The Big Onion Guide to Brooklyn: Ten Historic Walking Tours

by Seth I. Kamil, Eric Wakin, Kevin Baker (Foreword by)

Overview

The Big Onion Guide to Brooklyn is an entertaining and informative walking guide to the historic people and places of Brooklyn. Ten fascinating, fact-filled walks are featured, inviting the reader to take an intimate tour through Brooklyn's important historic sites, neighborhoods, cultural institutions, and shops.
From the iconic brownstones of Brooklyn Heights to the famous piers on Coney Island, this book covers all of Brooklyn’s notable terrain, plus many of the not-so-well known treasures of New York's much beloved borough. Beautifully illustrated with over fifty photographs and complete with maps and easy-to-follow directions, all peppered with informative side-bars and fascinating tales of Brooklyn lore.
Over two-and-a-half million New Yorkers call historic and vibrant Brooklyn home and thousands more are drawn to this borough every day. Whether you're new in town or a native New Yorker exploring Brooklyn for the day, this exceptional walking guide to the historic people and places of Brooklyn is essential reading.
The Big Onion Guide to Brooklyn offers you a chance to explore:
Downtown Brooklyn and Brooklyn Heights: Take a walk through the oldest urban section of Brooklyn with more than 600 Antebellum homes. Coney Island: Frolic in Brooklyn's playground, the great “Sodom by the Sea.”Prospect Park: Stroll over intricate bridges, past the boathouse, sculptures and monuments of Brooklyn’s emerald jewel.Williamsburg: Explore this ever-changing neighborhood that is Italian, Latino, Hassidic, and Hipster all at once.Park Slope: Discover one of the best loved residential neighborhoods in Brooklyn, the “ninteenth-century suburb on the subway.”Green-Wood Cemetery: Learn about famous Brooklynites buried within this historic garden cemetery.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814747858
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	05/01/2005
Pages:	302
Product dimensions:	4.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Seth Kamil and Eric Wakin are, respectively, the president and chief tour guide of the largest and best-known walking tour company in the United States-Big Onion Walking Tours. They are also the authors of The Big Onion Guide to New York City: Ten Historic Tours, also published by NYU Press. Both live in Brooklyn, NY.

Eric Wakin is Chief Tour Guide. Their company conducts more than 1,200 tours of New York City for more than 35,000 people each year. They are both in the Ph.D. program in history at Columbia.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Kevin Baker
Introduction
Downtown Brooklyn and Brooklyn Heights: Manhattan’s “Nearest Country Retreat”
Fort Greene and Clinton Hill: From Revolutionary War to Cultural Center
Bedford-Stuyvesant: “In Those High Rooms Life Soared and Ebbed”
Williamsburg: A “Polyglot Population”
Greenpoint: American Warsaw
Park Slope: “A Land of Terra Cotta and Red Brick”
Prospect Park: “Landscape Painted by a Skilled Hand”
Green-Wood Cemetery: Brooklyn’s Great Victorian Legacy =
Sunset Park: “How Sweet It Is!”
Coney Island: The “Nickel Empire”
Sources
About the Contributors
Index
About Big Onion Walking Tours

Editorial Reviews

“Well researched”
-Library Journal

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Praise for The Big Onion Guide to New York City:“One could scarcely find a more informative and engaging guide than this book. . . It is a delight, deeply knowledgeable, presented with wit and style.”
-New York History

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“A wondeful little guide probing many historic neighborhoods and buildings.”
-The Bookwatch

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“A nice mix of the fun and the factual.”
-Block Magazine

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From the Publisher

First- and second-time visitors to New York City are unlikely to venture outside of Manhattan's concrete jungle. Yet the Brooklyn Bridge is increasingly becoming an essential tourist stop-a 20-minute jaunt that ambitious sightseers could extend into a tour of the borough's downtown section and esteemed Heights neighborhood. Kamil and Wakin, president and chief tour guide, respectively, of Big Onion Walking Tours, wisely kick off their well-researched walking guide with those areas, including a simple street map, subway directions, historical background, buildings/sites of interest, and photos. The formula is carried out in nine other neighborhoods, including seedy-sational Coney Island and this reviewer's home of Fort Green/Clinton Hill, often with the addition of biographies of Brooklyn movers and shakers and snapshots of important events. The level of detail is both impressive and inadequate; while gems like the Skinner House on Lafayette Avenue are indicated, the authors fail to point to public bathrooms, which people may desperately need during these two- to three-hour walks. The book would have also benefited from more basic information on using the subway and safety-two factors that discourage visitors from venturing to Brooklyn in the first place. Best suited to locals who know their way around and want to delve more into their rich environs; recommended only for travel collections in the New York City area.-Heather McCormack, Library Journal Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal