A Walking Tour of Brooklyn Heights

There is no better way to see America than on foot. And there is no better way to appreciate what you are looking at than with a walking tour. Whether you are preparing for a road trip or just out to look at your own town in a new way, a downloadable walking tour from walkthetown.com is ready to explore when you are.

Each walking tour describes historical and architectural landmarks and provides pictures to help out when those pesky street addresses are missing. Every tour also includes a quick primer on identifying architectural styles seen on American streets.

This walking tour of the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York takes you through one of the most desirable addresses in New York City.

Dutch settlers founded Brooklyn in 1645. The village was sparsely populated until 1814, when Robert Fulton’s steam ferry first offered a means of commute to Manhattan and Brooklyn Heights became Manhattan’s first suburb. On April 8, 1834 the New York State Legislature granted Brooklyn - at the time with a population of 25,000 - its city charter. The Heights became a magnet for the affluent and the popular Greek Revival style of the time became the predominant row house style here. But you can still find clapboard Federal homes from a decade earlier. Later homes employed any manner of graceful architecture.

With more than 600 antebellum homes in the Heights the entire neighborhood was granted landmark status by New York City in 1965 - the first historic district so recognized. The designation halted any new construction, ironically at a time the Heights was in decline. Brooklyn Heights has roared back with a vengeance and today an explorer can trace practically the entire history of New York residential design beginning in the 1820s.

Our walking tour will start in the eight acres of open space surrounded by government buildings in Cadman Plaza. The Reverend Doctor Samuel Parkes Cadman (1864-1936) was a Brooklyn Congregational Church minister well known for his oratory, and first to have his own regularly scheduled coast-to-coast radio sermon. For 36 years of his life, he was pastor of the Central Congregational Church in Brooklyn and helped to found the Federated Council of Churches in America, which he headed from 1924-1928. After World War II this was the largest civic development project in the country...