For more than sixty years Brooklyn was an independent city, the fourth largest in the United States, with its own mayor, port and factories. In 1894 it voted to join New York by just 277 votes, and many of its people never forgave it. Twelve stops between the bridge that joined the two cities, Whitman's ferry landing, the cardboard factories of DUMBO, the promenade hanging over the highway, the old city hall, the shipyard that built the Arizona and the Missouri, the Williamsburg sugar refinery, the avenue of artists, the murals on Bushwick's old breweries, the arch to the Union's soldiers, the great meadow of Prospect Park and the brownstones of Park Slope. Approximate audio duration: 26 minutes.
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Brooklyn: la ciudad que votó dejar de existir y se volvió la más famosa del mundo
Durante más de sesenta años Brooklyn fue una ciudad independiente, la cuarta más poblada de Estados Unidos, con su propio alcalde, su puerto y sus fábricas. En 1894 votó unirse a Nueva York por apenas 277 votos, y muchos de sus vecinos nunca lo perdonaron. Doce paradas entre el puente que unió las dos ciudades, el muelle del ferry de Whitman, las fábricas de cartón de DUMBO, el paseo colgado sobre la autopista, el antiguo ayuntamiento, el astillero que construyó el Arizona y el Missouri, la refinería de azúcar de Williamsburg, la avenida de los artistas, los murales de las viejas cervecerías de Bushwick, el arco de los soldados de la Unión, el gran prado de Prospect Park y las casas de piedra rojiza de Park Slope. Duración aproximada de audio: 26 minutos.
Tour stops
12 stops · ~26 min of audio · 19.47 km on foot (~4 h 50 min walking) · about 5 h 30 min in total
You are on the wooden walkway of the Brooklyn Bridge, beside the Brooklyn tower. Look up: two Gothic arches of granite and limestone, and a web of steel cables running down to your feet.
When it opened on 24 May 1883, this bridge did not link two neighbourhoods. It linked two separate cities: New York across the river, and Brooklyn, the one behind you. Brooklyn was then one of the biggest cities in the country, with its own mayor and its own government.
The design was by John Augustus Roebling, a Prussian-born engineer. In 1869, while taking measurements near the ferry slip, his foot was cru…
2
The Ferry That Invented the Commuter
You are on the Fulton Ferry landing, right under the bridge, with the East River at your feet. This is where Brooklyn was born as a city. Long before the bridge, everything came through here.
In the seventeenth century the Dutch founded the village of Breuckelen nearby, named after a town in Holland. For almost two hundred years it was a scatter of farms across the river, linked to Manhattan by rowing and sailing boats.
This landing also saw a decisive night. In August 1776, after losing the Battle of Long Island, George Washington slipped some nine thousand soldiers out of Brooklyn across t…
3
DUMBO, the Neighbourhood of Cardboard Boxes
You are at the corner of Washington Street and Water Street. Look north: between two brick buildings the Manhattan Bridge appears, and through one of its steel arches, the tower of the Empire State Building. It is one of the most photographed views in New York.
A hundred years ago nobody came here to take pictures. This was a district of factories and warehouses by the docks. They made coffee, soap, machinery, tins and, above all, boxes.
A Scottish-born manufacturer, Robert Gair, found in 1879, almost by accident, that he could cut and crease cardboard in a single operation. That was the bir…
4
A Promenade Hanging over the Highway
You are on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, a walk of hexagonal paving stones facing the river. Across the water stand the skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan, and far off to the left, the Statue of Liberty. Now listen to the noise beneath your feet.
Right under you thousands of cars and lorries are passing. The promenade is the roof of a three-level highway, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, built in the early fifties.
The original plan of the all-powerful planner Robert Moses was to drive the road through the neighbourhood and knock houses down. Brooklyn Heights residents fought back. The result w…
5
The City Hall of a City That No Longer Exists
You are standing before Brooklyn Borough Hall, a white marble building with Greek columns, a broad flight of steps and a cupola. Today it houses the borough president. But it was built for something far grander: to be a city hall.
Brooklyn became a city in 1834. This building was finished in 1848. From here a city was governed that never stopped growing, fed by the port, the factories and Irish, German, Italian and Jewish immigration.
In 1855 it absorbed its neighbour Williamsburg, and over the following decades it took in the old Dutch towns of the county. By 1890 it had more than eight hun…
6
The Shipyard That Built Naval History
You are at the entrance to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, on Flushing Avenue. Behind the gate stretch industrial sheds, cranes and dry docks on a bend of the East River. For more than a hundred and sixty years this was one of the most important shipyards in the United States.
The Navy established it in 1801. Ships that shaped the nation's history were launched here. The battleship Maine, whose explosion in Havana in 1898 set off the war with Spain, came out of this yard.
