or at Degraw Street? There are no official borders, and some people may say it’s at another street.
Turn left at Kane Street. The
Make a left on Tompkins Place, a one-block street of 1840s and 1850s classics that you could enjoy for their door enframements alone.
Turn right on Degraw and then head back to Kane via another one-blocker, Strong Place. At the corner with Degraw is a recent church-to-condo conversion. This 1852 building, designed by Minard Lafever, a preeminent church architect of the time, had stood vacant and neglected for nearly a decade before being acquired by the condo developer.
Turn right at Kane, walking beside Christ Church, the oldest Episcopal church building in Brooklyn. Come around to its front on Clinton Street, and stand beneath the 120-foot, four-spire steeple. This 1842 masterpiece was designed by Richard Upjohn and was completed while his most famous project, Trinity Church at the head of Wall Street in Manhattan, was under construction. Christ Church’s altar, pulpit, and some windows were designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany.
Go in the other direction on Clinton. On your left across Baltic Street, #296 was the home of Richard Upjohn, who also designed it (in 1842), although with only three stories (another was added later) and with a bay window rather than the slightly thrust front that replaced it.
Walk west along Baltic Street next to the Upjohn house. Richard M. Upjohn designed this apartment-house extension to his father’s former home in 1893. Farther down on the right is the neighborhood’s oldest long row of houses built together, starting with #181 and extending to the end of the block. They’ve all been modified one way or another since they were erected in 1837–39.
On the next block, you need only peek into the mews next to 145 Baltic, as you’ll be going into it shortly, but look for the plaque on the side of 141 Baltic that tells you its name: COTTAGES FOR WORKINGMEN. Hmm. In the meantime, don’t overlook the handsome twin houses on both sides of Warren Place. Finishing out the block, you have the Home and Tower buildings to your left and right, respectively, which today constitute the Cobble Hill Towers.
At Hicks Street, first go left and check out the Home apartments, as they were known when they went up in the late 1870s in tandem with the Tower across Baltic. Both were built for the working class—“model tenements,” offering those of modest means attractively designed housing with decent plumbing and ventilation. Then turn around and walk north on Hicks in front of the Tower complex.
Turn right on Warren Street, then enter
Cobble Hill Park
Turn left on Henry Street. The entire west side of the block is occupied by Cobble Hill Health Center, now a nursing home but built as a church-affiliated charity hospital in 1888.
Turn right on Verandah Place, which was probably an alley of stables and carriage houses before the houses were built in the 1850s. Thomas Wolfe lived in the basement of #40 in 1930 and described it in You Can’t Go Home Again: “follow the two-foot strip of broken concrete pavement that skirts the alley, and go to the very last shabby house down by the end. . . . The place may seem to you more like a dungeon than a room that a man would voluntarily elect to live in.” Don’t despair—he also wrote that “he found beauty” here, from “a tree that leaned over into the narrow alley . . . .”
Turn left on Clinton Street and enter
Turn right again at Henry. On your left as you approach Amity Street is a regal structure built for those in need. Toward the top it bears the name THE POLHEMUS CLINIC, founded in 1895 to provide medical services for poor residents of the waterfront district (the harbor’s just two blocks beyond). Long Island College Hospital, of which Polhemus was part, closed in 2014, and now its entire site is targeted for mixed-use redevelopment.
Turn right on Amity. The busily embellished corner building on your right was also part of the hospital, opened as a nurses’ dormitory in 1902. Upon crossing Clinton, notice the corner house on the right that is considered Cobble Hill’s prize property, partly because of its generous yard. Known as the Degraw mansion, the house was built in 1845 in the simple Greek Revival mode—still evident from the first three stories of windows facing Clinton (the low iron fence is original, too). Without a lot of other buildings in the way at that time, it had a view of the water. The house was extended down Amity in an 1890 remodeling that also gave it the Flemish gable and large brownstone stoop. Down Amity on your left, #197 was the birthplace in January 1854 of Miss Jeanette Jerome, later known as Jennie Churchill, the American-socialite mother of Winston.
Turn left on Court Street. On the left at Atlantic Avenue, the first Brooklyn
Continue north on Court Street four blocks to reach the Borough Hall subway station.
Points of Interest
Carroll Park Smith and President Streets; nycgovparks.org
The Brooklyn Strategist 333 Court St.; 718-576-3035, thebrooklynstrategist.com
