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Interfaith Gathering on Promenade to Mark 20th Anniversary of 9/11

This coming Saturday, September 11, is the twentieth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the hijacked plane that was brought down in Pennsylvania.  Starting at 7:15 pm there will be a candlelight vigil on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade near the Montague Street entrance, presented by the Brooklyn Heights […]

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Coming at the Center for Brooklyn History: Building the Brooklyn Bridge

The Center for Brooklyn History (formerly the Brooklyn Historical Society) is presenting free, virtual programs about topics of historical interest. On Wednesday, September 1, from 6:30 to 7:30 PM, Jeffrey I. Richman, author of Building the Brooklyn Bridge 1869-1883 will present “a visual feast of 19th century photographs, illustrations, engineering drawings, and stereographs that bring […]

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Farewell to Jack the Horse Tavern: An Interview with Tim Oltmans and Micki Schubert

On 6/6/2006, at 66 Hicks St., a new restaurant opened in Brooklyn Heights. Jack the Horse Tavern was its name. Tim Oltmans was its chef and owner, along with his wife and business partner Micki Schubert. Soon after opening, locals crowded the bar at happy hour and sipped cocktails called long bottom bramble and behind […]

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Coming at Center for Brooklyn History

Tomorrow evening, Tuesday, June 29 from 6:30 to 7:30 the Center for Brooklyn History will present a virtual event, Representing Brooklyn: The Life and work of Major Owens, that tells of the life and accomplishments of a Black man from Brooklyn who started his career as a librarian and later became a State Senator and, […]

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Juneteenth Celebration at Cadman Plaza Park Saturday

On June 19th 1865 Federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to announce the Emancipation Proclamation freeing all slaves in Texas, which was the last of the former Confederate states to receive this news. “Juneteenth” has since become an occasion to celebrate the abolition of slavery throughout the former slave states. On Saturday, June 19th there […]

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Grace Chorale of Brooklyn and Apollo Chorus of Chicago Present Premiere On-Line Performance of “Epitaph for Eugene Williams” Sunday Evening

In 1909 Chicago’s lakefront beaches were strictly segregated. On a hot July day a young Black man, Eugene Williams, was swimming and accidentally drifted into water off a “Whites Only” beach. A White man on the shore threw stones at him, and he drowned. Several Black bystanders who witnessed this asked a policeman to arrest […]

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A Non-Resident’s View of Hunts Lane

Joey Hadden, in Insider, describes her visit to Hunts Lane in Brooklyn Heights, a short, dead end street that goes eastward from Henry Street between Joralemon and Remsen. She took lots of photos, and quotes an Eagle story from 1944 that tells of residents’ children loving to watch when the police, whose horses were stabled […]

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Flickr photo by Tom Rupolo

Normandie Doors at Our Lady of Lebanon

Untapped New York has a story about the doors on Our Lady of Lebanon Cathedral at Henry and Remsen streets. The doors were taken from the great French ocean liner Normandie, which burned and sank in 1942 while in the process of being converted to a troopship while docked on the West Side of Manhattan. […]

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New Staten Island Ferry Named for Dorothy Day, Brooklyn Heights Native

The newest Staten Island Ferry boat is named for Dorothy Day. Ms. Day was born in Brooklyn Heights in 1897, but her father, a journalist, took a job in San Francisco in 1903. The family later moved to Chicago, where she reached adulthood. As a young woman, she returned to New York and lived a […]

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Of Addresses Renumbered and Other Curiosities of Brooklyn Heights History

I like to take walks through Brooklyn Heights. I’ve lived here going on 38 years, longer than I’ve lived anywhere, and there is no block in the neighborhood I haven’t traversed many times. (Well; Love Lane and College Place only a few. I’ll remedy that.) Still, I seldom take a walk on which I don’t […]

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