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
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
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
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
