Sheepshead Bay
The Canarsee Indians lived generally undisturbed until nearly 150 years after European settlers arrived in adjacent Gravesend in 1643. In the 18th century, the Wyckoff and Lott families built homesteads and farms. Built in 1766, the Henry and Abraham Wyckoff House still stands today on the corner of Kings Highway and East 22nd Street. One Wyckoff family home was built in 1652. It is the Pieter Claesen House in today’s Flatlands, Brooklyn, and it is believed to be the city’s oldest surviving home. Restored in 1982, the Pieter Claesen House is now a public museum. The Hendrick I. Lott House, built in 1720 and enlarged in 1800, is also a landmark home in Flatlands, located on East 36th Street.
Fishing in the bay became popular in the early 19th century, and little cottages were built along the rim. Sheepshead Bay was named after the Sheepshead fish, and since pre-colonial times, it has been a place for fishing, sailing, and other maritime activities. The bay was originally part of the Coney Island Creek. In the 1840s and before, the area was a secluded community of farming and fishing. It became a vacation destination beginning in the summer of 1840. Benjamin Freeman owned much of the land around the bay, and in 1844, opened one of the first hotels here. He called it The Sheepshead, named after the common marine fish. This would give the area its name. Tourists came in the mid-19th century, when more hotels were built, like Sam Leonard’s Hotel and Tappen’s Hotel. When Ocean Avenue was opened, it became the first direct route to the area.
During the 19th century, the bay area did not have a reputation as luxurious as Manhattan Beach and Brighton Beach. In the 1870s, a large farm was subdivided for development. This led to more development, including 400 houses being built by the end of the century, as well as shops, churches, and a post office. Businesses such as seafood restaurants started to be built on Emmons Avenue. The Ocean Avenue Footbridge was built by Austin Corbin in 1880. It allows people to cross the bay, connecting Emmons Avenue and East 19th street to Manhattan Beach.
As a recreational spot, sports were popular in Sheepshead Bay. Besides fishing and boating, there was horse racing. In 1880, the Coney Island Jockey Club founded a racetrack, which sparked population growth in nearby areas. Gilded Age moguls funded the sport. Among these was August Belmont Jr., who was known as the godfather of horse racing.
The Sheepshead Bay racetrack, taken by George Bradford Brainard, courtesythe Brooklyn Museum
In 1911, the Vin Fiz, piloted by Calbraith P. Rodgers, used the Sheepshead Bay Race Track as its runway when it made the world’s first transcontinental flight. Racetrack betting would become illegal in the 1910s, making the track repurposed for auto racing. In 1915, the Sheepshead Speedway replaced the track when the Coney Island Jockey Club disbanded. Italian racing legend Dario Resta drove an automobile here when he raced an airplane steered by pioneering pilot Katherine Stinson.
Auto racing lasted from 1915-1919, but this too fell out of popular tourism attractions. Not far away, Coney Island opened and had a subway connection. This also decreased tourism to Sheepshead Bay. The race track was subdivided for housing and bungalows were set up along Millionaire’s Row. This increased the amount of permanent residents. The automobile track was completely demolished in 1919, replaced with housing.
The channel of the Sheepshead Bay waterway was dredged by 1916 and dredged further in 1922, by the New York City Dock Commission. The City improved the neighborhood in the 1930s, widening Emmons Avenue and modernizing buildings. Sheepshead Bay residents wanted a place to store their boats and socialize with locals, leading to the formation of yacht clubs. Among these was the Miramar Boat and Canoe Club, founded in 1938. During the Second World War, Sheepshead Bay had a maritime training station that opened on September 1, 1942 and took up 76 acres across the Bay. Around 115,000 servicemen were trained there. Kingsborough Community College now sits at this site. In the 1950s, brick apartment buildings replaced wooden houses. By 1960, Sheepshead Bay was the fastest growing Brooklyn community.
Sheepshead bay was once predominantly Irish and Italian, but became a more diverse neighborhood over the years. The population increased during the 20th century. Jewish and Soviet immigrants arrived in the mid-late 20th century. Avenue U Chinatown is partially in Sheepshead Bay. Albanians, Turks and Hispanics also live in the neighborhood. Today, Sheepshead Bay is mostly residential. Condos are more common near Ocean Avenue, the center of the neighborhood. The northern shoreline along the bay has piers and tour boats, and many restaurants can be found in the area. Four branches of the Brooklyn Public Library are in the neighborhood.
Zohra Saedis a poet from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, who came to Brooklyn with her family in the 1980s. It was comfortable to settle in Sheepshead Bay due to there being many other Turkic people there. She lived on Ocean Avenue in Sheepshead Bay, where there was an Uzbek-Turkestani community. In an interview for the Coney Island History Project, Zohrareads “Brooklyn” and “Neptune Avenue,” poems that connect to her childhood. She writes about the place she and her friends used to play between Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay, and her times at the boardwalk along Coney Island. Zohra remembers playing in between the Brighton Beach bungalows, where some of her friends lived. She tells of ghost stories from Lundy’s and how she would dream of horses when she lived in a building where there were once horse races nearby. Sheepshead Bay had many diverse and multicultural spaces such as Russian, Turkish, and later Chinese American. Access to Southern Brooklyn involved access to beaches and getting invited over to other families’ homes. Zohra spoke Farsi, Uzbek, and Arabic before learning English at PS 254, a diverse school where she bonded with teachers and students. She went to Cunningham in Homecrest for junior high school, Sheepshead Bay High School, and Brooklyn College. She has an MFA in poetry from Brooklyn College and a PhD in Literature from the CUNY Grad Center. She also translates poetry from Turkestani and is a Distinguished Lecturer at Macaulay Honors College.
Learn More
Bowery Boys. “No Sheep in Sheepshead Bay, but Lots of Fish with Human Teeth.” The Bowery Boys: New York City History, 20 Feb. 2014, https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2014/02/no-sheep-in-sheepshead-bay-but-lots-of.html.
NYC Parks. Sheepshead Bay Piers Highlights. https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/sheepshead-bay-piers/history. Accessed 19 Apr. 2023.
Saed, Zohra. Zohra Saed: Poet and Writer from Afghanistan Who Grew up in Southern Brooklyn. 22 Dec. 2021, https://www.coneyislandhistory.org/oral-history-archive/zohra-saed.
Sarnoff, Sheri. “The Best Catch: A History of Sheepshead Bay.” Urban Archive, https://www.urbanarchive.org/stories/xGAjuRn3wWQ. Accessed 17 Apr. 2023.
Srour, Jennifer. “History of Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn: A Diverse Community.” EarSpa, https://www.earspa.us/blog/sheepshead-bay-history. Accessed 19 Apr. 2023.