Two years ago, while on vacation from France, Lucien Zayan came across an old factory on Bergen Street.

“I fell in love with it,” says Zayan.

When he decided to leave his native France to open The Invisible Dog Art Center in the warehouse and rent the apartment next door, he had no clue that he was moving into a neighborhood with an already well-established French contingent.

He found out soon enough.

“I heard French being spoken on the streets,” he says. “I realized I am surrounded by French people.”

The neighborhood’s French flair will be on full display this Sunday, July 10, when a Bastille Day celebration takes place outside Bar Tabac on Smith Street between Bergen and Pacific streets. The festivities, which include a petanque tournament, food and live music, begin at 11 a.m. and run until 10 p.m.

Degraw Street is also closed off between Smith and Hoyt streets for Provence en Boite's petanque tournament and Bastille Day celebration.

The 8th annual Bastille Day celebration, which commemorates France’s independence, puts a spotlight on the growing French population in the community. In the past decade, about 3,000 French families have moved into the Carroll Gardens, Gowanus and Park Slope neighborhoods, according to information gathered by Fabrice Jaumont, education attaché for the French Embassy. Approximately 75,000 French individuals live in New York State; and most of them call New York City home, says Jaumont.

This recent wave of immigration has bolstered a long-standing French presence in the borough, says Brian Merlis, an archivest whose images appear in The Glory of Brooklyn’s Gowanus: Legacy, Industry, and Artistry by Leslie-Arlette Boyce.

“Huguenots immigrated to Brooklyn in the 1620s and 1630s,” says Merlis, referring to members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France who were driven from their homeland in the 17th Century by religious persecution. “They were some of the first land owners in the area. They occupied land from Brooklyn Heights to the Gowanus,” he says.

The latest newcomers from France were drawn to New York City by the economic boom in the United States in the late 1990s and early 2000s, according to Jaumont. Prior to the 1990s, it was typically business professionals who made the trek from France to New York City, but this time around, French people of lesser means, such as teachers and artists, were also in the mix, Jaumont says. And instead of moving to traditionally French enclaves on the Upper East Side and in Larchmont, where private French-language schools are expensive and near capacity, these French people opted for the cheaper rents of Brooklyn, according to Jaumont. The recent economic downturn pushed even more French families across the East River, he says.

It wasn’t long before French parents started lobbying for dual language programs at public schools in their new neighborhoods. At PS 58, parents initially pressed for a French-language after-school program, says principal Giselle McGee, who had prior experience with dual-language programs from her time working at a school in Chinatown.

Parents’ requests took shape in the fall of 2007, when the school established a dual-language kindergarten class made up of 24 pupils.

“I figured why not do it if we have the population to support it," McGee says. "It was so popular we had to have a lottery to determine who got placed in the class."

The school’s French dual language program is currently one of 12 throughout the New York City school system and has grown tremendously since its inception, says McGee. It now includes a second kindergarten and two classes for each grade from first through fourth. This fall the school will have a total of 250 students in dual-language classes. 

The program itself has become “an engine for more French migration to Carroll Gardens” from overseas and Manhattan, says Jaumont.

French culture is also cropping up outside of the classroom. French restaurants and bars have found their place in the neighborhood. There are a handful of French restaurants on Smith Street, plus Bacchus on Atlantic Avenue, Le Petit Cafe and Quercy on Court Street, and Petite Crevette on Hicks and Union streets.

There’s even a French-language summer camp for children ages 4 through 9, run by Ria Aichor, a transplant from Paris.

“Parents want their kids to maintain their French over the summer,” says Aichor.

Carroll Gardens, says Jaumont, is "a recreation of a French village. You can walk outside and get your croissant and your café au lait.”

That village feel is a big part of the appeal, says Jean-Francois Fraysse, owner of Quercy on Court Street.

“I think when you pass the [Brooklyn] bridge, you have a sense that life’s more easy.”

That's a draw for Francophone and Anglophone residents alike, he says.

“I have some space outside. I have a garden. I see green when I look outside,” he says. “This is closer to the French way of life.”