Back to Homepage

New York - New York City - Brooklyn In Brooklyn 2,465,326 people are crammed into an area of 81 square miles. The borough is a vast residential cantonment with segregated shopping and service centers. The Flatbush, Shore Road, and Bay Ridge neighborhood's are occupied by the more prosperous elements of the community; Bay Ridge has a colony of Scandinavians; Brownsville is Jewish, Ridgewood German, the southern end Italian; Red Hook has a variety of national groups, largely Syrian and Arabian; the Irish and Poles are scattered. POINTS OF INTEREST PLYMOUTH CHURCH OF THE PILGRIMS ( 1849), Orange and Hicks Sts., was the pulpit of Henry Ward Beecher from 1847 to 1887. Its simple interior is suggestive of a New England meetinghouse. The LONG ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY, Pierrepont and Clinton Sts., houses a collection of books, pamphlets, and manuscripts especially devoted to life and history of Long Island. It has published six American historical works and a Catalogue of American Genealogies, all available for use. BROOKLYN NAVY YARD has ifs main entrance on Flushing Ave. and Cumberland St. The WILLIAMSBURG HOUSES ( 1937), Scholes St. to Maujer St., Leonard St. to Bushwick Ave., a slum-clearance and low-rent housing project, was completed under the Federal Housing program and is under the management of the New York City Housing Authority. The BROOKLYN CHILDREN'S MUSEUM ( 1899), Brooklyn Ave. and Park Place, was the first of its kind in the world and is rated the largest and best equipped. Exhibits: stuffed birds and animals, insects and minerals, handicraft and costume design, models of American historical events. Children may join the Museum League, Tree Club, Science Club, Mineral Club, Stamp Club. KINGS COUNTY HOSPITAL, Clarkson and New York Aves., is a municipal institution with the largest bed capacity in the city, and cares for every ailment except contagious diseases and mental cases requiring prolonged treatment. The main building is a handsome brick structure, by Leroy P. Ward and Associates ( 1931). BROOKLYN MUSEUM, Eastern Parkway and Washington Ave., is outstanding among American museums for the quality of its collections of the arts and crafts of American, primitive, and Asiatic peoples, and for its extensive educational program, consisting of concerts and dance recitals, demonstrations of various crafts, and lectures by writers, artists, and educators. In the BROOKLYN BOTANICAL GARDEN, 1000 Washington Ave., are a brook, esplanade, trees, enclosed gardens, and glacial boulders. Special features are the Japanese Garden, the Rose Garden, the Rock Garden. PROSPECT PARK, bounded by Prospect Park W., Prospect Park SW., Parkside, Ocean, and Flatbush Aves., covers 526 acres and is the borough's main public area. It contains a lake, pools, playgrounds, picnic grounds, parade ground, a Quaker cemetery, gardens, statues, menagerie, and the old LEFFERTS HOMESTEAD, which houses'a collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century items. It is the site of the most important action of the Battle of Long Island, on August 27, 1776. BROOKLYN COLLEGE (founded 1930), Ave. H and Bedford Ave., city-supported coeducational college of liberal arts and sciences, is a group of Georgian buildings, by Randolph Evans with Corbett, Harrison, and MacMurray as associates. Outside of summer school, graduate, and extension divisions, there is a student enrollment of 12,000 (divided between day and evening classes), with a teaching staff of 800. FLOYD BENNETT AIRPORT (IRT Flatbush Ave. subway to Flatbush Ave., then bus to field; BMT Brighton Beach subway to Ave. U, then bits to field, at the foot of Flatbush Ave. and Jamaica Bay, was the base of many famous flights. CONEY ISLAND (BMT Brighton Beach subway to Coney Island; BMT Sea Beach or West End subway to Stillwell Ave.; bus from Times Square), Surf Ave., Ocean Parkway to W.37th St., offers a bathing beach, two-mile boardwalk, two large amusement parks, bathhouses, dance halls, freak shows, carousels, roller coasters, penny arcades, assorted game booths, waxworks, ferris wheels, shooting galleries, souvenir shops, restaurants, tea rooms, chop suey parlors, and hot dog stands.