Literary Brooklyn: A Real Life Tour of 10 Fictional Brooklyn Places
Brooklyn, Colm Toibin
This novel does an amazing job at recreating Brooklyn life in the 1950s for a young, female Irish immigrant. And while some of the places in the book are fictional (including the store Bartocci’s where the main character first works), others have an interesting Brooklyn history. One such spot is the original Loehmann’s, which opened on Bedford Avenue and Sterling Place in 1921. The discount store closed in 1962 and is now a gospel church, but the original building is still quite spectacular and rules that corner of Crown Heights in much the same way it’s been doing for decades.