The Short Answer
People ask this at the counter more than you would think, usually visitors who took the ferry down and want to know what they are standing in. The answer is unusually literal. Bay Ridge is named for a bay and a ridge, both of which are right here. The bay is New York Bay, which you can see from the end of our block. The ridge is the steep rise of land behind us, the one that makes the walk up from the water feel like work.
The more interesting part is that the name is not very old. For about two hundred years this neighborhood was called something else entirely, and the reason it changed is a small piece of public-health history.
Before Bay Ridge, There Was Yellow Hook
The shoreline where the harbor pinches shut was inhabited long before it had any European name. The Lenape people who lived along this stretch of coast are recorded under the name Nyack, and the high ground above the water offered them what it offers anyone on Shore Road today: a clear line of sight down the channel.
Dutch colonists arrived in the 1600s and named what they saw. They called this corner of the coast Yellow Hook, from the yellowish clay in the local soil, and the name survived the transfer from Dutch to English rule more or less intact. Administratively the area sat inside New Utrecht, one of the six original towns of Kings County, chartered in the 1650s. For roughly two centuries, if you lived where our cafe now stands, you lived in Yellow Hook, New Utrecht.
Why a Perfectly Good Name Had to Go
Then came the 1840s. New York was hit by serious outbreaks of yellow fever, and the disease shaped how people talked about where it was safe to live. A village whose name began with the word yellow was making an argument it did not want to make.
In 1853 the residents of Yellow Hook met, agreed the name had become a liability, and traded it for a description of the landscape instead.
Local accounts credit a nurseryman named James Weir with proposing the replacement. Bay Ridge was accurate, it was pleasant, and it carried no association with anything contagious. It took hold quickly, and within a generation Yellow Hook had faded into the kind of fact you only encounter on a plaque.
Where the Ridge Actually Is
Here is the part you can verify with your own legs in about ten minutes. Walk inland from the water anywhere between 69th Street and the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and the ground climbs, hard, up to Shore Road. Then it flattens out and runs south along Ridge Boulevard, which is named for exactly the feature you just climbed.
That rise is not a local accident. It is the western end of the terminal moraine left behind by the last glaciation, the long band of pushed-up earth and rock that forms the spine of Long Island. Bay Ridge happens to sit where that spine meets the harbor. Everything the neighborhood is known for follows from it: the elevated harbor views along Shore Road, the way the streets step down toward the water, and the fact that the 69th Street Pier feels like the bottom of something.
The Narrows Botanical Gardens sit partway up that slope, and the terraces there are essentially the hillside with planting beds on it.
And Which Bay?
The water in the name is New York Bay, which reaches the neighborhood at the Narrows, the channel between Brooklyn and Staten Island. South and east it opens toward Gravesend Bay and Coney Island; north it becomes the Upper Bay and the mouth of the Hudson.
This is the geographic fact that explains almost everything that has ever happened in Bay Ridge. Because the harbor is at its narrowest here, whoever controlled this shoreline controlled access to New York. That is why Fort Hamilton was built at the south end of the neighborhood in the 1820s, why there is a Civil War cannon in a triangular park near the bridge, and why the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge crosses where it crosses. The bridge is not placed for the view. It is placed at the short spot.
From New Utrecht to Brooklyn to New York City
The neighborhood's paperwork changed twice more after the name did. The Town of New Utrecht was annexed by the City of Brooklyn in 1894, which is when Bay Ridge stopped being a village in its own town and became a Brooklyn neighborhood. Four years later, in 1898, Brooklyn itself was consolidated into Greater New York.
So in about fifty years, an address here went from Yellow Hook, New Utrecht to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York City, without anyone moving. The old vocabulary is still bolted to the street grid: New Utrecht Avenue, Shore Road, Ridge Boulevard, and Bay Ridge Avenue, which is the street name for 69th Street and the reason our address reads 10 Bay Ridge Ave.
How to Walk the Whole Answer in an Hour
If you would rather see this than read it, the route is short and almost entirely flat until the one part that is not.
- Start at the bottom. From our counter at 10 Bay Ridge Ave, walk to the end of the block and out onto the 69th Street Pier. You are standing in the bay half of the name, looking straight down the Narrows.
- Head south on the promenade. The waterfront path runs along the shoreline with the harbor on one side and the hillside on the other. Our waterfront walk guide covers the stretch in detail.
- Turn inland and climb. Any cross street will do. The grade is the ridge, and it is the part of this that photographs badly and feels obvious.
- Follow Shore Road or Ridge Boulevard back north. Now you are on top of the moraine with the water below you, which is the view the name was chosen for.
- Come back down for lunch. Downhill the whole way, which we consider good planning.
There is more to do out there than the geology. Things to do near the Bay Ridge waterfront has the rest, and if you are new to the neighborhood entirely, our newcomer's guide to Bay Ridge covers the day-to-day version.
Coffee at the Bottom of the Ridge
We sit at the low end of all of this, a few steps from the pier and the NYC Ferry landing, which makes us either the start or the finish.
We open at 6 AM on weekdays and 7 AM on weekends, early enough to be on the promenade before it fills up. A cold brew or a cortado travels fine, and the breakfast side of the menu runs from avocado toast to Belgian waffles if you would rather eat before you climb anything. Coming back hungry is the usual outcome, and the rest of the menu, from the Pier 69 Burger to salads and soup, runs all day. If you are bringing a group down to see the neighborhood, our catering side handles the part where everyone wants something different.
A Name That Still Describes the Place
Plenty of New York neighborhood names have come loose from whatever they originally meant. This one has not. The bay is still there, the ridge is still there, and the relationship between them is the first thing you notice walking around. Yellow Hook needed a reason to disappear. Bay Ridge just needed someone to look up.
Where to Find Us
Pier 69 Market is at 10 Bay Ridge Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11220, open Monday through Friday from 6 AM to 9 PM and Saturday and Sunday from 7 AM to 9 PM. The phone is (718) 777-6969, and pickup and delivery both run through GetSauce. We are a waterfront cafe next to the 69th Street Pier and a few minutes from Owl's Head Park, the Shore Road promenade and the NYC Ferry landing, serving La Colombe coffee and Rishi tea. Directions, a map and current hours are on the visit page, and anything we missed is on the FAQ or a phone call away.
