Brighton Beach is a community on Coney Island in Brooklyn.

It is bounded by the community of Coney Island proper on the west, Manhattan Beach on the east, and the Atlantic Ocean on the south.

Brighton Beach was developed as a beach resort in 1878 and was named in a contest; the winning name evoked the resort of Brighton, England. The centerpiece of the resort was the large Hotel Brighton or Brighton Beach Hotel, placed on the beach at what is now the foot of Coney Island Avenue and accessed by the Brooklyn, Flatbush, and Coney Island Railway, known then and now as the Brighton Beach Line, which opened on July 2, 1878.

Brighton Beach was redeveloped as a fairly dense residential community with the final rebuilding of the Brighton Beach railway into a modern rapid transit line of the New York City Subway system c. 1920. The area now has a large community of primarily Russophone immigrants who left what was the Soviet Union in 1980s and 1990s. The majority of these immigrants are Jewish. However, living in the USSR has made them in many ways culturally distinct from the Jewish immigrants that moved to the neighborhood decades earlier from Tsarist Russia. While in many cases their Jewish origins played a role in their immigration (such as frustration with anti-Semitism), the suppression of religion in general, especially in the European part of the USSR, and assimilation into mainstream Soviet culture has resulted in most of these émigrés being culturally more like their non-Jewish fellow Russians and Ukrainians than that of the earlier Jewish immigrants from that part of the world. Brighton Beach has been dubbed "Little Odessa" by Russians.

Currently, Brighton Beach is replete with restaurants (mostly Russian) and Russian food stores. During daytime, the street is filled with people - generally Russian immigrants. The community, with an estimated population of 150,000, has a distinctively ethnic feel - akin to Manhattan's Chinatown. The proximity of Brighton Beach to the city's beaches (the street runs parallel to the Coney Island beach area and the Boardwalk) and the fact that the street is located right under the Brighton Beach Avenue subway station, makes it a popular summer weekend destination for thousands of NYC residents.

Education

Brighton Beach, like all of New York City, is served by the New York City Department of Education. Manhattan Beach is zoned to PS 225 The Eileen E. Zaglin School for grades K-8, as well as PS 100 located on Brighton Beach and West 3rd for grades K-5. Brighton Beach is not zoned to any high schools as all New York City high school students are required to apply to their high schools of choice.

Nearby high schools include: