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Brooklyn Heights

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Brooklyn Heights:

Epitome of 19th-Century Gentility

Above: Classic Italianate brownstones on Remsen Street

BOUNDARIES: Middagh St., Clinton St., State St., Promenade

DISTANCE: 2.5 miles

SUBWAY: 2 or 3 to Clark St.

It may be self-defeating for me to say so, but you really don’t need a guide in Brooklyn Heights. It’s compact, and wherever you might wander, you’ll probably like what you see. This was Brooklyn’s first residential neighborhood—America’s first suburb, some call it—and it still contains hundreds of antebellum homes. It was also the first historic district designated by the city, which means the old houses haven’t been getting demolished, as happens in communities without landmark protection. The architectural riches of Brooklyn Heights include some glorious churches and other public buildings. And perched along its west end is the Promenade, offering views of the East River and many of NYC’s most famous landmarks. All things considered, the Heights has few peers among urban communities in this country.

Walk Description

Exit the subway on Henry Street. You’ve emerged from within the St. George, a hotel described in a 1930s guidebook as “the social mecca of all Brooklyn.” It opened in 1885, and by 1929 had expanded to 2,632 guest rooms—the most of any hotel in the world. Its ballroom, saltwater pool, and rooftop restaurant were legendary. The hotel closed in the 1970s, and the building is now residential.

Go to the left on Henry, then make a left on Orange Street. Plymouth Church, on your right, was a destination unto itself from 1849 to 1887, when people came from far and near for the sermons of Congregationalist minister Henry Ward Beecher. Beecher, brother of Uncle Tom’s Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe, was a leading progressive and huge celebrity in his day, complete with his own adultery scandal (the Pulitzer Prize–winning 2006 biography of him is titled The Most Famous Man in America). In the garden next to the church are a statue of Beecher (holding one of his mock slave auctions that essentially bought the slave’s freedom) and a bas-relief of Abraham Lincoln, who worshipped at the church; both were made by Mount Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum.

Make a right on Hicks Street. That two-dormered corner building on your left at Cranberry dates to 1822.

Turn right on Cranberry Street. Midblock on the left is the Church of the Assumption, erected in 1908. The parish (est. 1842) lost its original building, located farther east, to eminent domain when the Manhattan Bridge was constructed. The Art Deco Cranlyn apartment building on your right near the end of the block has terrific polychromatic terra cotta panels and a metal bas-relief at the main entrance featuring the Williamsburgh Savings Bank clocktower—the pride of Brooklyn at the time of the Cranlyn’s construction, as it had opened just a few years earlier as the borough’s only skyscraper.

Turn left on Henry. The residential complex to your right, Whitman Close, was the approximate location of the Rome brothers’ print shop, where Walt Whitman set type in 1855 for his first edition of Leaves of Grass.

Turn left on Middagh Street. On your right is the old factory of Peaks Mason Mints; some of their candies are today produced by the Tootsie Roll company, while their building is now a condo. This block also contains a house from 1829 at #56. Virtually the entire block past Hicks is composed of pre-1850 wood houses. The most celebrated is the corner house at #24, sometimes erroneously identified as the oldest in the Heights (it’s close, built in 1824). On the Willow Street side, you can see that the home has its own cottage. Proceed across Willow and look into the playground named for “Cat’s in the Cradle” singer Harry Chapin, who grew up in the Heights. Another popular story-song of his, “Taxi,” is represented in the benches. Walk around the park, going left onto Columbia Heights.

Make a left on Cranberry. This is the street where Cher kicked a can as she dreamily strolled home after her night at the opera in Moonstruck. The house at #19 was used for exterior shots of her home.

Turn right on Willow Street, where the star is #70—built in 1839 and one of the largest Greek Revival homes in New York. Truman Capote wrote Breakfast at Tiffany’s there while he was the basement tenant of his friend Oliver Smith, a Broadway set designer, who owned the house for 40 years.

On your left after Pineapple the whole block is consumed by an exquisite building that used to be Brooklyn’s most expensive hotel, the Leverich Towers, which charged $3 a night in 1931. In the glory days of the Leverich, its towers were illuminated every evening. But in the daylight you can better appreciate their hexagonal design, colonnades, and balconies.

