Part of the beauty of walking around NYC, is turning a corner and finding yourself in a completely different neighborhood than you were moments before. The diversity of this city is astounding, but can come with stark wealth and racial divides in housing that results in NYC having one of the most segregated school systems in the US.
When I first moved into the Prospect Park South neighborhood of Brooklyn the inequality in housing was immediately apparent on my street (Westminster Rd), with the pre-war walk-up apartment buildings typical of the block north of Church Ave juxtaposed by the iconic Victorian mansions south of Church Ave in the historic Ditmas Park neighborhood. The more I wandered around the blocks- which during COVID has been quite extensively since there’s little else to do- the more I noticed the differences in wealth families had depending on how far down the street they lived.
Were there trees? How tall were they? Did they have a lawn or just sidewalk? How many people did they share their building with? Did they have a car? Did they have a driveway? Did they have trash piled up blocking the sidewalk, or did they have their own designated trash bins neatly lined up along the street? Did they have a security system? Is their building freshly painted, well-maintained, or undergone recent renovations, or has it been neglected for decades? All of these elements, visible to a stranger on the street, become signifiers of wealth.
