The Stoop

“The stoop was part of our living space
and so was the sidewalk, so was the curb.
When you step out the door to the top step
of your stoop you look left right, right left,
and you assess the entire block, who’s out,
what kind of action is there, and make a plan.
A stoop in Brooklyn or Manhattan, there’s a
reaction with the entire street. As soon as
you hit that top step.”

-Jay,
Vernon Avenue,
Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn

Stoop (noun): The streetscape of New York City has included outdoor steps, commonly called stoops, which provide access to the principal floor of a residence, since the early nineteenth century. Although stoops did exist elsewhere, “nowhere was the stoop as universal a feature or on so grand a scale as in New York.” Stoops have been both a part of the streetscape and vocabulary of New York City for over two centuries.

“You could sit on the stoop and you were away from everything. It was like you were just, you were in another world, you were free. Y’know you sat on the stoop you could watch right across the street the stoopball games, the stickball games, if I wasn't playin’ I was watchin’. It was just a wonderful way of growin up for a kid and it made you want more outta’ life. But if you could you would always stay. In your neighborhood.”

-Billy,
Macdougal Street,
West Village, Manhattan

“Stoop culture is a spontaneous thing.
It is woven in and out of movement
around your home and through your life.”

-Bob,
Garfield Place,
South Brooklyn, New York

The grandness of New York City’s stoops, and stoop culture is captured in THE STOOP as generations of New Yorkers speak of the rich heritage of sitting out on one’s stoop. This uniquely New York culture of stoop sitting has been memorialized in photographs of the ‘old neighborhoods’ where children can be seen playing at open hydrants as grandmothers stand next to baby carriages keeping an eye on the street. Men stand on the top step of the stoop with a cigar between their lips, a newspaper in their hand, intermittently surveying their block. The value of a self-policing and eyes on the street has never waned and still gives a neighborhood ‘good bones’ today.

Twenty-first century urban studies would have people believe that small towns and suburban areas are the only spaces where community life and friendly socialization exists; a New York City neighborhood is the last place where active community interaction is expected to occur. In actuality, the relationship New Yorkers have with our stoops was formed centuries ago and remains strong in many neighborhoods today.

These are the neighborhoods where anything of pride- a newborn baby, a baseball caught at Ebbet’s field, a high school diploma- has always been displayed to the neighborhood out on the stoop. New Yorkers who choose to grow up and grow old in the same neighborhood, as well as a high presence of people out on their stoops displays a pride in their block, their neighborhood, and in their city. There is much of value in these New York City neighborhoods not the least of which are the upcoming generation of young children. Walking through most Brooklyn neighborhoods it is clear that the tradition of using one’s stoop as a place to grow up and learn the rules of the neighborhood is strong, even as Spaldings have been replaced by Nerf Dart Tag.

THE STOOP is an award-winning documentary feature film currently being shown at film festivals and preliminary screenings. The film tells the story of an architectural feature of the New York City streetscape that has survived on a grand scale and of neighborhood stoop culture that remains the true place to take the pulse of many a neighborhood today. Stoop sitters are, above all else, observers of the life of their neighborhood.