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06/23/2008: "Walt Whitman and the Brooklyn Bridge"

In this forum I’ve previously compared Brooklyn with the Northside of Pittsburgh and also commented separately about the Northside being a place that lost its downtown. Today I came to realize in a way Brooklyn also lost its downtown. While it wasn’t bulldozed and replaced by an office mall, it was impacted by the construction of one of the country’s first engineering marvels, the building of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Before the bridge was built, the center had been near the pier where the “Brooklyn Ferry” carried passengers to Manhattan. When the Bridge opened, the span went over the location of the ferry terminal and into a completely new part of the city.

With a bit of thought, it may have seemed obvious, yet a good lecture like the one I attended at the Brooklyn Museum today helps to bring my new city into focus. Francis Morrone, historian, journalist, and author of six books discussed early Brooklyn architecture and what Brooklyn looked like in 1835, when Walt Whitman arrived.

Morrone talked a good deal about architecture and discussed Whitman’s changing tastes, eventually coming around to liking the examples of Grecian building going up around him.

Morrone discussed a number of Brooklyn locations Whitman knew including one that a local group is attempting to protect through historic designation. Also discussed was a home Whitman would have seen that was later the place where Truman Capote wrote both Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood. I looked up 70 Willow Street when I returned home only to learn it rents for $40,000 a month!

Yes folks, there are only so many parallels between Brooklyn and Pittsburgh’s Northside I can draw. Sure, the Northside does have connections to authors including Gertrude Stein and Mary Roberts Reinhardt, but you’d be hard pressed to find any home there renting for $40,000 a month.

Eric Miller, on 06.23.08 @ 02:24PST