place was inconveniently far enough from Manhattan that the affluent refused to move to Brownsville, but the land was cheap enough that tenements could be built for the poor there. Jewish neighborhood Brownsville was predominantly Jewish from the 1880s until the 1950s. In 1887, businessman Elias Kaplan showed the first Jewish residents around Brownsville, painting the area as favorable compared to the Lower East Side, which he described as a place where one could not get away from the holds of labor unions. Kaplan built a factory and accommodations for his workers, then placed a synagogue, named Ohev Sholom, in his own factory. Other manufacturers that created low-tech products like food, furniture, and metals followed suit throughout the next decade, settling their factories in Brownsville. This led to much more housing being built there. The area bounded by present-day Dumont, Rockaway, and Liberty Avenues, and Junius Street, quickly became densely populated, with "factories, workshops, and stores" located next to housing. The farm of a local farmer, John J. Vanderveer, was cut up into lots and given to Jewish settlers after he sold it in 1892. Within three years of the first lot being distributed, there were 10,000 Jews living in Brownsville. By 1904, the lots comprising the former Vanderveer farm was entirely owned by Jews, who were spread out across . An estimated 25,000 people lived in Brownsville by 1900, most of whom lived in two-story wooden frame accommodations built for two families each. Many of these buildings were grossly overcrowded, with up to eight families living in some of these two-family houses. They were utilitarian, and according to one New York Herald article, "grossly unattractive". Many of these houses lacked amenities like running water, and their wood construction made these houses susceptible to fires. New brick-and-stone houses erected in the early 1900s were built with indoor plumbing and less prone to fire. The quality of life was further decreased by the fact that there was scant infrastructure to be found in the area, and as a result, the unpaved roads were used as open sewers. Compounding the problem, land prices were high in Brownsville (with lots available for $50 in 1907, then sold for $3,000 two years later), so in order to make their land purchases worthwhile, developers were frequently inspired to build as many apartments on a single lot as they possibly could. Within twenty years of the