When Walking Brooklyn was first published in 2007, Brooklyn was on the brink of change. Yet nobody could have foreseen just how far-reaching and momentous that change would be. It’s a renaissance unprecedented in modern urban history, and it entails so much more than skyscraper construction, waterfront development, or gentrification spreading from one neighborhood to the next. Brooklyn has emerged as a worldwide locus of trendy, artisanal cool and a wellspring of artistic, culinary, and technological creativity. It has become, in the words of New York magazine, New York City’s “most dominant cultural export.” Brooklyn went into this a place and came out a brand name. And, occasionally, a punchline, as that amalgam of qualities now synonymous with the word Brooklyn—hip, highly educated, cross-cultural, environmentally responsible, haute rustic, retro-influenced—is parodied nearly as much as it’s imitated.

Yet while this renaissance has renewed hometown pride, it also has perpetuated a disconnect between today’s Brooklyn and the Brooklyn of so many cherished 20th-century memories, and between the “new” Brooklyn and the sizable swath of this 40-neighborhood, 2.6 million–person borough that hasn’t really changed. A lot of newer Brooklynites grew up far from Kings County. They may not even know they’re supposed to hate Walter O’Malley for banishing the Dodgers to California, or Robert Moses for bulldozing a highway through their streets. Earlier events—from the devastating assault by the King’s army during the Revolutionary War, to the high-bourgeois Victorian age, to the lurid decline of the 1970s—have left their mark on Brooklyn. So we have a place defined by both the past and the future, a personality both nostalgic and on the cutting edge.

Brooklyn has the unique history of having been an independent city, and before that was composed of several different cities and townships. It can also boast of the great outdoors, with parks and community gardens galore and a shoreline that stretches from river to bay to ocean. These walks aim to capture all this diversity in Brooklyn’s geography, history, and people. I hope you have fun exploring and are enlightened and excited along the way.

Manhattan Bridge and Brooklyn Bridge

Manhattan Bridge and Brooklyn Bridge:

In One, Out the Other

Above: One of America’s proudest architectural achievements, the Brooklyn Bridge

BOUNDARIES: Canal St. (Manhattan), Jay St., Cadman Plaza Park, ferry landing

DISTANCE: 4.1 miles

SUBWAY: B or D at Grand St. (Manhattan)

Standing less than half a mile apart, the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges span the East River between two downtowns: lower Manhattan and the neighborhood known as Downtown Brooklyn. Both bridges had long, complicated, controversial journeys to completion, and both set precedents in design and construction. The Manhattan, opened in 1909, ushered in an age of lighter and narrower suspension bridges, whose deck and cables could deflect weight and wind forces enough to decrease reliance on clunky-looking girders. But the Brooklyn Bridge, dating to 1883, was an engineering marvel, and now it’s also revered as a work of art. While the Manhattan Bridge has neither the iconic status nor aesthetic cachet of the Brooklyn Bridge, together they create a striking image and apt symbol of this city that’s always on the move.

Walk Description

Begin in Manhattan at Canal Street and the Bowery. Go onto the plaza for an up-close view of the Manhattan Bridge’s grandiose entrance. The crosswalk from the south side of the plaza leads right onto the bridge’s pedestrian lane. Because Manhattan Bridge pedestrians have just one “caged” lane, as opposed to an entire level on the Brooklyn Bridge, this is a more confining walk. But it offers its own unique experiences—like walking beside the subway train (which clamors across the bridge mere feet away) and possibly even feeling the bridge’s vibrations.

After walking down the steps from the bridge on the Brooklyn side, go to the right. You’re on Jay Street and entering Dumbo, a neighborhood given new life by artists and entrepreneurs a century after its industrial heyday and one of NYC’s priciest. It’s even spawned a Dumbo Heights—the group of buildings in this vicinity connected by sky bridges. Now office,

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