The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn: An American Story

by Stuart M. Blumin, Glenn C. Altschuler

Overview

Winner of the Herbert H. Lehman Prize from the New York Academy of History.

In The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn, Stuart M. Blumin and Glenn C. Altschuler detail how nineteenth-century Brooklyn was dominated by Puritan New England Protestants and how their control unraveled with the arrival of diverse groups in the twentieth century.

Before becoming a hub of urban diversity, Brooklyn was a charming "town across the river" from Manhattan, known for its churches and suburban life. This changed with the city's growth, new secular institutions, and Coney Island's attractions, which clashed with post-Puritan values.

Despite these changes, Yankee-Protestant dominance continued until the influx of Southern and Eastern European immigrants. The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn explores how these new residents built a vibrant ethnic mosaic, laying the foundation for cultural pluralism and embedding it in the American Creed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501765513
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	09/15/2022
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Stuart M. Blumin is Emeritus Professor of American history at Cornell University. He is the author or coauthor of several books including The Emergence of the Middle Class, Rude Republic, and The G.I. Bill.

Glenn C. Altschuler is Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He is the author or coauthor of twelve books, including Rude Republic, The G.I. Bill, and Cornell: A History, 1940–2015.

Table of Contents

Prologue: America's Brooklyn
1. Brooklyn Village
2. The City of Brooklyn"
3. On the Waterfront
4. Toward a New Brooklyn
5. Newcomers
6. Transformation
7. Acceptance, Resistance, Flight
Epilogue: Brooklyn's America

What People are Saying About This

Tom Lewis

Stuart M. Blumin and Glenn C. Altschuler have produced more than a history of Brooklyn. The tensions caused by German Protestants, Irish Roman Catholics, East European Jews, and African Americans from the south describe the basic form of ethnic succession in American cities. Their excellent book is about contemporary America and the immigrants who are bringing change to cities across the nation today.

Deborah Dash Moore

The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn is a well-told tale: lively and persuasive. It brings questions of religion to the fore in discussing Brooklyn as a suburb of New York even in the years when it was a separate city.

Clifton Hood

An important and fascinating book. Stuart M. Blumin and Glenn C. Altschuler chart Brooklyn's complicated relationship with Manhattan, the behemoth across the East River, and the city's and then borough's struggles to forge its own urban identity. The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn is an instant classic of New York City history

Thomas J. Campanella

Of all the groups responsible for Brooklyn's storied polychromy, among the least studied is its Protestant vanguard. Brooklyn's Anglo-Dutch founders helped end slavery, established splendid cultural institutions, and built Olmsted's greatest park—and then abandoned it all for the suburbs. The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn tells the story of this once formidable people who have left the scene as fully as the Lenape they displaced 400 years ago.

Kyle Roberts

Stuart M. Blumin and Glenn C. Altschuler vividly capture Brooklyn's development as a city, bringing to life a mosaic of neighborhoods, vibrant voluntary associations, and churches which provided the foundation for community for the diverse peoples who moved into the city.

Martin Lemelman

Anyone interested in history will be fascinated with The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn—an in-depth account of how the little village of Breuckelen transformed into the amazing multicultural borough we know today.

Editorial Reviews

Writing of Brooklyn's history with a notable tone of delight and exuberance, Blumin and Altschuler trace the transformation of early 'Breucklelen,' as the Dutch called it, into a suburban 'City of Churches' dominated by New-England style Puritanism and yet again into the ethnically diverse borough of New York City we recognize today.

Journal of Urban History

Blumin and Altschuler's Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn deftly traces Brooklyn's transformation from a post-Puritan enclave separated conveniently from sinful Manhattan by the East River to a modern swirl of urban ethnicities, races, religions, and classes, perhaps not Queens with parks and trees but not far away. Smoothly written, smartly analyzed, and deeply researched, The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn becomes An American Story, as its subtitle promises — a wonderfully satisfying book whose final sentences convey just how powerfully our past can illuminate our troubled present if we let it.

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