We begin our tour at the Carroll Street Bridge over the Gowanus Canal. The cobblestone approach and wood planks attest to the fact that this is no ordinary bridge. In fact, it is the oldest of four retractile bridges in the United States (constructed in 1889), and it is the only wooden bridge in the city that carries cars. As recently as the 1990s, the Carroll Street Bridge was retracted almost twice daily in order to allow passage for waterborne traffic to and from the paint factories, oil depots, sand and gravel suppliers, and warehouses lining the canal, but with the decline of industry in the area these deliveries have since become far less frequent. To read the Gotham Center blog post that inspired the walk visit: https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/schlep-in-the-city-carroll-gardens-from-the-creek-to-the-point

In accordance with the 1846 plan devised by a land surveyor with the unfortunate name of Richard Butts, the neat rows of elegant brownstones that you see are all set back 33.5 feet from the street — leaving room for the district’s eponymous gardens, many of which are replete with rose bushes, fig trees, and Madonna statuettes. The developers who raised these blocks after the Civil War took a somewhat coordinated approach to the construction of the mostly neo-Grec and late Italianate homes that line them, shipping in the brownstone from quarries in Connecticut and New Jersey and giving the area a remarkably coherent aesthetic in the process. Read the Gotham blog post that inspired the walk: https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/schlep-in-the-city-carroll-gardens-from-the-creek-to-the-point

This establishment, founded in 1960, is one of five clubs in south Brooklyn specifically open to those who can trace their ancestry to Mola di Bari, a small fishing village on the Adriatic Coast. (The strikingly northern European name honors a composer whose Flemish ancestors immigrated to the town in the 17th century.) As of 2016, Van Westerhout had about 100 members, 30 of whom lived in Carroll Gardens. To read the Gotham Center blog post that inspired the walk, visit: https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/schlep-in-the-city-carroll-gardens-from-the-creek-to-the-point

This beautiful church, dedicated in 1875, originally housed St. Stephen, the Irish congregation; Sacred Heart, the first Italian parish in Brooklyn, was established seven years later. It was not until the 1940s, when Robert Moses’s infamous “meat axe” slashed through the neighborhood (a recessed stretch of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway roars just beside the building) that the Archbishop mandated a merger of the two parishes. As most Irish had already left the neighborhood, Italian worshippers easily integrated into a church where they “were once not considered welcome.” To read the Gotham Center blog post that inspired this walk, visit: https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/schlep-in-the-city-carroll-gardens-from-the-creek-to-the-point