Literary Brooklyn: A Real Life Tour of 10 Fictional Brooklyn Places
Tropic of Capricorn, Henry Miller
Miller (who later, notoriously, came to hate Brooklyn, calling it “that old shithole, New York, where I was born”) grew up at 662 Driggs Avenue, across the street from the one block stretch of Fillmore Place. But it was Fillmore, not Driggs, that he memorably praised in Tropic of Capricorn as being “the most enchanting street” he’d ever seen. Unfortunately, Fillmore Place didn’t escape Miller’s later disgust at Brooklyn. He revised his orignal opinion of the small street, saying it had become “a dirty mouth with all the prominent teeth missing….[G]arbage was knee deep in the gutter and the fire escapes filled with bloated bedding, with cockroaches, with dried blood.” Now, though, more than a century after Miller played on the streets of Williamsburg (known back then simply as Brooklyn’s 14th Ward), Fillmore Place retains much of the charm Miller first recorded. It’s a quiet stretch in a particularly bustling part of Williamsburg, and is still lined with dignified brick houses that Miller would recognize much more easily than he would newer additions to the neighborhood, like the Williamsburg Cinemas. And, of course, it’s still very much a street of “value.” I can’t even begin to think what one of those brick townhouses would cost, probably far more than most tailors or poets could afford.