Sunrise on Sunset Park

By Marion Palm

This book tells how a group of immigrants from Finland founded the fi rst
co-ops in our nation focusing on one in a group of associations that are
organized around Sunset Park, a New York City public park with an outlook
over the harbor that is located on the highest hill of this neighborhood from
the perspective of a Swedish-American fi rst generation person accepted by
the Finns. This is an inside look into how one co-op has functioned adapting
with the growth of Brooklyn and New York City. While it is tempting to
want to examine each of the co-ops and compare how they are similar
and differ from one another, it is more important to focus on how they
cooperated with each other to remain independent and are able to adapt
to changes. This book is organized into chapters that focus on different
aspects of co-op living and includes a Patriotic Tour at the end to help
the reader understand why it is important to be all-inclusive when writing
history and important also to put new residents in the very spots where
history happened, even if the original spot has been changed over time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 13, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462869725

Marion Palm

Marion Palm is a prominent poet/singer who lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is the only child of Swedish immigrants and was raised in a bi-lingual Swedish speaking home.. When her marriage ended back in 1982, she returned to her roots in Brooklyn and discovered she could live without a car and use public transportation to get to and from work. She was also able to get back to performing and writing, and that was possible because she lives in a co-op, not your ordinary co-op but one of the original Finnish co-ops.

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Copyright © 2011 by Marion Palm.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 09/15/2023

Xlibris

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Contents

1.     Introduction

2.     Setting the Scene

3.     How The Co-Ops Work

4.     Telling Some Stories of Co-op Characters

5.     9/11

6.     Transitions

7.     Acceptance

8.     Appendix – Walking Tour

9.     Acknowledgements

Old%20Photo%20of%20our%20house.jpg

This book is dedicated to

my son Noah Palm Paris

Sign%20Scandinavaska%20Varer.jpg

BOOK SUMMARY

T HE SUNSET PARK neighborhood stretches from 17 th to 65 th Street and from the waterfront to 8 th Avenue. Over 100 years ago, we were the southern edge of the City of Brooklyn. The blocks from 17 th to 39 th Street were once called South Brooklyn and the blocks from 39 th to 65th Street were lower Bay Ridge. Since 1965, we’ve been known as Sunset Park. Our soil comes from up north. It was pushed here 14,000 years ago by a glacier creating the ridge that runs along 6 th Avenue. We are the highest point in all of Brooklyn.

This book tells how a group of immigrants from Finland founded the first co-ops in our nation focusing on one in a group of associations that are organized around Sunset Park, a New York City public park with an outlook over the harbor that is located on the highest hill of this neighborhood from the perspective of a Swedish-American first generation person accepted by the Finns. This is an inside look into how one co-op has functioned adapting with the growth of Brooklyn and New York City. While it is tempting to want to examine each of the co-ops and compare how they are similar and differ from one another, it is more important to focus on how they cooperated with each other to remain independent and are able to adapt to changes. This book is organized into chapters that focus on different aspects of co-op living and includes a Patriotic Tour at the end to help the reader understand why it is important to be all-inclusive when writing history and important also to put new residents in the very spots where history happened, even if the original spot has been changed over time.

You will not find the crime stories that shattered the reputation of Sunset Park after the white flight that came with the early 1960s. This book covers what happened in this community from the early 1980s when people rediscovered Sunset Park. You won’t find references to exactly how these co-ops came to be, because each co-op has its own history and that history can only be learned by reading the minutes of meetings that even members of individual co-ops don’t have access to. I had unusual access because I had access to minutes of my own association, speak Swedish and am Scandinavian-American, so I was able to build trust and learn things others don’t know. I also had access to people and documents as a board member, council member, church administrator for two churches, and having served on several committees for Community Board #7. There are deeper secrets of things that happened in the co-ops, but this will stay skeletons in our closets out of respect for those who have passed away.

PROLOGUE

Excerpt from The Brooklyn Spectator – April 27, 1973

T HE BOROUGH’S FIRST House Was In Sunset Park, a story by Tony Giordano tells how Sunset Park has a culture and how relatives have handed down the information and history of this neighborhood. The story tells how in 1636, William Bennet and Jacques Bentyn bought a great deal of land near the head of Gowanus Bay and during that year built the first house in Brooklyn on 28 th Street and Third Avenue on what was to someday become that intersection. The Schermerhorn House, built on the same site in 1690, after the Indians burned the other house to the ground was brick, had double chimneys and an uneven plank board fence close to four huge trees. It stood as the oldest house in Brooklyn until the 1900s. This neighborhood subsequently attracted the Italians, and later people from Puerto Rico and South America, and more recently the Chinese. But, this book is about the Finns, the culture they brought over here from the old country and the experiment now known as the Finnish Co-ops. Their culture needs to be remembered and celebrated, especially since many of these co-ops are about to be one hundred years old as they were established in the early 1920s, before the Great Depression. I live in the second oldest co-op in the nation and the first to have a rental property incorporated into it that offsets maintenance costs. The co-op is unique because members look out for each other and check on people. This is not how others view people who live in the city. We are seen as a city that is always on the move, with no roots. But, in this book, you will learn differently. You will learn how a community of people can govern themselves and do it democratically. During the Great Depression, the Finnish co-ops stood. They held up because they are all self-maintained and owned all cash. Some of them were lost, but enough of them survived into the new millennium and still function as their by-laws underpin proprietary leases that allow mortgages. As of this date, seven have survived out of the two dozen