Brighton Beach is a neighborhood in the southern portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, within the greater Coney Island area along the Atlantic Ocean coastline.

It is known for its high population of Russian-speaking immigrants, and as a summer destination for New York City residents due to its beaches along the Atlantic Ocean and its proximity to the amusement parks in Coney Island.

[6] Brighton Beach is included in an area from Sheepshead Bay to Sea Gate that was purchased from the Native Americans in 1645 for a gun, a blanket and a kettle.

[9] The Brooklyn, Flatbush, and Coney Island Railway, the predecessor to the New York City Subway's present-day Brighton Line, opened on July 2, 1878, and provided access to the hotel.

[9] In December 1887, an extremely high tide washed over the area, creating a new, temporary connection between Sheepshead Bay and the ocean.

Wrote the Brooklyn Daily Eagle: "Unless [Engeman] is very lucky the next races on the Brighton Beach track will be conducted by the white crested horses of Neptune.

This was accomplished by lifting the estimated 5000 ton, 460 by 150 feet (140 m × 46 m) building, using 13 hydraulic jacks, after which 24 lines of railroad track – a mile and a half length in total – were laid under it, and 112 railroad "platform cars" (flat cars) pulled by six steam locomotives were used to pull the hotel away from the sea.

Brighton Pike offered a boardwalk, games, live entertainment (including the Miller Brothers' wild-west show: 101 Ranch), and a huge steel roller coaster.

[8] The years just before and following the Great Depression brought with them a neighborhood consisting mostly of first- and second-generation Jewish-Americans and, later, Holocaust concentration camp survivors.

[11] During the 1970s fiscal crisis, the exodus of government workers and other middle class residents to suburban areas accelerated; accordingly, many of Brighton Beach's freestanding houses and bungalows were subdivided into single room occupancy residences for the poor, the elderly and the mentally ill. Brighton Beach suffered from arson as much as it did from constant drug trades.

[11] So many Soviet Jews immigrated to Brighton Beach that the area became known as "Little Odessa" (after the Ukrainian city on the Black Sea with a significant Jewish population in the first half of 20th century).

[4][28][29] A large number of Russian immigrant firms, shops, restaurants, clubs, offices, banks, schools, and children's play centers opened in the area.

[30] The value of real estate in Brighton Beach started to rise again, even though drugs remained a social issue in the area through the early 1990s.

[31] This address has become the destination of wealthy businessmen, entertainers, and senior officials from the former Soviet Union, and with their purchase of units at the Oceana, area housing prices have risen.

[11] As apartment buildings started to be built in large numbers in the 1930s, many of those who moved into the neighborhood were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, often by way of the Lower East Side.

They came from many countries, but also set the stage for a later wave of Jewish immigration from the Soviet Union that started in the 1970s, when Brighton Beach became known as "Little Odessa,"[1][33] and "Little Russia".

[34] An annual festival, the Brighton Jubilee, celebrates the area's Russian-speaking heritage, being populated heavily by Russian and Ukrainian Americans.

[8] The area has also been called "the land of pelmeni, matryoshkas, tracksuits, and...vodka" due to its large population of Soviet immigrants.

[39] As of 2010[update], increasing numbers of Muslim Central Asians were moving into Brighton Beach, and based on the historic Soviet influence over these areas, these immigrants also speak Russian.

[49] Brighton Beach is considered a hot spot for the Russian Bratva,[50] though public perception has been that organized crime "has largely gone away.

[citation needed] The major Russian criminal element in Brighton Beach was the international Russian mafia group, known as vor v zakone or "vory," and the first vory crime boss in Brighton Beach was Evsei Agron, who controlled the area's crime during the 1970s and 1980s until his death in 1985.

[53] After the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, many ethnic Russian criminals illegally entered the United States, coming especially to Brighton Beach.

[citation needed] The infamous vor Vyacheslav Ivankov, who dominated the Brighton Beach underworld until his arrest in 1995, arrived during this wave.

[57] The United States Postal Service operates the Brighton Station post office at 3157 Coney Island Avenue.