Williamsburg Beyond the Hype: A Neighborhood Guide

From village to industrial powerhouse

Williamsburg takes its name from Jonathan Williams, the surveyor who laid out its early streets around 1800. For a while it was an independent city, before merging into the City of Brooklyn in 1855. Its waterfront soon filled with shipyards, breweries, factories and, most famously, sugar refineries, and by the late 1800s it was one of the busiest industrial districts in the country.

The opening of the Williamsburg Bridge in 1903, then the longest suspension bridge in the world, changed everything. Tens of thousands of families, many of them Jewish immigrants escaping the crowded tenements of the Lower East Side, crossed the river to settle here. Italian, Polish, Puerto Rican and Dominican communities followed, each leaving a mark that you can still see today.

Bedford Avenue and the North Side

The L train's Bedford Avenue stop is the gateway to the neighborhood many visitors picture: coffee shops, record stores, vintage clothing, independent bookstores and bars. Artists began moving into the North Side's cheap industrial lofts in the 1980s and 1990s, and by the 2000s Williamsburg had become shorthand for a whole new kind of Brooklyn cool.

A 2005 rezoning opened the waterfront to residential towers, and the neighborhood changed fast. Some of the scrappy creative spaces moved east to Bushwick and beyond, but Williamsburg still has a strong live music scene, with well-known venues like Music Hall of Williamsburg and Brooklyn Bowl, and some of the best people-watching in the city.

Where to wander

• Bedford Avenue between North 4th and North 10th Streets for shops and cafés
• Wythe Avenue and Kent Avenue for converted warehouses, hotels and rooftop views
• McCarren Park, the neighborhood's backyard, with its restored 1930s public pool
• The Brooklyn Brewery on North 11th Street, brewing in Williamsburg since 1996, with a tasting room

Italian Williamsburg and the Giglio feast

In the northeast of the neighborhood, around Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church on North 8th Street, you'll find the remnants of Italian Williamsburg. Every July, the parish hosts the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and San Paolino, known simply as the Giglio. Its highlight is extraordinary: teams of men lift and "dance" a towering, multi-ton spire decorated with a statue of Saint Paulinus through the streets, to the music of a brass band. The tradition traces back to the town of Nola near Naples, and has been celebrated in Williamsburg for more than a century. If you're in town, it's one of the most memorable street festivals in New York. Check the parish's current dates.

Keep going: Bushwick

If you have more time, ride the L train a few stops east to Bushwick, where former warehouses are covered in large-scale murals. The area around the Jefferson Street station is the best place to start a street art walk.