Brooklyn

The Cape Town City Council developed Brooklyn in the 1920s and 1930s, building low-cost housing for poor whites. By December 1931, the first 20 cottages had been built in the Good Hope Model Village, as the area was then called. Between 1936 and 1944, the Citizens’ Housing League built a total of 742 houses in Brooklyn.

Brooklyn before the development of Ysterplaat

The area on the Air Force Base side of Koeberg Road is now known as Ysterplaat (although historically it was called Brooklyn and is still considered part of Brooklyn by the residents and the municipality). There are fewer residential houses on the Ysterplaat side, with most of the land area being taken up by the Air Force Base. Commercial activities take place mainly on the Brooklyn (or Paarden Island) side of Koeberg Road. The Albow Gardens flats were built in the1970s to house low-income families. The Palm Springs blocks of flats were built in 2005-6, also to accommodate low-income residents.

The Brooklyn Chest Hospital, situated in Stanberry Road, was established in 1872. During the smallpox epidemic and the later Spanish Flu epidemic, the hospital was turned into an isolation facility.

Patients arriving at the hospital

Today, it is the only facility that treats XDR TB patients in the Western Cape. It has 349 beds. On 28 October 2011, the S.A.M.E. Foundation was proud to host the official opening of the new Brooklyn Hospital School. Children treated at Brooklyn Chest Hospital can stay there from 6 months to 3 years and are not able to attend normal school. The new school educates approximately 30-40 pupils on any given day. The total budget for this project was R1¼ million. A new research unit geared towards making TB drugs safe and accessible for children recently opened its doors at the Brooklyn Chest Hospital.

The Dutch Reformed Church was the first to hold religious services in Brooklyn. Members of the congregation began meeting in a house in 1940 and the parish was officially established on 1 December 1947. As soon as funds were available, the NGK Ysterplaat-Suid was built in Da Gama Street.

NGK Ysterplaat-Suid in Brooklyn

In 1950, the Roman Catholic Church opened the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption on Koeberg Road. It was blessed in 1956 and consecrated in 2000.

The Anglicans opened the Chapel of St Francis in Fontana Street during the 1950s.

There are three ordinary state schools in the Brooklyn/Ysterplaat area – Buren High in Poole Street; Ysterplaat Primary (founded in 1906) on Koeberg Road; and Ysterplaat Junior Primary in Forridon Street. There is also the Roman Catholic Holy Cross Convent School, founded in 1959 with one class in a small room attached to the parish church. All four of these schools are multi-racial and are up to capacity.

The municipal hall, opened in the 1950s, is called the Martin Adams Hall.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the Oranje Cinema was well patronised, being the only cinema in the area.

Today, Brooklyn is a thriving multi-cultural community, although the shops along Koeberg Road have become something of an eyesore, showing signs of urban decay. Crime is a big problem in the area as well.