The next block of Willow presents a long and lovely assortment of decorating schemes and eras. One brownstone on your right houses Dansk Sømandskirke (Danish Seamen’s Church), the only church in North America that still holds services in Danish. On #110 and 112, look for child figures in the terra cotta decoration, then look all the way up to whoever that is lurking atop #115. Farther down, #155–159 were built in the 1820s, before the current street pattern, which is why they don’t align with Willow as the other houses do. Playwright Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible while living at #155.

Turn right on Pierrepont Street and then left on Pierrepont Place. The huge Italianate brownstone manses on your right date to 1857: #2 was the childhood home of Alfred Tredway White, who inherited his father’s business but ultimately devoted himself to social reform; #3 was built for A. A. Low, an über-successful importer of tea and silk from Asia, whose son Seth grew up to be the only person ever to serve as mayor of both Brooklyn and New York City. Continue across Montague Street onto Montague Terrace, and read of its literary heritage from the plaques on #1 and 5.

Turn right on Remsen Street, walk a short block, and go up the ramp to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. Stroll as much as you’d like on the Promenade (you’ll be exiting at Montague Street); it extends about a third of a mile to Orange Street. With wonderful views and benches all along the way, it is beloved by photographers, canoodlers, and dog walkers alike. For decades the Promenade overlooked abandoned piers and inaccessible waterfront, but now Brooklyn Bridge Park unfolds below you. You can visit it at the end of this walk (see page 12).

Leave the Promenade at Montague, pausing to read the historic marker on a boulder facing the street. At the right corner with Pierrepont Place, the Romanesque #62 was designed by Montrose Morris, architect of several landmark residences (mostly in Bedford-Stuyvesant). Continuing along Montague, watch on your left for a long building with a stepped gable, the Heights Casino. When it was built in 1904, the word casino was used for places of various social amusements, not just gambling. This casino was, and is, a renowned racquet club, producing many squash champions and containing the United States’ first indoor tennis courts.

On your right after you cross Hicks is the Bossert. From 1909 to 1949, it operated as Hotel Bossert, once lauded as “the Waldorf-Astoria of Brooklyn.” Across the street, find the Montague at #105, followed a couple of doors down by the adjoining Berkeley and Grosvenor. All three were designed in 1885 by the Parfitt Brothers, who were responsible for many fine churches and homes in late-19th-century Brooklyn.

From these Queen Anne gems, proceed past Henry and down the block to the 1847 Gothic Revival masterpiece of St. Ann and the Holy Trinity. The church’s superb stained-glass windows were the first such windows made in America, and its tower was originally 295 feet—taller than any other structure in Brooklyn or Manhattan—but was eventually shortened to less than half that height because upkeep was so expensive and the rector felt church steeples were being overshadowed by skyscrapers.

Two of the banks that gave Montague Street the nickname “the Wall Street of Brooklyn” stand opposite the church: to your right on Montague is the former Franklin Trust Company (1891), robustly punctuated with dormers and now restored as luxury apartments. Across Clinton Street, Chase occupies a 1915 building that was modeled on a palace in Verona, Italy.

Turn left on Clinton. Next to the church, smile at the faces of Michelangelo, Beethoven, Gutenberg, and Shakespeare—none of whom ever made it to Brooklyn, far as I know—high up on the 1881 building of the Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS).

Make a left on Pierrepont Street, walking around this Queen Anne landmark with deluxe terra cotta ornamentation. On this side you’ll find busts of Benjamin Franklin and Christopher Columbus between window arches. BHS, founded as the Long Island Historical Society, mounts exhibitions and owns an invaluable archive and library of books, maps, correspondence, newspapers, census and landholding records, and other materials. Across from the Historical Society is St. Ann’s, a progressive private school. Its building was erected in 1906 as a clubhouse for the well-heeled gentlemen who belonged to the prestigious Crescent Athletic Club.

At the next corner on your right, the Unitarian Church is the oldest church building in Brooklyn. Designed shortly before Holy Trinity by the same architect, Minard Lafever, it helped launch the Gothic Revival movement in the United States with its 1844 construction. The church installed eight Tiffany stained-glass windows for its golden anniversary.

Continue on Pierrepont just past Henry so you can get a good look at the mansion on the left corner. This Romanesque treasure, marred only by a canopy added in the mid–20th century, was completed in 1890 for manufacturing tycoon Herman Behr (whose son Karl, an attorney and tennis champion, would survive the Titanic). Check out the dragons fronting the stone porch.

