The Borough’s Best: 20 Brooklyn Neighborhood Superlatives
Brooklyn Heights
Considering that all of Brooklyn Heights is an officially designated historic district, it should come as no surprise that there are tons of interesting Brooklyn Heights factoids that you can learn and use to impress your friends. No, really! There might be no better way to spend a beautiful spring day than to walk around this neighborhood and look for the houses where such literary luminaries as Norman Mailer (49 Remsen Street), Truman Capote (70 Willow Street), Henry Miller (91 Remsen Street), and Thomas Wolfe (5 Montague Terrace) lived. But possibly the most interesting house in the area is 58 Joralemon Street. Although at a quick glance it looks like any other townhouse on the block, closer examination reveals that the windows are blacked out and that it is slightly architecturally incongruous with the rest of the buildings on the block. Why is it like this? Well, because it’s not a real building. It’s a front! That’s right, in one of the most expensive areas in all of the city, there’s an MTA-rented (before you ask, yes, it goes for way below market value) fake house that’s used to cover up a subway ventilation system. The more you know, right? Right.