The corner of Bushwick and Metropolitan Avenues has a long memory: it is the area of the 1638 Dutch settlement of Boswyck. In the 20th century it became pure car country. The lot was a used-car dealership by the late 1930s and a gas station by the 1980s, joined by a parking lot and a pair of three-story houses along Metropolitan. Decades of fuel use meant the ground had to be cleaned up under New York State's environmental cleanup program before anything new could be built.
After a 2021 rezoning from commercial to residential use, the parcels were assembled, the gas station and houses came down, and The Wave rose in their place. The nine-story building, finished in 2024, holds 136 rental residences above cellar parking behind a sweeping facade that has been likened to an Art Deco ocean liner.
