Abroad in New York: Brighton Beach is Blooming

The New York Sun
Monday, August 2, 2004

By FRANCIS MORRONE

Brighton Beach claims many distinct and fascinating episodes in its history of roughly a century and a half. In the late 19th century, the genteel resort boasted the, lavish Hotel Brighton and the world-famous Brighton Beach Racetrack. In the 20th century, the neighborhood became a place for year-round residents, who commuted. swiftly to Manhattan, seemingly a world away, via the express trains of the Brighton Line (today's B train).

I The fantastic Brighton, Beach Baths served a middle-class Jewish population residing in brick apartment houses only steps from the beach and boardwalk, which in this part bore none of the raucous atmosphere of Coney Island just a few blocks to the west.

But Brighton, like Coney Island, experienced tough times, including a decreasing and aging population, rising crime, and deteriorating housing stock. The coup de grâce struck in 1997, when the Brighton Beach Baths fell to the wrecker's ball.

But something else had been brewing in Brighton, and that, of course, was the influx of Russian immigrants that began in the 1970s. Today, Brighton is as Russian as Chinatown is Chinese. On Brighton Beach Avenue and along the boardwalk, Russian food stores, restaurants, cafés, nightclubs, and book and CD stores abound.

On the site of the baths, Muss Development has built a vast – 850 units on 15 acres – luxury apartment complex called Oceana. It rises in improbable splendor from a sea of brown brick. If Oceana evokes Sunbelt resort architecture,

it may be because Muss hired Sandy & Babcock, a Miami firm that is big in resort design. Startlingly for Brighton Beach, apartments at Oceana range from $500,000 to $2 million, and have sold briskly, many to immigrant entrepreneurs who have decided to remain in the old neighborhood.

Yet Oceana is not such a departure for Brighton. Every 30 years or so Brighton gets an Oceana. The Musses themselves built Seacoast Towers in 195 9-61. Ads of the time boasted that this complex, built right on the water at Brighton 14th Street, represented luxury resort living an express ride

from downtown Manhattan. "You can save as much as $1,500 a year on the vacations you'll never have to take again. Here is unequalled perfection in individual luxury apartments plus a year-round vacation paradise right in the heart of the city." The lobby designs by Odessa-born, Brooklyn-bred Morris Lapidus remind us that such buildings did not import Miami style, but rather that Brooklyn exported resort style to Miami.

In 1936, Joseph Day – a titanic figure in New York's outer borough development – put up Brighton Beach Gardens, on Brighton Beach Avenue and Brighton 15th Street.

These luxe Art Deco buildings, which boasted uniformed doormen, saltwater bathtubs, and roof gardens, "adjoining Brighton Beach Baths," may be the handsomest buildings in Brighton Beach.

From Brighton Beach Gardens to Seacoast Towers to Oceana, hope springs eternal in Brighton Beach. As well it might in Brooklyn, where neighborhoods down for the count have an uncanny knack of springing back up for another round.