ike most European immigrants, Poles began arriving in large numbers at Ellis Island in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Large waves followed after the Second World War and again in the 1980s and 90s with the collpase of the Eastern Bloc. In recent decades, the city's best-known Polish community has been in Greenpoint, where Polish delis, bakeries, and butcher shops stretch along Manhattan Avenue, often bearing signs with no English translation, with churches, schools, and other community institutions to match. More recently, with gentrification and generational shift, much of the community has moved to the nearby neighborhoods of Maspeth and Ridgewood. Other Polish communities continue to thrive elsewhere in Brooklyn (Windsor Terrace, Borough Park) as well as in Manhattan (in the East Village, near other Slavic groups), as well as in many areas in New Jersey and Long Island.