The Arizona was built here too, launched in 1915. She was sunk in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and her wreck is n…
7
The Refinery That Sweetened a Nation
You are in Domino Park, on the bank of the East River in Williamsburg. To your right rises the Williamsburg Bridge, and behind you a huge brick building with a chimney. It is what remains of the Domino sugar refinery.
The Havemeyer family, of German origin, set up their refinery here in 1856. Ships brought raw sugar from the Caribbean and unloaded it straight onto this pier. At its height, this waterfront processed a huge share of the sugar eaten in the United States.
The building you see was rebuilt after a fire in 1882. Thousands of workers, many of them immigrants, spent their days betwee…
8
Bedford Avenue, the Street That Exported a Style
You are on Bedford Avenue, by the L train station. Look around: specialty coffee shops, vintage clothing stores, record shops, bicycles locked to every post. This street became the symbol of a new Brooklyn.
Until a few decades ago, northern Williamsburg was a working-class district of Polish, Italian and Puerto Rican families, surrounded by factories and warehouses. Many of those factories closed in the seventies and eighties.
In the nineties, artists and musicians priced out of Manhattan found that the L train dropped them here just one stop after crossing the river. They rented empty wareh…
9
Bushwick, from Breweries to Murals
You are at the corner of Troutman Street and St. Nicholas Avenue in Bushwick. The warehouse walls around you are covered in giant murals: faces, animals, coloured lettering. This is the open-air gallery known as the Bushwick Collective.
The neighbourhood's name comes from the Dutch Boswijck, meaning something like wooded district. It was one of the towns founded by Dutch settlers in the seventeenth century, long before there was a city of Brooklyn.
In the nineteenth century German immigrants arrived, and with them, beer. The streets around here filled with breweries, so much so that one stre…
10
Brooklyn's Triumphal Arch
You are in Grand Army Plaza, a large oval roundabout where several avenues meet. In the centre rises a granite arch crowned by a bronze chariot drawn by four horses. This is the Soldiers' and Sailors' Arch.
It was raised to honour the Brooklyn men who fought for the Union in the Civil War. General William Sherman laid the cornerstone in 1889, and the arch was dedicated in 1892, while Brooklyn was still an independent city.
The architect was John H. Duncan, who also designed President Ulysses Grant's tomb in Manhattan. The obvious model is the Arc de Triomphe in Paris: a city wanting to show …
11
Prospect Park, the Park Its Designers Preferred
You are on the Long Meadow, the great lawn of Prospect Park. Before you opens a rolling meadow nearly a mile long, edged with trees, with hardly a building in sight. It looks like open country, but all of it was designed.
After the success of Central Park, Brooklyn wanted a great park of its own. It hired the same men, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. Work began in 1866 and the park opened to the public the following year.
This time they had more freedom. Central Park was bound to a rigid rectangle and a competition with many conditions. Here they could shape the land their own way. M…
12
Park Slope and the Brownstones
You are on a tree-lined street in Park Slope, between Prospect Park and Eighth Avenue. On both sides stand rows of reddish-brown stone houses with tall stoops, iron railings and arched windows. These are Brooklyn's famous brownstones.
This neighbourhood grew because of the park. Once Prospect Park opened, the land on its western slope became very valuable. In the 1880s and 1890s merchants and professionals built their homes here, and the mansions facing the park earned it the nickname of the Gold Coast.
The brown stone, a sandstone from New Jersey and Connecticut, was cheap and easy to carve…
How long does the "Brooklyn: the City That Voted Itself Out of Existence and Became World Famous" audio tour take?
It has about 26 minutes of audio across 12 stops and a 19.47 km walking route (~4 h 50 min on foot). Plan roughly 5 h 30 min in total, or split it up: you can pause and resume anytime.
Where does the tour start?
At stop 1, "The Bridge That Joined Two Cities" (coordinates 40.70385, -73.993). The app guides you from stop to stop with a map.
Is it free?
Trevurs is a free app for iOS and Android. There is also an optional Premium version, from USD 1.99, with unlimited offline downloads, access to every tour and no ads. It also helps keep an independent app alive.
Why use an audio tour instead of a guided group tour?
No group to keep up with and no guide to wait for. Start at any time of day, on your own schedule. Go at your own pace: pause, rewind or skip any stop. No need to commit 2 or 3 hours to a single tour: do one stop or the whole route. Works offline once downloaded.
What languages is this audio guide available in?
This tour is available in Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, Italian. Switch languages anytime from inside the app.
Do I need wifi to listen to this tour?
No. Download the tour over wifi before you go, then listen without any data connection.
How do I access this tour?
Download Trevurs on iPhone (App Store) or Android (Google Play), then open New York and pick "Brooklyn: the City That Voted Itself Out of Existence and Became World Famous". No account required to start.
