Adrienne Onofri - Walking Brooklyn: 30 walking tours exploring historical legacies, neighborhood culture, side streets, and waterways

Walking Brooklyn: 30 Tours Exploring Historical Legacies, Neighborhood Culture, Side Streets, and Waterways

Second edition, first printing

Copyright 2017 by Adrienne Onofri

Project editor: Ritchey Halphen

Cartography and cover design: Scott McGrew

Interior design: Annie Long

Photos: Adrienne Onofri

Copy editor: Erin Mahoney Harris

Proofreader: Rebecca Henderson

Indexer: Sylvia Coates

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Onofri, Adrienne, author.

Title: Walking Brooklyn : 30 tours exploring historical legacies, neighborhood culture, side streets, and waterways / Adrienne Onofri.

Description: Second edition. | Birmingham, AL : Wilderness Press, 2017. | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017015019| ISBN 978-0-89997-803-1 (pbk.) | ISBN 978-0-89997-804-8 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)Tours. | WalkingNew York (State)New York Guidebooks. | Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)Guidebooks | New York (N.Y.)Guidebooks.

Classification: LCC F129.B7 O56 2017 | DDC 917.47/2304dc23

LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/2017015019

Published by

An imprint of AdventureKEEN
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Birmingham, AL 35233
800-443-7227, fax 205-326-1012

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Distributed by Publishers Group West

Cover photo: Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Manhattan Bridge ()

Frontispiece: Elegant rowhouses on Stuyvesant Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant ()

: mural by Nicer Tats Cru. Both appear in this book with the permission of the artists.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher, except for brief quotations used in reviews.

SAFETY NOTICE Although Wilderness Press and Adrienne Onofri have made every attempt to ensure that the information in this book is accurate at press time, they are not responsible for any loss, damage, injury, or inconvenience that may occur to anyone while using this book. You are responsible for your own safety and health while following the walking trips described here.

Acknowledgments

If I were to name names, I might inadvertently leave someone out. So, to everybody who provided me with assistance or answers, a great big thanks for that contribution and for your contribution to the life and culture of Brooklyn. Thank you to the Wilderness Press/AdventureKEEN team for their support and patience. This book is dedicated in memory of my mother, who passed away while it was in productiona proud New Yorker, she instilled my curiosity and affection for the city. Finally, thanks and kisses to Daniel, my husband and favorite fact-checker.

Authors Note

Try as I might, I cannot include every place thats interesting, eye-catching, or otherwise worthy of note in a book that must be light enough to carry around as you walk. I encourage you to make your own discoveries to supplement what I share on these tours. Look at buildings I dont describe, examine ornamentation on buildings, read historic markers and interpretive signs I havent pointed out, check out eateries and shops... youre bound to see things that I had to omit to keep the book portable. While I do mention some restaurants and bars, I leave it to you to find what appeals to your taste (I also avoided extensive restaurant and bar coverage in the interest of keeping the book current). Consult blogs, message boards, and guidebooks for recommendations.

Also seek out information online about special events like music festivals, historic-house tours, artists open-studio weekends, and free outdoor performances and screenings, as well as the weekly and seasonal food, vintage, and/or artisan markets (Brooklyn Flea and Smorgasburg chief among them). Theyre a great way to enhance your experience in a neighborhood. If you plan to visit museums, historic sites, or galleries, check in advance when theyre opensome have limited hours, and even the major ones arent open seven days a week.

On most of these routes, you pass subway and bus stops, so you can curtail a tour and do the rest of it another time. Pick up a Brooklyn bus map (available free at most subway stations), see it online at mta.info/nyct/maps/busbkln.pdf, or use an NYC transit app for guidance in such situations. A neighborhood mapon paper or your phonewill come in handy in case you wish to veer off-course to see something that catches your fancy. Youre in the most walkable of cities, so get yourself some comfortable shoes and have fun! Adrienne Onofri

Numbers on this overview map correspond to walk numbers. A map for each tour follows the text for that walk.

Introduction

When Walking Brooklyn was first published in 2007, Brooklyn was on the brink of change. Yet nobody could have foreseen just how far-reaching and momentous that change would be. Its a renaissance unprecedented in modern urban history, and it entails so much more than skyscraper construction, waterfront development, or gentrification spreading from one neighborhood to the next. Brooklyn has emerged as a worldwide locus of trendy, artisanal cool and a wellspring of artistic, culinary, and technological creativity. It has become, in the words of New York magazine, New York Citys most dominant cultural export. Brooklyn went into this a place and came out a brand name. And, occasionally, a punchline, as that amalgam of qualities now synonymous with the word Brooklyn hip, highly educated, cross-cultural, environmentally responsible, haute rustic, retro-influencedis parodied nearly as much as its imitated.

Yet while this renaissance has renewed hometown pride, it also has perpetuated a disconnect between todays Brooklyn and the Brooklyn of so many cherished 20th-century memories, and between the new Brooklyn and the sizable swath of this 40-neighborhood, 2.6 millionperson borough that hasnt really changed. A lot of newer Brooklynites grew up far from Kings County. They may not even know theyre supposed to hate Walter OMalley for banishing the Dodgers to California, or Robert Moses for bulldozing a highway through their streets. Earlier eventsfrom the devastating assault by the Kings army during the Revolutionary War, to the high-bourgeois Victorian age, to the lurid decline of the 1970shave left their mark on Brooklyn. So we have a place defined by both the past and the future, a personality both nostalgic and on the cutting edge.

Brooklyn has the unique history of having been an independent city, and before that was composed of several different cities and townships. It can also boast of the great outdoors, with parks and community gardens galore and a shoreline that stretches from river to bay to ocean. These walks aim to capture all this diversity in Brooklyns geography, history, and people. I hope you have fun exploring and are enlightened and excited along the way.