. The recipe for Brooklyn Lager, which the Brooklyn Brewery began producing in the 1980s, came from Claus Lipsius, one of Bushwick's old German breweries.

Tenement and apartment-house blocks clustered near the factories. Early 20th-century crowding led to squalid conditions in some areas, and in the 1930s the Williamsburg Houses, near Brewers' Row, replaced several blocks of tenements. The Landmarks Preservation Commission recently granted landmark status to these residences. The architectural critic Lewis Mumford infamously wrote in the 1930s that for light, air, and general salubriousness, the Williamsburg Houses excelled the luxury apartments of Park Avenue. This part of Brooklyn contains many housing projects, so it's easy for the pedestrian to compare the Williamsburg Houses, with their low-rise buildings centered on comely courtyards, with conventional, banal projects — Bushwick Houses and Hylan Houses — that came later.

Another thing this part of Brooklyn contains is a lot of fresh-faced young people, many of them into creative pursuits (or the hangerson of those into such pursuits). They eagerly reside in tenements such as those torn down for the Williamsburg Houses. The bodegas now share streets with coffee houses and hipster hangouts. The name "Bushwick" now resonates among the young across America. And this tells us much about the dynamics of urban change.

It also brings us back to "Up From Flames," which uses photos, press clippings, and maps to convey a tremendous amount of information. In the 1970s, some in city government spoke of "planned shrinkage" — government policy to accelerate the depopulation of neighborhoods such as Bushwick so dwindling city resources need not be spread so thin. Thirty years later, rising population and rising property values have spurred an outward-spreading gentrification that not a single — not one — 1970s policy expert would have predicted or even thought possible. In other words, Bushwick no longer worries about planned shrinkage. Bushwick worries about success.

As "Up From Flames" makes clear, Bushwick's gentrification didn't happen in a vacuum. Rather, government initiatives, beginning with the Koch administration, and community organizations infilled Bushwick's burnt-out lots with low-rise housing, making the neighborhood physically whole again. This was just in time for the great L train exodus of the young, first to Williamsburg from the East Village, then to Bushwick from Williamsburg .

Factory workers lived in tenements. Factory owners lived in mansions, many of which still stand along Bushwick Avenue, one of the city's great residential thoroughfares. But by far the most attractive reason for a lover of city architecture to venture to Williamsburg is to see St. Barbara's Church, at Bleecker Street and Central Avenue, not far from the mansions. Helmle & Huberty, Brooklyn's pre-eminent City Beautiful classicists, designed St. Barbara's, which opened in 1910. It's said the name came from Barbara Epping, the wife of local brewer Leopold Epping. Is any church in the five boroughs more majestic than St. Barbara's, inside or out? I doubt it.

We too seldom see this Baroque sumptuousness in New York, where Gothic (much of it quite good) trumps the classical in our churches. But oh! What a dome! German Catholics built it. Italians inherited it. Both peoples knew from Baroque. So too the Latin Americans who now form St. Barbara's congregation. The church shines like a jewel amid infill housing, a Baroque beacon proclaiming there will always be a Bushwick.

fmorrone@nysun.com