Walking Brooklyn. Adrienne Onofri

      Nothing will ever heal the wound of losing the Dodgers, but Brooklyn got back in the big leagues in 2012 when the Barclays Center opened and became the new home of the Nets, the NBA team previously based in New Jersey. The arena hosted the MTV Video Music Awards during its first year and is now a stop on many a pop star’s world tour. It happens to be located just a couple of blocks from Brooklyn’s other premier performance venue, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, known to all as BAM (pronounced as one syllable). Established in 1859 in Brooklyn Heights, BAM is the oldest performing arts institution in the country, yet it continues to expand and has spawned a cultural district around it. The arts presence—and high-rise construction—does not cease once you cross Flatbush Avenue into Boerum Hill. But the genteel residential streets of its historic district will take you back to another time, as they’re full of classic mid-19th-century styles, with many homes predating the Civil War.

      Walk Description

Come up the stairs from the subway and the Barclays Center is right in front of you. It resembles a spaceship, although those brown metal panels of the facade are meant to resemble Brooklyn’s iconic brownstones. Walk straight ahead into the covered entry area that has a video-screen-ringed opening in the roof. Turn and walk through the plaza with planters and benches. Notice that both the arena’s roof and the canopy of the subway station are covered with sedum plants—just one of the “green” components of this LEED-certified property. The first two performers to give concerts here, in the fall of 2012, were Brooklyn-born and -raised Jay-Z and Barbra Streisand. As of 2015, it’s also home ice for the NHL’s New York Islanders, who used to play in suburban Nassau County. Head to the flagpole at the Flatbush and Atlantic intersection; it has an important local pedigree, too, as you can learn from its plaque.

      Cross Atlantic Avenue and walk on Flatbush Avenue beside the Atlantic Terminal mall. The subway station house on the island to your left dates to 1908, the year the subway first came to Brooklyn. Only three original control houses, as these structures are officially called, remain in the city, and this is the only one in Brooklyn.

At the corner of Hanson Place, stand before the Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower, aka One Hanson Place, and gaze up. For 80 years from the day it opened in 1929, this 512-foot domed clocktower stood as Brooklyn’s only skyscraper—and then it was joined by a building only 2 feet taller (the Brooklyner on Lawrence Street). Today, alas, it ranks sixth, and at least four additional taller buildings have been proposed.

      Cross Hanson Place and examine the detail on this magnificent building. Look for the lions guarding a lockbox, industrious folks depicted in the grille, griffins holding flagpoles. The former bank lobby, featuring marble floors and a zodiac-themed mosaic ceiling among other lavish trappings, has received its own interior landmark designation and has been the winter locale for the Brooklyn Flea and Smorgasburg markets.

      Go to the building’s Ashland Place side; at the base of the window columns, you find owls and pelicans alternating with human faces, while who knows what those creatures are peering between the paired arches. Many of the things sculpted on the exterior—beehives, squirrels with acorns—are symbols of thrift, ironic given what people are paying to live in the apartments inside. The building was converted to residential around 2007; in its commercial heyday, it had the nickname Tower of Pain because a lot of dentists had offices here.

Walk on Ashland Place.

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