1. Brownstones, Grey spaces: A
Look at the Portrayal of
Brownstone Stoops in Film
CRP 386/Social Life of Public
Places
Daphne Lundi

2. Research Questions
Background History of Brownstones in New York
Urban Spaces in film
Film Case Studies
Conclusions

3. Research Questions
What have been the common uses of brownstone stoops in New York, what
have been their social significance, and how is this changing?
What are common themes of representation of brownstone stoops in film?
• How are the uses of brownstone stoops portrayed in film?
• Who are the principal user groups portrayed in film?
• How are the relationships between these user groups portrayed in
film?
• How are various forms of demarcations associated with stoops
portrayed in film?

4. Background History of Brownstones in New York

5. Stoops, comes from Dutch word “stoep” for stairs.
Earliest brownstones, also known as row houses were built in lower
Manhattan before 1800 where most of the city’s population was located.
The buildings were mixed used serving as work spaces as well as
residential spaces.
By the late 19th century many brownstones were dilapidated and had lost
their cache as the residential choice for the upper class.
In the 20th century many affluent families in the city chose to leave the
urban core for more suburban lifestyles.
Many single family brownstones were converted into multi-unit dwellings to
deal with the growing demand. Poor and working class residents, mostly
from Central Europe were also moving into these areas, in tenements that
housed twenty or more families into a single lot.

6. In Brooklyn, brownstones were the housing of choice for many middle
class families.
Brownstone construction mostly ended in the 20th century due to the
increasing cost of land and suburban growth and the fact that the buildings
were seen as out of fashion.
After World War II small groups of white professionals and artists began to
buy old existing brownstones and renovate them. This became a major
movement in the 1960’s and 1970’s that was coined the name, the
“Brownstone Revitalization Movement” that supported a larger urbanist
movement “back to the city”.
With these new neighborhoods came neighborhood associations, historical
land marking and community gardens in abandoned lots (put a garden on
it: Frambach 2012 ).
These residents were part of a neighborhood movement that significantly
impacted planning.

8. Urban Spaces in Film
Cinematic Landscape: "the representation of material, real world and
subjectively organized scenery on the earth’s surface, which is loaded with
cultural additions, or a fictitious environment in the day-to-day dimension”
Cinematic spaces can be delineated in the way in which a film character
exits one space and moves to another and when the camera angle shifts
from one direction to another.
Borders are necessary in film as a way of framing the geography of the
movie. Without these borders, there is no room for discourse and it is
difficult to frame the film within a space, whether real or imagined.

9. Spike Lee helped to create a shift from Harlem to Brooklyn becoming the
center of black culture. This shift also helped to highlight spaces such as
brownstones and how they are part of urban life.
The use of brownstone space is a powerful framing technique that lets the
street itself reveal the conditions of everyday life in urban settings by
framing interactions.
In many of Spike Lee’s film as well as other films that capture brownstone
life what is striking about the portrayal of these spaces is that the spaces
themselves are not romanticized and have a level of “anthropological
authenticity”.
In films that examine New York life from an often neglected perspective,
“the neighborhood is introduced in the film before any of the major
characters “

10. Film Case Studies:
Street Scene (1931)
The Landlord (1970)
Do the Right Thing (1989)

11. Street Scene takes place in front of a brownstone in New York and
examines the goings on in the brownstone during a 24 hour period.

16. The Landlord centers around Elgar Enders, a white upper young man
who decides he no longer wants to live with his parents wealth and
decides to buy a brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn in 1970. At the time
the neighborhood has yet to be gentrified and is populated by low-
income black residents.

21. Do the Right Thing takes place during the hottest day of the year in
Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Tensions are growing between local
businesses, Korean grocery and Sal's Pizzeria. Mookie, Sal's
delivery boy stays in center of the action.

28. Conclusions
Stoops as buffer spaces
Stoops as audiences
Stoops as witnesses
Stoops as barriers
Stoops as living rooms for the working class