The DUMBO Brooklyn Neighborhood Guide: How an Ugly Name Built One of New York's Most Photographed Waterfront Districts

1. Why artists named it DUMBO — and why the strategy completely failed

By the mid-1970s, the blocks between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge had been functionally abandoned by industry. The warehouse buildings along Water Street, Front Street, and Jay Street — enormous 19th-century brick structures built for printing houses, tobacco storage, and rope manufacturing — were emptying out as New York's manufacturing base left the city. Rents were essentially nothing.

Artists who had been priced out of SoHo and Tribeca began moving in. They converted loft floors into live-work studios, running electrical cable themselves and insulating against the noise of the two bridges overhead. The neighborhood had no official name — it was part of a vague zone that official city maps called Fulton Ferry or simply 'Brooklyn waterfront.'

The acronym DUMBO was coined around 1978, with different accounts attributing it to different residents of the early artist community. The intent was explicit: 'Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass' was chosen specifically because it sounded industrial, unglamorous, and inhospitable. The artists had watched SoHo transform from a cheap artists' district into an expensive one as soon as it acquired a fashionable-sounding name. They hoped an aggressively ugly name would buy them time.

It did not buy them much. David Walentas, a real estate developer, had begun buying the neighborhood's large warehouses in the late 1970s through his company Two Trees Management, recognizing that the waterfront location and the proximity to Manhattan were exceptional regardless of what the neighborhood was called. By the 1990s, Two Trees controlled a significant portion of DUMBO's commercial real estate and was actively converting buildings into offices and high-end residential lofts. The artist community was largely displaced by rising rents through the 2000s. What remained was the name — which, once the neighborhood became expensive, stopped functioning as a deterrent and started functioning as a brand.

Ironically, DUMBO's relative obscurity during its industrial phase preserved much of its physical character. The cobblestone streets on Washington, Water, and Front streets were never repaved with asphalt; the cost and disruption of doing so was not worth it when the blocks were mostly warehouses. Today those cobblestones — original Belgian block from the 19th century — are one of the neighborhood's most valuable aesthetic features.

2. The Washington Street archway: understanding the photograph everyone takes

At the intersection of Washington Street and Water Street, a specific visual alignment occurs that has made this corner one of the most photographed spots in New York City. Looking west from the middle of the intersection, the rectangular arch of the Manhattan Bridge — built 1909, its stone towers modeled on the Arc de Triomphe — frames an almost perfectly centered view of the Brooklyn Bridge in the distance, with the cobblestones of Washington Street stretching toward it.

The alignment is a coincidence of urban geometry. Washington Street runs at a slight angle that happens to point directly through the Manhattan Bridge's arch toward the Brooklyn Bridge's central span. The perspective compression created by a standard 50mm lens (the equivalent on most smartphone cameras) pulls the two bridges into an apparent proximity they do not have in three dimensions — the Manhattan Bridge arch appears to dwarf the Brooklyn Bridge towers even though they are of similar scale.

What most visitors do not notice is the layer of urban infrastructure they are standing inside. The Manhattan Bridge carries both subway tracks (the B and D lines run across its upper deck, the N and Q on the lower) and automobile traffic on two decks simultaneously. The rumble of trains is a constant presence on the surrounding streets; on Water Street, immediately beneath the bridge approach, the sound of trains accelerating out of the Manhattan Bridge curve is loud enough to interrupt conversation. This noise — and the visual weight of the bridge structure overhead — is what made the surrounding blocks unattractive to developers for decades and what makes them still feel unlike anywhere else in New York.

The cobblestones on Washington Street between Water and Front streets are Belgian block, granite cobblestones that were the standard street surface for heavy-use Brooklyn streets in the late 19th century. They were imported as ballast on ships returning from European ports. Unlike the smoother paving stones used in SoHo, these are uneven enough to require attention underfoot, which contributes to the neighborhood's texture — you are forced to look down as well as up.

3. Jane's Carousel: 27 years of restoration inside a Jean Nouvel glass box

The Jane's Carousel at the edge of Pier 1 in Brooklyn Bridge Park is a 1922 Philadelphia Toboggan Company carousel that spent most of its life in Youngstown, Ohio, at Idora Park, an amusement park that closed in 1984 after a fire. The carousel — 48 horses and 2 chariots, carved in the distinctly formal style of early 20th-century carousels, with horses arranged in three rows — was auctioned off when Idora Park closed.

