The Brooklyn Culinary Institute is located in the heart of historic Brooklyn, drawing on the rich culture of New York City.

To accommodate new facilities and an expanding student population, the Institute is relocating. During this period of transition please continue to use the following address:

MAIL: Brooklyn Culinary Institute
         805-809 Driggs Ave
         Floor #3
         Brooklyn NY 11211

PHONE:    718 391 4611
FAX:         718 391 4611

EMAIL: info@brooklynculinaryinstitute.edu

THE BOROUGH OF BROOKLYN

In 1646, the Village of Breuckelen was authorized by the Dutch West India Company and became the first municipality in what is now New York State (the predecessors of the Cities of Albany and New York were numbers two and three, respectively).

In 1683, almost 20 years after the English kicked out the Dutch(1664), the General Assembly of Freeholders reorganized the governmental structure in all of the province of New York into 12 counties, each of which was sub-divided into towns.

Brooklyn was one of the original six towns of Kings County, an original county when the county/town system was established in 1683. (Other local area original counties were New York, Richmond, Queens, Westchester and Suffolk. The Bronx was part of Westchester County until 1873, when the western Bronx was annexed by New York City/County, and 1895, when the eastern Bronx was annexed as well. The eastern two-thirds of Queens County seceded and became Nassau County in 1899, making Nassau the youngest county in New York State, although the Bronx "paper" county was established in 1914 when the Bronx "seceded" from New York County.)

The Town of Brooklyn did not have that large a population in 1790, the year of the first federal census. The Town of Oyster Bay, then in Queens County, had a larger population than did Brooklyn that year. The Village of Breuckelen (1646) preceded City of Nieuw Amsterdam (1653) by some 7 years. Brooklyn/Kings County has 2 names because it took some 200 years for Brooklyn to annex the other parts of Kings County. When the City of Brooklyn annexed the City of Williamsburgh and theTown of Bushwick, this area was then known as the eastern district of the City of Brooklyn and Williamsburgh lost its final "h".

The streets in Brooklyn do not line up because each of the 2 cities and 6 towns in Kings County were independent municipalities and purposely decided to create street grids with different naming systems that did not line up with the adjoining city or town. The Town of Gravesend was the only town where the streets run long north-to-south, all other cities and towns ran their streets long west-to-east. Gravesend was the only English town, all the others were Dutch.

South Brooklyn is north of southern Brooklyn because until 1894 the Red Hook area (South Brooklyn) was the southernmost part of the City of Brooklyn.