Brooklyn Promenade

Brooklyn Heights is the oldest neighborhood in Brooklyn. In 1834 when the borough was formed, the Heights was still called Brooklyn Village. It still has that quiet feel of a nice town. It was the neighborhood where the Huxtables from the Cosby Show lived and it looks like it. With shady tree-lined streets and old Brownstones, on any given afternoon it feels like a Sunday afternoon. In the mid-nineteenth century, residents were known to feel a bit superior to the "dirty industrial" (at least Walt Whitman did) city across the harbor, and much of New York's founding families called Brooklyn Heights home. (The names of the streets still bear their names...Hicks, Degraw, etc.)

The area is called the Heights because of its location atop a bluff, once its defining feature. After Robert Moses failed to bulldoze through the cities elite for his BQE highway project, the bluff was to become another defining feature and one of my favorite places to sit and drink a cup of coffee. The highway route was moved to just below the Bluff and the view from the neighborhood like so many others after Robert Moses got to them was turned into that of a motorway. Instead, the now famous Brooklyn Promenade was built.

In another great adaption to over-industrialized urban landscape, a walkway and overlook was built on the bluff to cover that stretch of the BQE and create a nice, semi-quiet park that boast of amazing views of lower Manhattan, Governor's Island, The Statue Of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. It is the premier spot in Brooklyn to watch the July 4th fireworks.

The sunset from there, which I have seen 5 times in the last month, does not set perfectly over the skyline or the Statue as you might want. However, on a clear night, when the sunset turns orange, the south faces of all the Manhattan buildings reflect the color with a unique glow that has to be seen to fully appreciate.

It is almost always a quiet place to sit and even now...especially now as the weather gets a bit colder one of those sit-and-gather-your-thoughts hot spots that makes New York so special.