“I’m exhausted by New York life. I’m going back to Seoul to look for a teaching job. Let’s stop this and each find our own way.”
My roommate spoke with slow gestures, taking off his glasses to wipe his sunken eyes as if he’d been up all night agonizing. It was early 1984. My husband and I, along with our roommate in Soho, had been struggling with the ever-soaring rent. We had all been waiting for someone else to say the words "let's part ways" first. I was grateful he moved first. We simply nodded in agreement.
My husband and I crossed the Williamsburg Bridge to Brooklyn, searching for a space where the rent was cheap and we could both live and work. Past the bridge, the massive Domino Sugar Refinery with its towering chimneys caught our eye. We wandered north along the East River, peering into vacant warehouses.
We walked with the desperate hope that a room would simply fall from the sky. Eventually, we reached the edge of Greenpoint, where Brooklyn ends and Queens begins across a small creek. A dark red, five-story warehouse—a former dye factory—blocked our path like a dead end. We stopped to rest our tired legs. That’s when I saw a "RENT" sign on a shabby grey door that looked as if no one had passed through it in years.
Inside, the fifth floor was a vast, open space of over 14,000 square feet. Dozens of large windows lined the wall, stretching from waist-height to the ceiling. The rattling of the old window frames felt like a greeting. Through the glass, Manhattan sat across the river in full view. I leaned out, standing on my tiptoes, following the light shimmering on the murky water. The building’s edge met the river directly; though it was an ugly structure, it reminded me of a corner of Venice floating on the water.
A man began marking the floor with white chalk, allotting two windows per section. “Pick whatever space you want. Build your own walls. Since you’ll share a communal bathroom and shower, the rent will be cheap.”
Each unit was about 1,000 square feet, with ceilings twice the height of a normal house—perfect for an art studio. Other tenants chose spots with even floors and clean ceilings. We chose the messiest spot near the communal bathroom so we could connect our own pipes and have a private bath.
After dinner, we would watch Manhattan, shining like a giant jewelry-encrusted cruise ship on the water. I remembered my father’s constant refrain back in Korea: “Once you leave the Four Main Gates (of central Seoul), it’s hard to get back in.” It was the same here: Once you leave Manhattan, it’s not easy to return. I wasn’t sure if I ever would.
One summer morning, I woke up and screamed. A stranger seemed to be lying next to me. “What happened to your face?” I gasped. My husband’s face was lumpy and distorted, like a monster. He had been devoured by swarms of mosquitoes breeding in the nearby stagnant creek. He stepped out into the hallway and came back, saying, “The guy next door is worse. I couldn't even recognize him.”
We spent our first summer as newlyweds fighting mosquitoes and praying for winter. On windy days, the stench from the Newtown Creek sewage plant thirteen blocks away would waft toward us. It felt like living in a latrine. We had spent all our money building walls and connecting pipes. Between the mosquitoes, the smell, and the broken elevator, we climbed those five floors—the equivalent of ten regular flights—as if we were trekking the Himalayas.
The winter we longed for was not what we expected. Gale-force winds pierced the old windows, turning our unheated space into a freezer. I found myself missing the mosquitoes. We built a small "plastic house" in one corner with an electric heater, huddling there far away from the "romantic" windows. That spring felt so slow to arrive. I moved like a dull, heavy creature, layered in every piece of clothing I owned. Outside was actually warmer; I finally understood why homeless people wear winter coats even in the summer. Rats the size of forearms shivered atop trash piles, too cold to move even when I passed. I would lean against a wall in the sun, trying not to disturb my "fellow passengers" on this sinking ship.
In the midst of this hazy, unstable life, I became pregnant. There was a freight elevator, but it was for factory use only. On lucky days, the operator would wink and let me on. On unlucky days, my husband had to pull me from above and push me from behind as we scaled the five floors. Eventually, my belly grew too large to make the trip.
If I hadn't gotten pregnant, would I still be living there, huddled in exhaustion? Having a child was like a master’s whip, waking my spirit. I found a sudden surge of courage to flap my wings and find a new nest. We landed just three or four blocks away.
Let me pause my story of struggle to describe Greenpoint.
In the 17th century, sailors saw a grassy protrusion on the shoreline and called it "Greenpoint." When I first arrived, there was no green to be seen. I felt like a pioneer venturing into a dangerous wilderness without a gun. Later, artists moved in, raised their voices to fix the sewage smell, and planted trees in the desert to create an oasis. Today, it has regained its namesake beauty.
Greenpoint was originally settled by Irish and German dockworkers. As they moved on to wealthier neighborhoods, Polish immigrants replaced them. The men worked in factories and construction; the women cleaned buildings. Scattered among them, like "ugly ducklings," were Puerto Rican families.
Back then, most Greenpoint apartments had no bathrooms. There was a public bathhouse on Huron Street, built in 1903 in a Roman style. At its peak, it served over a thousand people a day. By the 1950s, as indoor plumbing became standard, it closed with only twenty users left.
