[7] In 1887, businessman Elias Kaplan showed the first Jewish residents around Brownsville, painting the area as favorable compared to the Lower East Side, which he described as a place where one could not get away from the holds of labor unions.

The area bounded by present-day Dumont, Rockaway, and Liberty Avenues, and Junius Street, quickly became densely populated, with "factories, workshops, and stores" located next to housing.

[12]: 38  The area's Jewish population participated heavily in civil rights movements, rallying against such things as poll taxes, Jim Crow laws, and segregation in schools.

[8][20] At one point in the 1943 published book, New York City Market Analysis, it had described Brownsville as having a variety of small industry unlike Lower East Side.

[12]: 5  Citing increased crime and their desire for social mobility, Jews left Brownsville en masse, with many black and Latino residents moving in, especially into the area's housing developments.

Backlash against the report, mainly on accusations of victim blaming, caused leaders to overlook Moynihan's proposals to improve poor black communities' quality of life, and the single-mother rate in Brownsville grew.

It closed down a block of Herzl Street for use as a play area, and it created the biweekly Brownsville Counselor newspaper to inform residents about government programs and job opportunities.

Multiple robberies of businesses were reported every day, with robbers simply lifting or bending the roll-down metal gates that protected many storefronts.

In June 1970, two men set fire to garbage bags to protest the New York City Department of Sanitation's reduction of trash collection pickups in Brownsville from six times to twice per week.

[12]: 239 [37] In May 1971, the mostly black residents of Brownsville objected to reductions in Medicaid, welfare funds, and drug prevention programs in a peaceful protest that soon turned violent.

[12]: 240  In 1970, Mayor John Lindsay referred to the area, which had been the city's poorest for several years, as "Bombsville" because of its high concentration of empty lots and burned-out buildings.

Brownsville had not seen a similar revitalization because, unlike Pico-Union, it had not been surrounded by gentrified neighborhoods; did not have desirable housing; and was not a historic district or an area of other significance.

The South Bronx's coastline gave way to attractions like Barretto Point Park; Bedford-Stuyvesant offered brownstone townhouses comparable to those in affluent Park Slope, Fort Greene, and Prospect Heights; and Bushwick and Greenpoint became popular places for young professional workers once Williamsburg had become highly sought due to its waterfront location and proximity to Manhattan.

The area's largest employer is supposedly the United States Postal Service, and the lack of mobility for many residents encourages them to buy from local stores instead.

Many have been torn down and replaced by vacant lots or newly constructed subsidized attached multi-unit rowhouses with gardens, driveways, and finished basements.

Livonia Commons' postmodern buildings will contain 270 apartments for lower-income citizens and 11,000 square feet (1,000 m2) of commercial space at ground level.

[55] The initiative's 21,000 square feet (2,000 m2) of community space will host a senior center and two concentrations of school classrooms, operated by two different groups.

[41]: 12 (PDF p. 7) [62] In December 2014 the HPD issued requests for qualifications to determine which developers could build new affordable housing on one of 91 empty HPD-owned lots in Brownsville.

Despite Family Services' grandiose $3.8 million plan to rehabilitate the 65th Precinct building into a community center, it sits derelict as of 2012[update], with graffiti on the walls, garbage in the interior, and jail cells still intact.

[65] The site contains remains similar to those found in the African Burial Ground National Monument in lower Manhattan, as well as those discovered under the former 126th Street Depot in East Harlem.

[19][79] Empty lots and unused storefronts are common in Brownsville due to high rates of crime, mostly in the area's public housing developments.

A reporter for The New York Times observed that some of the area's playgrounds were inadequately maintained with broken lights and unlocked gates, and that shootings were common in these public housing developments.

[80] Brownsville was so dangerous that one UPS driver, robbed at gunpoint, needed an armed security guard to accompany him while delivering packages to houses in the neighborhood.

[44] In an effort to reduce crime, the NYPD started a stop-and-frisk program in the early 2000s; this was controversial especially in Brownsville, with 93% of residents in one eight-block area reportedly being stopped and frisked (compared to a 7% rate citywide).

In order to deter aircraft from flying through the area during World War I, parts of the park had turrets installed in "serviceable but inconspicuous locations" in 1918.

[101][102] The Zion Park War Memorial, a monumental wall based on a design by sculptor Charles Cary Rumsey and architect Henry Beaumont Herts, was installed in the triangle and dedicated in 1925.

[8] Brownsville is a heavily Democratic area; in the 2012 presidential campaign, President Barack Obama "won what was very close to a unanimous vote" in the neighborhood.

[132] Brownsville Academy, a relatively small school with 205 students as of 2016–2017, is located at 1150 East New York Avenue, close to the Crown Heights border.

There are proposals to convert the overpass into a free-transfer passage between the two stations, due to increasing ridership and plans for additional housing in the area.

[8] One block away, the incorrectly spelled Strauss Street was named after two former Macy's co-owners, brothers Nathan and Isidor Straus, the latter of whom died when his wife Ida gave up a seat on a lifeboat off the sinking RMS Titanic.