This Brooklyn tour is available in two options: group and private. There is no hotel pick-up for your Walking Tour of Brooklyn tour. Make your way to the front of Starbucks Coffee located at 38 Park Row #4, just two blocks from the Brooklyn Bridge (in Manhattan), which is accessible by the 4,5,6 (Brooklyn Bridge stop) and the 2,3 (Park Place stop) subway lines. In the event of rain, we'll meet inside Starbucks.
You will be accompanied by a professional English-speaking docent on this tour.
During your three-hour walking tour, your guide will focus on the development of Brooklyn Heights—the historic area directly across from lower Manhattan—and surrounding neighborhoods, shifting gears from architectural and social history to contemporary politics, art, food, culture, and ethnic identity.
Learn about the development of Brooklyn Heights in the 19th century as a refuge for genteel families from the squalor of Manhattan island. Looking closely at the Federal-style brownstones, clapboard houses, and mews along lush, tree-lined streets, trace the development of a distinct Brooklyn character over the centuries.
Your walk will also include a stroll through DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), a former warehouse district that has become a trendy gallery zone. Here, you will walk to some of the docks and waterfront to trace the origins of Brooklyn as a maritime port and discuss the importance of trade and commerce to the city until the 1970s when larger, deep water ports in New Jersey surpassed the shallower ones in the East River.
Your perambulations may also take you along the Promenade, where you may visit Henry Ward Beecher's Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims, a famous stop on the Underground Railroad.
You will also venture into such peripheral neighborhoods as Carroll Gardens, a historically Italian neighborhood, and Boerum Hill, home to a lively mix of Middle Eastern food shops and boutiques and cafes that make Midtown Manhattan feel hours away.
By the end of your walk, you are sure to emerge with a portrait of Brooklyn, a city within a city, and a deeper understanding of the important role its played in the history and culture of New York.
The tour ends in Boerum Hill.