For our class meeting on February 19, we read two chapters from historian Suleiman Osman’s book The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York (Oxford, 2011.) During our discussion, we identified a list of values that the “brownstoner” movement embraced, as well as a list of values they rejected. We called the former category “authentic” and the latter “inauthentic.” (Brownstoners, by the way, are the people who reclaimed the brownstone-constructed housing in several districts of South Brooklyn in the period after World War II. They purchased buildings at a low cost, renovated them, and invested in brownstone-heavy neighborhoods. Brownstoners tended to be professionals and have the kind of capital — both social and economic — that allowed for dramatic change in these previously working class and, at times, blighted neighborhoods.)
Here’s our list with “authentic” on the left and “inauthentic” on the right. In the middle, we placed a few adjectives that we couldn’t fit in either category. How would you add to these lists?
