Community-driven Change in Prospect Lefferts Gardens and Greater Gowanus

Throughout the Center for Brooklyn History’s archival collections there exists evidence of grassroots community organizations mobilizing to improve the quality of life for Brooklyn residents. Two recently processed collections provide insight into the people, programs, and services of community-driven neighborhood associations in Prospect Lefferts Gardens and Greater Gowanus, meanwhile illuminating common and reoccurring issues faced by residents throughout the greater metropolitan area. This month we take a closer look at the history and impact of the Prospect Lefferts Gardens Neighborhood Association and the Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus.

The Prospect Lefferts Gardens Neighborhood Association (PLGNA) was founded in 1968 by Robert Thomason (1927–2020), a librarian and minister, in collaboration with a coalition of ministers looking to improve the quality of life for residents in the Prospect Lefferts Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn. PLGNA was incorporated in 1969 and organized its first public program that year, the Prospect Lefferts Gardens House Tour. The house tour strengthened the community by inviting neighbors into their homes and highlighting unoccupied residences to prospective buyers.

Through the 1970s, PLGNA and East Flatbush residents fought redlining in the neighborhood to promote a diversity of residents and effectively organized to ensure local banks invested directly into the community. In 1970, Thomason counted 300 neglected buildings (3 of them abandoned) throughout Prospect Lefferts Gardens. The organization hired its first community organizer with a combination of public and private funding. With the help of trained volunteers, by 1976, the group successfully improved the living conditions for about 70 deteriorating buildings consisting of approximately 3,300 apartments. The community organizer helped to organize tenants into tenant associations, mobilized neighbors to form block associations and created agreements that would benefit both tenants and property owners.

From 1983 through 1994, PLGNA received grants from the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal and the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development for neighborhood preservation and redevelopment programs. Additional activities included revitalizing the commercial corridor, organizing street cleanups, enlisting community members in a mobile patrol, and consulting community members on housing technical assistance, including tenant court representation, block and tenant association organizing, and housing rehabilitation.

In 1994, PLGNA lost funding from the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal for breaching their contract agreement. PLGNA could no longer afford to pay its staff and closed its offices on Flatbush Avenue, suspending activities for the latter half of the 1990s. In 2000, Thomason and a group of ministers led by Reverend Ronald Winley organized to revive the organization. PLGNA was remade as a community-based, community-driven project with a new mission to reclaim and revitalize the neighborhood through positive change. In this iteration of itself, the organization added new youth and workforce development programs to its roster. Meanwhile, continuing to address affordable housing, gentrification, and displacement of residents in Prospect Lefferts Gardens.

As PLGNA was regaining momentum, just two neighborhoods to the northwest, community members in Gowanus and Caroll Gardens were assembling to fight issues burdening their community. Linda Mariano (1943–2021), a retired art teacher and Gowanus resident since 1976, co-founded Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus (FROGG) with neighbors Bette Stoltz, Margaret Maugenest, and Mauren Donnelly. Local citizens came together to oppose a precedent-setting application for a zoning variant for a project along the community’s public waterfront of the Gowanus Canal.

In 2002, the owner of 460 Union Street, also known as the Green Building, filed a request with Community Board 6 to demolish the century-old building and replace it with a luxury condominium. The developer submitted a variance to the Board of Standards and Appeals (BSA) to rezone the site for residential use from its original industrial zoning. Residents of greater Gowanus were against the proposed development and saw the Green Building as a beacon of Gowanus’s urban industrial heritage. Many were also concerned for the health of the condominiums' future tenants, as the location sits on the waterfront of the heavily polluted Gowanus Canal. After two years of community advocacy and activism, the BSA denied the application for rezoning the property at 460 Union Street.

The successful campaign emboldened the organization to continue efforts combatting rezoning, promoting the historic preservation of Gowanus’s industrial heritage and restoring the environmental health of the Gowanus Canal. With the waterbody’s legacy as an industrial artery, the Gowanus Canal laid victim to illegal dumping and pollution from the factories that lined its shoreline for over a century. During heavy rainfall events, the city’s combined sewage overflow lets out directly into the Canal, adding untreated or partially treated human and industrial waste, toxic materials, debris, and storm runoff to the already burdened watershed.

In 2006 and 2008, FROGG joined with other local like-minded organizations to discuss environmental priorities for the Canal and address the government's role in the cleanup efforts. This included the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation, and the Urban Divers Estuary Conservancy, among others. The discussions were accompanied by representatives from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New York City's Department of Environmental Preservation, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It was unclear whose jurisdiction the Canal cleanup fell under causing any remediation or restoration efforts to be delayed until December 2008, when DEC Commissioner Peter Grannis sent a letter to the EPA asking them to evaluate the Gowanus Canal as a potential federal Superfund site.

Along with other community groups, FROGG mobilized in support of the Superfund designation. Together they organized demonstrations, produced informational materials to educate community members, and recruited signatures for a community petition. In March 2010, the EPA placed the Gowanus Canal on the National Priorities List of Superfund Sites, assigning the cleanup duties to the federal government and the fiscal responsibility to the industrial and municipal polluters. Much like PLGNA’s hiring of a Community Organizer for Housing, FROGG hired a Technical Advisor to provide services and support to communities dealing with the challenges of Superfund sites. The advisor and ensuing programs were funded by the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund Technical Assistance Grant Program. The grant provided support from 2012 through 2015.

Meanwhile, Linda Mariano and other members of FROGG worked to place the Gowanus Canal Corridor on the National Register of Historic Places as an Urban Industrial District. The designation would preserve the landmarks and architecturally significant buildings for future generations, allow for adaptive reuse of existing buildings and open spaces, and protect the Gowanus Canal Corridor from overdevelopment. The proposed historic district was up for nomination in 2013, however, New York State Historic Preservation Office postponed the proposal review, and no decision has been made.

As of 2022, both the Prospect Lefferts Gardens Neighborhood Association and the Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus are still active. Their efforts and impact extend beyond the activities introduced in this blog post. If you are interested in exploring more about these organizations and other Brooklyn-based community associations, you can browse the Center for Brooklyn History’s archival holdings in the online catalog. The Robert Thomason Prospect Lefferts Gardens Neighborhood Association collection is open for research. The Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus collection is still being processed and will be available for research later this month. The processing of these collections was made possible in part by a grant from the Documentary Heritage Program of the New York State Archives, a program of the State Education Department.