Most residential buildings were three or four-story tenements from the early 1900s. The layouts were "railroad style"—rooms lined up like subway cars. The living room faced the street, the bedroom was in the middle, and the kitchen and bathroom were at the back, facing the yard.
Two houses down from me lived David’s mother, a Polish woman. I could see her from my window, darting in and out of her shed where she made smoked Kielbasa. We first met at Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn. As we waited for the nurse to call our names, she asked in her bright blue eyes if she could sit next to me. My second child was born on December 18th; her David was born on December 23rd. We spent seven months bonding in hospital hallways, two immigrants wondering how to make it in America.
Years later, we ran into each other on the street. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “I’m buying that building at the end of the block,” she said. It had 16 apartments and two stores.
She had saved every penny for ten years working as a live-in maid for a Jewish family in Manhattan. Her husband had saved from his job at an ironworks. Together, they bought the building. She scrubbed her new home with a ferocity that reflected her past. “My mistress made me clean the floors on my hands and knees for ten years,” she told me, showing me her calloused, darkened knees. “I didn't spend a single cent.”
Her husband was always somber. “His head was hit by a falling piece of iron at work,” she whispered. “Now his ears ring constantly. I’m afraid he’ll hear that sound for the rest of his life.”
We met at the park almost every day while raising our kids. She was so frugal she reused juice bottles until the labels wore off. Eventually, they became wealthy, paying off their mortgage and buying 52 acres upstate. She would bring me venison sausage from deer they hunted on their own land.
Greenpoint was a Polish stronghold. They were insular; there were almost no Black or Asian residents. In my children’s elementary school, there was only one Vietnamese child and my two. Polish landlords famously refused to rent to Black tenants.
Despite their frugality, the Polish women loved fashion. They would fly back to Poland with five massive suitcases full of jeans and leather jackets bought on Fulton Street. I remember one neighbor telling me she almost died on a layover in Hamburg because she had so many bags she was afraid to leave them to go to the bathroom.
The service in the neighborhood was cold. If I walked into a Polish-run store, the female clerk would look at me with a gaze that said, “I am a white woman, superior to you. Buy something or get out.” They had thin, straight lips that, when pursed, made their faces look like white masks with a single red line.
Every Sunday, the neighborhood transformed. The Polish residents dressed in their finest—expensive furs and leathers—and paraded to church. It was a long, solemn procession of faith. Even my children, seeing everyone cross themselves as they passed the church, began to do the same. I wondered if my son was crossing himself three or four times because he knew I couldn't afford a Happy Meal, praying for God to make us rich enough to eat at McDonald's.
One day, everything changed at the Metropolitan Pool. I walked in to find yellow floral curtains over the windows. In the locker room, I nearly fainted—blonde wigs were perched on stands in almost every locker, looking like severed heads. They were the wigs worn by Hasidic Jewish women.
The pool was full of women swimming in long skirts that ballooned in the water. I was the only one in a swimsuit. A woman, pale as soaked tofu, approached me. “Do you need a job?” she asked. “What job?” “Cleaning job.” She thought I was a cleaning lady. I smiled and replied, “I need a cleaning lady, too.” She turned red and scurried away to whisper with her friends. I found out the pool had set aside hours for Hasidic women. Even in the "melting pot" of New York, people still tried to carve out their own exclusive bubbles.
By the early 2000s, gentrification hit Greenpoint like a wave. The Domino Sugar factory closed in 2004. Artists had paved the way, turning empty warehouses into galleries and cafes. Then came the developers. Rents spiked. The Polish and Puerto Rican families began to vanish, replaced by young, professional "hipsters."
I see them now, young professionals from other states and Europe, clutching maps and looking for apartments. They sit in cafes on weekdays, staring at laptops. I asked my hipster son what they do for a living. “They have trust funds or live off stock dividends,” he said.
The artists who made the neighborhood "cool" were now being priced out. They moved further south to Red Hook or Bushwick, or north to Beacon. They develop a place, and then they are forced to leave. It’s a repetitive cycle. Being a painter is a reckless life—you need so much space but have so little time to earn money. It’s an addiction you can’t quit.
I walked along the East River early one Saturday morning. The only tracks in the sand were from ducks and gulls. I saw a seagull with only one leg, staring at me as if it had given up on flying. I felt a kinship with it—surviving in a harsh world despite being different.
I’ve lived in Greenpoint for 30 years—longer than I lived with my parents in Seoul. But the neighbors I knew are gone. The Empire State Building, which I watched from my kitchen window for decades, is now blocked by a 40-story condo.
The informality of the old neighborhood is dead. Jose, the gossip from the back house, is gone. The corner deli where my husband could buy beer on credit has been renovated into something chic and unrecognizable. Lisa, who watched for the mailman from her window, and Jay, with his raspy voice, have vanished. My Polish neighbors moved to Maspeth or Ridgewood.
In early 2014, I finally left the nest I had occupied for three decades. Following my father’s old logic, I moved from Brooklyn toward Manhattan, stopping at the edge of the Hudson River. I flapped my wings one more time, leaving the place that had defined my life in America.
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