Boerum Hill in Brooklyn

Your guide has been leading tours of Boerum Hill for longer than anyone, and has led more of them than anyone, and each and every one of them has been an unmitigated disaster, usually as the result of an “act of God.” So…why not try again? Boerum Hill is not as “pretty” as some of Brooklyn’s other brownstone neighborhoods, and its history has been at least as troubled as any of them. But today it’s one of the most popular neighborhoods in the city, and it has a rich, diverse, and surprising history, and some surprising and wonderful literary associations. Required reading: “The Mohawks in High Steel” by Joseph Mitchell. Also consider “Up in the Old Hotel” (the essay, not the book of the same name) by Joseph Mitchell, and the novel “The Fortress of Solitude” by Jonathan Lethem.