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Community Corner

The Forgotten Red Light District of Fort Greene

Longtime resident recalls the transition of South Portland Avenue.

As one walks down South Portland Avenue, it’s hard to imagine it lined with anything but historic homes.

But for , it’s nearly impossible to forget that at one time, the strip of this street just south of Fort Greene Park was at the heart of a red light district in Fort Greene.

“Saturday nights you couldn’t walk down the street it was so crowded with prostitutes and drug dealers," Goldstein said, painting a portrait of South Portland that's almost unrecognizable today.

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Pointing to numerous homes on the block, as examples of places, which only rented out rooms," Goldstein reflected on these earlier days.

“There were boarding houses that housed mainly transients, and crime was rampant, so you wouldn’t really go out at night,” she said.

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Then on a hot summer evening sometime in the 1970s, Goldstein said everything changed.

"The city found itself in the middle of the annual summer riots that we used to have, and Mayor John Lindsay was walking the neighborhood trying to calm the situation, when someone from the neighborhood confronted him [Lindsay] with the reality that you couldn't get a mortgage in Fort Greene," Goldstein said.

According to Goldstein, that's when Lindsay, who was surrounded by reporters and flanked by the president of Chase Manhattan Bank, negotiated a mortgage pool for urban communities around New York.

"That was really the sort of the turning point for the area because up until that point, when you called the bank to ask for a loan, the second you told them you were interested in a mortgage for a place in Fort Greene, they’d very politely tell you, 'I'm sorry, we don't give out mortgage in your area,’" Goldstein said.

It would take many more years of fighting with the banks and a lawsuit brought on behalf of the people in Brooklyn by the New York Public Interest Research Group before these “questionable lending” practices would end, she said. 

However, Goldstein stressed that once it did, things changed for the better, relatively fast.

“Sudden there was an influx of investment in the neighborhood and boarding houses gave way to homes with more stable occupants, and real businesses began to return to the vacant store fronts around the area,” she said.

Today, Fort Greene remains an urban area on the rebound, with people far and wide flocking to one of the borough biggest success stories.

Though Goldstein was quick to point out that her love of Fort Greene began way back when.

“My husband and I always knew just how special the neighborhood was, which is why we became so active in seeing it improve,” she said.

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