The Pierrepont Street townhouses with these bay windows are steps from the Promenade

Walk on Henry Street beside the Behr mansion and then cross Montague. You don’t need to be close to Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Cathedral to spot its Rapunzel tower, but you do want to go up to the entrances on both Henry and Remsen to see its engraved bronze doors—salvage from the Normandie, the largest ocean liner in the world, which was being refitted for military deployment during World War II when it caught fire at the dock in Manhattan and capsized. The building was erected in the 1840s for a Congregational church; its Romanesque style was uncharacteristic for its architect, Gothic master Richard Upjohn.

With the church on your right, walk on Remsen. See the “cultural medallion” on #91 about a former resident. Why such a short tenancy here for Henry Miller? He was evicted because he couldn’t make rent. The mansion two doors down has a copper roof and may be the standout of this outstanding block.

Turn left on Hicks Street, taking note of Grace Court Alley to your left, a mews of former carriage houses for the mansions on Joralemon and Remsen. On your right at Grace Court, Grace Church proffers another bold design by Richard Upjohn, this one in his more typical Gothic Revival vernacular.

Walk down Grace Court, a tranquil, secluded street with a fantastic view of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty at the dead end. There’s also a celebrity connection: Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman at #31, and then sold the house to civil rights leader W. E. B. DuBois.

Return to Hicks and go right.

Make a right on Joralemon. The 1847 brownstone on your left at #58 has blackened windows because there’s nothing in the house except a ventilation shaft for the subway.

Turn left on Willow Place. About halfway down the block you find the Unitarian Church’s former chapel on your right. Alfred Tredway White, the philanthropic scion who grew up on Pierrepont Place, was its patron. It had to be sold upon his death in 1921 and for a while housed a brothel frequented by Navy Yard employees. Rescued by a citizens’ rehabilitation campaign in the 1960s, it is now used by the Heights Players, a long-running community theater. Toward the end of the block on your left is a group of brick townhouses in a so-called colonnade row. An identical quartet was built directly across the street (both in the 1840s), but it has only one weathered survivor.

Brooklyn Bridge Park

Brooklyn Bridge Park opened in phases starting in 2010 and became one of the city’s most popular green spaces in no time. Once you start roaming through the park, you’d never believe this real estate went neglected and inaccessible for so long. Stretching 1.3 miles from Atlantic Avenue (just south of Joralemon) all the way to beneath the Manhattan Bridge, the park centers on five redeveloped piers. At Joralemon Street’s Pier 5 are a marina and a picnic area with barbecue grills. Pier 6 features volleyball courts and playgrounds, while the absent Pier 4 has been replaced with a sandy beach and tidal pools. Pier 2 offers shuffleboard, roller skating, and kayaking, while Piers 1 and 3 both have terraces made from salvaged granite. And don’t miss the Squibb Park bridge, which carries pedestrians between the park and the foot of Middagh Street. There are lawns, pathways, plantings, and of course views throughout the park, as well as a series of 20- to 30-foot grassy hills that reduce noise level from the nearby expressway. You can also catch a ferry here. Park signage points you where you want to go and shares key historical and environmental information. All facilities and programs are subject to seasonal closings.

Make a right on State Street. The park on your left was renamed for the Beastie Boys’ Adam “MCA” Yauch in 2013, one year after his death at age 47. “Born and bred in Brooklyn the U.S.A.,” Yauch rapped in “No Sleep Till Brooklyn.” He’d learned to ride a bike in this park.

Turn right on Columbia Place, site of one of Alfred T. White’s projects, Riverside, partway down on your left. Built in 1890, they were conceived as “model tenements” that elevated the quality of housing that the working class could afford, with decent plumbing and ventilation—not to mention decent aesthetics.

Back at Joralemon, you can go to the left and walk under the highway and across Furman Street to Brooklyn Bridge Park (see sidebar). Or if you’d rather save that for another time, go right on Joralemon and left on Clinton to the R train, about 0.4 mile away.

Points of Interest

Plymouth Church 57 Orange St.; 718-624-4743, plymouthchurch.org

Dansk Sømandskirke (Danish Seamen’s Church) 102 Willow St.; 718-875-0042, dskny.org

Brooklyn Heights Promenade West of Columbia Heights between Remsen Street and Orange Street

Brooklyn Historical Society 128 Pierrepont St., 718-222-4111; brooklynhistory.org

Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Cathedral 113 Remsen St.; 718-624-7228, ololc.org

Adam Yauch Park State Street and Columbia Place; nycgovparks.org