Brooklyn Before the Bridge

The last time your guide led this tour, a 20-something tour goer said, “I’m bored out of my mind. Why do you have to talk so much?” Your guide has refined the tour, and – be warned – there is more talk than ever. This is a look at northern Brooklyn Heights and Fulton Ferry as they were in the years (roughly 1820-1870) before there was a Brooklyn Bridge. Our focus will be on three outstanding individuals: Walt Whitman (the Rome brothers’ print shop, where he saw the first edition of “Leaves of Grass” through the presses in 1855), Henry Ward Beecher (Plymouth Church), and Henry C. Murphy (the most important Brooklynite you may never have heard of), and on three important business enterprises, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the Brooklyn City Railroad Company, and the Fulton Ferry Company/Union Ferry Company. Along the way we will look at representative works of architecture of theperiod, and we will conclude at the newly renovated Empire Stores.