Jane Walentas — wife of developer David Walentas — attended the auction and purchased the carousel for $385,000. She spent the next 27 years restoring it herself, working in a studio in DUMBO, stripping horses down to bare wood and repainting them in the original Victorian palette. The restoration was not subcontracted; Jane Walentas did the work directly, learning the techniques required as she went. The carousel finally opened to the public on September 16, 2011, as a permanent installation in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

The glass and steel pavilion enclosing the carousel was designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, best known for the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris and the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Nouvel's structure is a transparent cube with retractable glass walls — when the walls are open, the carousel appears to float at the water's edge with unobstructed views of the East River, the Manhattan skyline, and both bridges. When closed in winter, the glass creates a greenhouse effect that keeps the interior warm enough to operate year-round.

Rides cost $3 per person, and the combination of the restored Victorian horses, the views through the glass walls, and the scale of the bridges overhead creates an experience that is genuinely strange in the best possible way. The carousel operates daily in summer from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; hours contract in winter. Cash and cards accepted.

4. Brooklyn Bridge Park: 1.3 miles of reclaimed waterfront designed from scratch

Brooklyn Bridge Park runs 1.3 miles along the East River from the Manhattan Bridge at the north end to Atlantic Avenue at the south, occupying what were formerly active shipping piers — Piers 1 through 6 — that handled commercial cargo until containerization made them obsolete in the 1970s. The park opened in phases beginning in 2010 and was essentially complete by 2018.

The design, by landscape architecture firm Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, was built around a core principle: the park should generate its own operating revenue rather than depend on city funding. The piers and upland areas were designed with commercial and residential development embedded within the park boundary — a decision that generated significant controversy, since it put luxury apartment towers inside what many residents expected to be purely public green space. The funding model has worked; the park has remained financially self-sustaining.

Pier 1, the large pier directly adjacent to DUMBO, has the neighborhood's most dramatic views: a wide-open lawn facing Manhattan, with the skyline at close range and both bridges in the sightline. In summer, the park runs free outdoor film screenings here on Thursday evenings. Pier 6, at the south end, has sand volleyball courts, a children's water play area, and a dedicated picnic peninsula. The Squibb Park Bridge, a 450-foot pedestrian bridge connecting the park to Brooklyn Heights at the north end, was rebuilt after the original bouncy-by-design suspension bridge proved too bouncy and was closed for repairs — the current version is more stable.

Boathouse at Pier 2 offers kayak rentals and free public kayaking sessions on weekend mornings in summer. The park's running path along the water's edge is 1.3 miles one way, with no street crossings, and is one of the better urban runs in New York for the combination of views and traffic separation.

5. The DUMBO pizza dispute: Juliana's, Grimaldi's, and a coal oven with a complicated history

The pizza situation in DUMBO is worth understanding before you arrive with an opinion, because locals treat it seriously.

Patsy Grimaldi apprenticed under Neapolitan pizza master Anthony Pero — known as 'Totonno' — in Coney Island in the 1940s, and the coal-fired method he learned there (high heat, fast cook, thin char on the crust) became the foundation for what he later built in Brooklyn. He opened Grimaldi's at 19 Old Fulton Street in 1990, in a basement space directly under the Brooklyn Bridge. The restaurant acquired a national reputation through the 1990s and 2000s, with regular appearances on 'best pizza in New York' lists and consistent weekend waits stretching around the block.

In 2012, Grimaldi's lease came up for renewal. Facing changes to the lease terms, the Grimaldi family sold the restaurant name and the business. The new ownership moved Grimaldi's to a larger space at 1 Front Street, also in DUMBO. Meanwhile, Patsy Grimaldi came out of retirement and opened Juliana's at his original address — 19 Old Fulton Street — reclaiming the same basement space, the same coal oven, and the same approach to pizza he had developed over decades. He named the new restaurant after his mother.

