GREENPOINT (from AIA Guide to New York City)
Greenpoint (pronounced Greenpernt in those gangster movies of the 1930s) is a quiet, ordered, and orderly community of discrete ethnic populations, with a central charming historic district all but unknown to outsiders, even those in neighboring sectors of Brooklyn.
Its modern history began with the surveying of its lands in 1832 by Dr. Eliphalet Nott, president of Union College, in Schenectady (America's first architecturally planned campus), and Neziah Bliss. Much of it was purchased for development by Ambrose C. Kingsland, mayor of New York (1851-1853), and Samuel J. Tilden, who went on to fame in politics and who is happily remembered for leaving a bequest for the establishment of a free public library in New York, an act that triggered the merger of the Astor and Lenox Libraries, and the establishment of the New York Public Library.

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