1st paragraph

The once private neighborhood that my house sits atop has changed greatly in the past few decades. It once was supposed to house only electricians and their families, but as times went on, the dynamics of this small community have greatly changed. Electchester was supposed to be a haven for eletricians to escape their long days of working by providing affordable housing in a safe area. The neighborhood has everything from a school, to a shopping center complete with a grocery store and a drug store. Since Electchester has losened its exclusivity, the neighborhood has began to slowly decline in social, economic and religious views.

Interview

I had the privlege of interviewing Shawn Kretzschmar, a long time resident of my neighborhood who comes from a family of electricians. His father is an electrician, he is an electrician, his sister works for Local 3 and his youngest sister is going to school to help prepare her to do the same kind of work. He has been living in the neigborhood for over 30 years and says that the change he has watched has shocked him. I asked him many different questions about the life of the neighborhood, who he has seen come and go, and what he thinks of things as they are right now. He told me that the people he has seen come into the neigborhood recently seemed respectable, but the way they treat the area is horrible. He thinks that the neighborhood is unsafe and he thinks its a shame that there have been many cases of anti-semitism.

"This isnt the neighborhood I remember growing up in, we usto play outside at night and not have to be home when it gets dark, now you would be a fool to let you kid stay out after the street lights go on".

The greatest news to many residents ears is that they are going back to the old ways. In order to live here, you must be an electrician. When Shawn told me that, his face was glowing and he seemed like he just learned that he had won the lottery. "I've watched some great ideas go wrong, but i dont think that is possible in terms of improving the neighborhood".

1. How long have you lived here?
2. What made your parents move here?
3. Did the area you live in have an impact on your career choice?
4. what changes have you seen while living here?
5. How has the anti-semitism affected you
6. Do you think that the neighborhood has room for change?
7. If you could move out now and never come back, would you?

Library research pt 1.

href="http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=7&did=967436631&SrchMode=1&sid=1&Fmt=3&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1191350187&clientId=13031">

HOLLOWAY, LYNETTE. "NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: CENTRAL QUEENS; At Last, the 107th Moves In. " New York Times [New York, N.Y.] 17 Apr. 1994, Late Edition (East Coast): A.9. National Newspapers (27). ProQues

The first article I found was about the 107 police station. The article told how after many in its desired home spot, just across the street from the Electchester shopping center. The police would have moved into the building earlier, but there were many repairs needed. When it all came down to it, a deal was made and the police would move out of their old building, into the newly renovated building which had been teasing them for months now. Although the police had an old headquarters, it was not as roomy as they would have liked. They used to stay in a building, which once was a one-story parking garage. Prior to the police station being taken over, cops used to park in residential areas, taking spots, which could have been used by the people. When the project was done, the police had a parking lot equipped with 122 parking spots. Although the people of electchester felt more safe after the police moved into the station and patrolled the area more carefully. Although there were complaints about how effectively they do there job, residents were still happy. months of fighting and many repairs being needed, the station was finally going to be built.

2 paragraphs

Electchester, a neighborhood once dominated by electricians, is slowly opening up to a much broader group of people. The neighborhood began construction on the buildings in 1949, originally to house the men and their families who worked for Local 3, the union which is in charge of electricians. The community sits atop 103 acres of land every acre developed with buildings, some three stories, most sixstories, and two towers which stand alone. There are 38 buildings which can house approximately 6,000 people. But over time, many things have changed, the people, the neighborhood, and the way everyone sees whats going on.

Before becoming over run by brick and cement, the land was once a country club. Now electchester is nothing more than another place to live. The area usto be safe, but recently there have been burglaries and murders which doesnt sit right in mnay peoples stomaches. The school which is encompassed by the neighborhood is Public School 200, a relatively good school, now taking children from kindergarden to 8th grade. The area is slowly losing its value to crazy kids, a new generation, and a scarse number of electricians, what the neighborhood once stood for.

pre 1950

The bricks seem new, and the air conditioners are inside the building, but this structure is older then you may imagine. The building was constructed in 1949, and has been touched up countless times to hide water stains, broken bricks and a collapsing roof. Although the building seems to be encompassed by a green lawn, they only began maintaining it recently and it doesn’t hold up as well as they wish it did. The wiring scheme inside the building is insane, they made it that way so that no electrician could rewire the apartment or do anything to mess it up.

Although the outside of the building seems well kept, the inside of the building isn’t maintained so well. When it rains, the basement floods but no one seems to do anything. The inside of the building smells like an ethnic food fair, and the people well resemble that. Many of the people in my building are either immigrants or old ladies whose husbands who died. The people come and go, but the building seems to go unchanged. No one seems to realize that no matter what, the building wont change externally.

The structure of the building seems to be holding up very well, and although the people seem crazy, it’s a great place to live. I have lived in the building for 15 years, and I have seen many people come and go, and I have watched more construction than I have the years when there is no construction. The building holds up well on the electrical aspect (go figure) but the building its self is falling apart. Sometimes we all seem to underestimate the place we call home.

When you think about the place you call home, you never think about the historical aspect of the area you live in. After doing this research I realize that places have more than just a visual aspect, you also have to take into account how the structure got there, why it was build and what was its original purpose. I think its more interesting to know what is behind the structure than what it looks like.

Bibliography 2

http://www.cooperator.com/articles/1283/1/Maximizing-the-Market/Page1.html


Maximizing the Market A Case Study in Strategic Energy Asset Management
By:Mike Gordon, 2006 MAY




This article is about how energy can be maximized and how Electchester is trying to do so by using certain air conditioners and also the way they use energy. They use a company called SEAM to help them maximize the energy in the neighborhood and how they can also get money from the energy market to maximize their profit. Before they began using SEAM, they didn't profit anything. Now that they use this company, they get $150,000 a year! Thats a lot of money to play around with.