Both restaurants now operate within two blocks of each other. Both use coal-fired ovens. Both serve whole pies only, no slices. Both have weekend waits. The core pizza — thin crust, fresh mozzarella, San Marzano tomatoes — is comparable, and the disagreement about which is 'authentic' turns entirely on whether you think the address or the family name is the thing being preserved.

For practical purposes: Juliana's does not accept reservations and runs a paper list at the door; Grimaldi's is larger, slightly faster, and accepts groups more easily. The walk between them is about four minutes.

6. The transformation: from artist lofts to design studios and chocolate shops

The DUMBO the original artists created is largely gone, but it left a specific kind of tenant in its wake: design-forward businesses, galleries, and specialty food producers that fit in converted industrial spaces.

Jacques Torres Chocolate at 66 Water Street is one of DUMBO's earliest destination businesses. Torres, a French pastry chef who worked at Le Cirque before opening his own operation, moved into the neighborhood in 2000, drawn by the large ground-floor production space available in the warehouse buildings. The Water Street shop is part retail and part factory; visitors can watch chocolate being made through a glass window between the store and the production floor. Torres invented what he calls 'wicked hot chocolate' — dark chocolate blended with ancho and chipotle peppers — here, and it remains the signature item. The hot chocolate is served year-round, and on cold days the line for it extends out the door.

Etsy was founded in DUMBO in 2005 in a loft at 325 Gold Street, and the company remained headquartered in the neighborhood for over a decade before expanding and eventually moving. The founding location of the global crafts marketplace in a DUMBO loft has become a frequently cited example of how the neighborhood's post-industrial character attracted companies that valued the combination of Manhattan proximity and Brooklyn aesthetic.

Empire Stores at 55 Water Street is a complex of eight connected Civil War-era warehouse buildings that were converted between 2015 and 2017 into a mixed retail and office building. The rooftop offers some of the better views of the bridges available without going to a dedicated observation point. Time Out Market New York operates inside Empire Stores, with a food hall format that includes around 21 vendors from across the city's restaurant scene — a useful option if your group can't agree on a single restaurant.

The DUMBO Arts Festival, which takes place each September or October, is the remaining expression of the original artist community in the neighborhood. It typically includes open studio events in the warehouse buildings, installations in the streets and public spaces, and programming at the DUMBO Improvement District's Archway space. The festival draws a different crowd than the usual weekend tourist traffic — it is worth noting in your calendar if you are planning a fall visit.

7. How to get here, when to go, and what the neighborhood still does poorly

Getting here: The most convenient subway is the F train to York Street, which deposits you on Washington Street, two blocks from the Water Street archway photo spot and five minutes from Brooklyn Bridge Park. The A and C trains to High Street–Brooklyn Bridge are a 10-minute walk from the park's northern entrance, which works well if you are combining DUMBO with a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan.

Driving is not recommended. Parking is extremely limited and the cobblestone streets make navigation confusing. DUMBO sits in a compressed triangle between two bridges and the East River; the streets do not follow a grid, and GPS directions in the area frequently route drivers into dead ends at the waterfront.

When to go: A weekday morning between 8 and 10 a.m. offers the Washington Street photo spot without crowds and the neighborhood at its most functional. Saturday mornings work well for combining the Brooklyn Flea with Jane's Carousel and a walk through Brooklyn Bridge Park. Sunday afternoons are the most tourist-heavy; Jane's Carousel and the park are both busy, and the cobblestone blocks around Water Street fill up.

Summer programming: July and August bring free Thursday night outdoor films at Pier 1, free kayaking at Pier 2 Boathouse on weekend mornings, and occasional live music events under the Manhattan Bridge Archway. The neighborhood's proximity to the water means temperatures are typically 3–5 degrees cooler than inland Brooklyn neighborhoods on hot days.

What DUMBO does not do well: dining options at the mid-range level are thin, especially for lunch on weekdays. The obvious pizza restaurants have weekend crowds. The neighborhood's blocks between York Street and the waterfront — specifically the stretch of Front Street and Jay Street east of the bridge approach — have very limited retail and feel more transitional than finished. The best use of DUMBO is as a two- to three-hour destination combined with a walk south through Brooklyn Bridge Park to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade rather than a full-day stay on its own.