In the right light, Vinegar Hill, the tiny neighborhood that abuts the loft-packed brick-and-glass wonderland of Brooklyn’s Dumbo district, doesn’t look much different than it did ten, twenty, even over a hundred years ago.

What was mostly an Irish immigrant enclave—dubbed Irishtown—in the nineteenth century has managed to hide in the shadows during decade after go-go decade of property development frenzy. Old photographs of the Vinegar Hill Historic District capture a sleepy small-town ambiance in the 1930s and ’40s. Somnolence slid a bit more into disrepair in later years, but never into dilapidation or abandonment. Separated from the gourmet groceries and modern furniture showrooms of Dumbo by a massive Con Ed plant and barbed-wire-wrapped industrial structures, the tiny stretches (ForgottenNY) of Hudson Avenue, Evans and Gold Streets still have a startling (for New York City) down-by-the tracks neighborhood feel.

From a short-trip resort for Manhattanites in the early 19th century, Vinegar Hill (named for the 1798 battle of the Irish Rebellion) grew into a small village of waterfront laborers and the businesses that served them. Streets are still lined with pre-Civil War row houses. On Evans Street, the gate-fronted 1806 Commandant’s Mansion (Scouting NY) with its vast front lawn, still inhabited today—though apparently by a neuroscientist rather than a commandant—looks out over the East River. Industry is still very much in evidence.

However, ambitious plans for the nearby Navy Yard (via Gothamist) loom on the horizon. And the arrival of Vinegar Hill House restaurant—often counted among the city’s favorite eateries for seasonal, local fare—put the neighborhood on the culinary map. Some feel this new public beacon could help to preserve the neighborhood’s charm, while others fear it will speed the hidden hamlet’s integration into the homogeneity that has befallen so much of “brownstone Brooklyn” in the present century.