Bibliography 1

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A02E4DF1631F936A25750C0A9629C8B63


Electchester Getting Less Electrical; Queens Co-op for Trade Workers Slowly Departs From Its Roots
By: David W. Chen, 2004, March 15

This article tells all about how the area that I live in, Electchester, was made specifically for electricians. It talks about how over the years it went from a very exclusive neighborhood, to a neighborhood where anyone of any profession could live in. There is still a very strong population of electricians, but now, there are people who live here who don't even know that the union building for electricians is up the block. The article also tells the demographics of the neighborhood, which tells everyone that my neighborhood is made up of mostly white people, and there is also a very strong population of elderly people. Today, rent is almost double the $475 that people use to pay when the neighborhood was first developed.

What goes up, cant come down.

There are many things that have gone up after 1950. When you look around, you can see a shopping center, a library, a bowling alley, but nothing really shows how this neighborhood is changing. The school went up a little before 1950, so I cant use that, but I found something even better than the school. I decided to showcase the playground behind my house. The playground went up when I first moved into the neighborhood and is available to all. It has changed over the years to fit the people in the neighborhood, but it has stayed relatively the same.

The reason I chose the playground is because it shows how the neighborhood is turning into a more child friendly place. Before it was full of people who just worked and slept, most people who live here had houses in Long Island and they just used their apartments for days when they worked longer hours than usual. Now this area is a haven for many struggling couples who have children and cant afford to have a nice house, or cant afford the cost of living any where else.

The playground is full of vibrant colors, slides and swings, and a play structure on which children can play in tubes, slide down the slide of their choice, and if they are daring they can climb on top of the structure and play up there. There is also a mini rock-climbing wall. This rock wall went up less than two years ago and seems to be like the biggest attraction to the park. Yong boys try to showcase their strength on it, and try there best to show off to their frantic parents, the other boys and the occasional little girl playing.

The playground is a large portion of life in my neighborhood, children rarely like to be home, and the park is also home to community events, like the “back to school BBQ”, fix our park day, and late night summer hang outs. There is a sign outside of the park which says that the park closes at nine, but everyone knows that there is no such thing as the park police.

My Neighborhood

What a beautiful day it is in my neighborhood. The sky is a crisp blue, the temperature just right, and there are many people around. The six story buildings surround you, and you can easily get lost if you don’t know your way around. There are always people around, walking their children home from school, driving to go food shopping, or in the morning waiting for the bus. There is always something to do in my neighborhood.

The buildings of my neighborhood explain a peoples past. The tall brick buildings have only been around for a few decades, and already they need work. They surely have seen better days, but they still serve their purpose. When you step into any building, you get a feel of something which most people live there life unexposed to. You get to smell a different kind of food on each floor, you get to walk next to so many different people, of different races and ages. My neighborhood is an amazing place to be.

There are a lot of different types of people who come to live in my neighborhood. Recently it seems as if my neighborhood is becoming “campus housing”. We have had a surge of young people coming to live here because of its distance to many local colleges. Not to long ago, you had to be an electrician in order to live in this neighborhood. Getting into my neighborhood was like winning the lottery. And if you weren’t an electrician, you could kiss your shot good-bye. Now this area is flooded by everyone. The two main groups of my area are older ladies, who once lived here with their husbands, and young couples just starting a family, most of these families having about two kids. Race isn’t much of a problem. This area is very diverse, due mostly to our location.

There are many great places to live in New York, but when your looking for a place to go that has you in the center, where it feels like you’re a local celebrity, my neighborhood is one of the greatest places to be.

http://iloveny.com
http://gothamist.com

Have we forgotten NY?

Forgotten New York is a look into the cultural past of New York, in
all aspects that seem to go unnoticed. The site lays out all of these
focal points, which locals never take into consideration. We never
seem to look at the small things, like store signs and their
historical content, or the different kinds of street lights you can see while
walking in any given neighborhood. The many treasures of New York we
walk past on a daily basis, and never think twice about why its there,
or why it looks the way it does. For those reasons alone, Forgotten
New York is a success, it makes us wonder and gives us some history
all at once. While looking at all of the components of this site, I
found most of them very interesting, but I thought that the most
interesting point was the section dedicated to the subways.

In the subway section of the site, there are many interesting
subsections. I found the section dedicated to the original
28 subway stations particularly interesting. I like to look
at the mosaic names of the stations, and all the factors that give the
station what it is. I think that this component of the site is in
place because it’s something that all New Yorkers look over, on a
daily basis. Every New Yorker has taken the subway in their life, but
never thinks to look twice at the fact that there is so much history
surrounding them. We also seem to forget that although these stations
have been touched up and remodeled, they have still been around for quite some time.

Forgotten New York helps us to look at the things we don’t appreciate
as much as we should. Although it helps us to remember what New York
had, it doesn’t show what it has, nor does it appreciate what it may
have in the future. New York is forever changing and although it
doesn’t appreciate its past just as much as it should, it still has a
lot of growing to do. New York is shaped by its past and its present
but it also needs to pay attention to what may come in the next
hundred years. Will all these things that were once forgotten be
completely gone? Or will New Yorkers realize what they are destroying
and finally begin to appreciate what they have? We wont know, but all
we can do is grasp the culture that our city has hidden behind the
bright lights and graffiti.