Jonathan Butler
Entrepreneur/Writer in Brooklyn, New York
Jonathan Butler is a Brooklyn-based writer, entrepreneur and investor.
A financial journalist earlier in his career, Jonathan started the local real estate and architecture blog Brownstoner.com in 2005 and, after growing it into the largest website in Brooklyn, sold it in 2015. More recently, Jonathan completed a non-fiction book – Join the Conspiracy: How a Brooklyn Eccentric Got Lost on the Right, Infiltrated the Left, and Brought Down the Biggest Bombing Network in New York – about an undercover FBI informant in 1960s New York City that was published by Fordham University Press in September 2024.
In 2008, Jonathan co-founded the Brooklyn Flea, New York City's biggest flea market business, and three years later launched Smorgasburg, the artisanal food festival that supports hundreds of diverse mom-and-pop businesses and has attracted millions of visitors from all over the world to its weekly locations in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami as well as its annual events in Osaka, Japan and Sao Paulo, Brazil. In 2020, Jonathan and his business partner took over management of the legendary Chelsea Flea market on West 25th Street in Manhattan.
In 2012, Jonathan spearheaded the acquisition of the 150,000-square-foot Studebaker Service Station at 1000 Dean Street in Crown Heights; after converting the building into office and studio space, the partnership sold the property in 2019. From 2014 to 2020, Smorgasburg operated a 9,000-square-foot beer and food hall in the building called Berg’n.
Jonathan has received awards from the Historic Districts Council, the Municipal Art Society, New York Landmarks Conservancy, the Brooklyn Historical Society and the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce for his work in preservation and community-building. He received his BA in History from Princeton University in 1992 and an MBA from NYU in 1998. He resides with his wife and two children in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.
To see older press about Jonathan, please go to https://www.clippings.me/jrbutler
To contact Jonathan, please email [email protected].