A Condo Tower Grows in Brooklyn

"We thanks God for making this world safe," Niederman says.

But dislocation looms. The median family in Williamsburg earns $27,466 and spends 45 percent of its income on rent. The three-piece-suited newcomer hails from the financial sector, where the average salary is $195,857. "How do we compete with this tsunami?" Niederman asks. "Our insularity is no match for this money."

Hasidic Jews march to protest the intrusion of another luxury loft -- Busta Rhymes lives there. Polish and Puerto Rican families put hand-lettered signs in their windows -- "Speculators Beware: This Building Not for Sale!" -- and burn candles in protest.

And still the moneyed waves wash in.

Acosta, dark hair swept back to his shoulders, walks across the bones of a once-great industrial land. He points out blackened stumps of piers where freighters docked and grassy lots where spice warehouses stood. He touches the brick wall of the Domino Sugar Factory, which two years ago employed thousands but now stands vacant, and sweeps his hand at Williamsburg. An onion-domed Russian Orthodox cathedral still dominates the skyline. Poles and Puerto Ricans, Italians and artists, they battled arsonists and heroin gangs, city bureaucrats, and sometimes each other.

They always won -- until now. Acosta doffs his fedora and waves to the south.

"That is our future now." He points to a blue condominium tower rising near the Williamsburg Bridge. A water taxi will ferry residents to Wall Street. "Which means we have no future at all."

* * *

The future of America's cities happened here once. Robber barons built foundries and factories, and immigrants poured into the most industrialized county in America. Catholic parishes and breweries rose. No one with a strong back starved -- or went thirsty.

Five-foot-tall Angela Ortiz, 74, with hair dyed red, and gold hoop earrings and a pink jumpsuit, and hands tiny and wrinkled, talks about raising three daughters and working in a union textile factory. "Work, you could always find, and with work you have happiness," says Ortiz.

She climbs creaking stairs to her apartment. Panting, she points through the kitchen to a fire escape entwined with Christmas lights. "My balcony," she says.

The Williamsburg that Ortiz loved turned to ashes. From 1969 to 1974, the city lost 215,000 manufacturing jobs, including 60,000 in the textile industry. Arsonists made bonfires of buildings. In 1975, officials tried to shutter Engine House 212 in Williamsburg. Families and parish priests sat in until it reopened. Veterans of the Williamsburg struggle led the way in rehabilitating apartments and building day-care centers.