Brighton Beach

Brighton Beach is a neighborhood in the southern portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, within the greater Coney Island area along the Atlantic Ocean coastline. Brighton Beach is bounded by Coney Island proper at Ocean Parkway to the west, Manhattan Beach at Corbin Place to the east, Sheepshead Bay at the Belt Parkway to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the south along the beach and boardwalk.

It is known for its high population of Russian-speaking immigrants, and as a summer destination for New York City residents due to its beaches along the Atlantic Ocean and its proximity to the amusement parks in Coney Island.

Brighton Beach is part of Brooklyn Community District 13, and its primary ZIP Code is 11235. It is patrolled by the 60th Precinct of the New York City Police Department. Politically, Brighton Beach is represented by the New York City Council's 48th District.

Brighton Beach is included in an area from Sheepshead Bay to Sea Gate that was purchased from the Native Americans in 1645 for a gun, a blanket and a kettle.

Brighton Beach was located on sandy terrain, and before development in the 1860s, had mostly farms. The area was part of the "Middle Division" of the town of Gravesend, which was the sole English settlement out of the original six towns in Kings County. By the mid-18th century, thirty-nine lots in the division had been distributed to the descendants of English colonists.

In 1868, William A. Engeman built a resort in the area. The resort was given the name "Brighton Beach" in 1878 by Henry C. Murphy and a group of businessmen, who chose the name as an allusion to the English resort city of Brighton. With the help of Gravesend's surveyor William Stillwell, Engeman acquired all 39 lots for the relatively low cost of $20,000. Mostly patronized by the upper middle class, this 460-by-210-foot (140 by 64 m) hotel close to the then-rundown western Coney Island had rooms for up to 5,000 guests nightly and served meals for up to 20,000 people daily. The 400-foot (120 m), double-decker Brighton Beach Bathing Pavilion was also built nearby and opened in 1878, with the capacity for 1,200 bathers. "Hotel Brighton", also known as the "Brighton Beach Hotel", was situated on the beach at what is now the foot of Coney Island Avenue. The Brooklyn, Flatbush, and Coney Island Railway, the predecessor to the New York City Subway's present-day Brighton Line, opened on July 2, 1878, and provided access to the hotel.

Adjacent to the hotel, Engeman built the Brighton Beach Race Course for thoroughbred horse racing. In December 1887, an extremely high tide washed over the area, creating a new, temporary connection between Sheepshead Bay and the ocean. Wrote the Brooklyn Daily Eagle: "Unless [Engeman] is very lucky the next races on the Brighton Beach track will be conducted by the white crested horses of Neptune."

After that extremely high tide, and a decade of beach erosion, the Brighton Beach Hotel, by then owned by the Railway, faced the possibility of being "undermined and carried away." A "highly ingenious and novel" plan to elevate and move the entire building was begun by railway Superintendent J.L. Morrow and Secretary E.L. Langford. It was accomplished by lifting the entire estimated 5000-ton 460 by 150 feet (140 m × 46 m) hotel on 13 hydraulic jacks, raising the building above its plot, and then laying 24 lines of railroad track – a mile and a half long altogether – under it; then the building temporarily on 112 railroad "platform cars" (flat cars) was pulled by six steam locomotives and relocated another 495 feet inland. This careful engineering (by B.C. Miller) made the move successful; it began on April 2, 1888, and continued for nine days, and was the largest building relocation of the 19th century.