This Friday evening, March 1, the Brooklyn Art Song Society will present “February House”, a collection of songs by artists who lived at or were associated with the house at 7 Middagh Street, later demolished to make way for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, which got its name from the fact that several of its inhabitants had […]
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Brooklyn Heights: Home of the (Literary) Stars
It’s pretty well known that Brooklyn Heights has had more than its share of great writers as residents, but in response to a question from Heights resident “Lauren” the Eagle has interviewed another Heights resident, former Borough Historian John Manbeck, about the neighborhood’s literary history. We all (or most of us, I presume) know about […]
Today is Centenary of Composer Benjamin Britten, Former Brooklyn Heights Resident
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), arguably Britain’s foremost composer of the past century, whose War Requiem has long been a favorite of mine, was for a time a resident of 7 Middagh Street, the now famous February House. (The house was demolished during the construction of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.) As a tribute to Britten and his Brooklyn […]
Fall Colors in Brooklyn Heights
The deciduous trees in the Catskills are already bare, but here in the Heights the peak of foliage season comes later. As I walked around the neighborhood this past weekend, I photographed some examples. Above (click on photo to enlarge) is a portion of the Promenade gardens between Clark and Pierrepont streets. More photos and […]
Gabriel Kahane’s ‘February House’ Personifies 7 Middagh Street’s 1940s’ ‘Bohemian Commune’
Burgeoning eclectic classical composer & performer Gabriel Kahane is featured in a lengthy profile in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine, titled “Gabriel Kahane Is a One-Man Cultural Cuisinart.” The 30-year-old resident of Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, composed music & lyrics for “February House” (see previous BHB post here), based on the true story of the […]
February House Update: Times Gives It a Rave
February House, the new musical play by Gabriel Kahane and Seth Bockley that imagines life at 7 Middagh Street in the early 1940s, when the house was inhabited by a stellar and remarkably disparate collection of poets, composers, and novelists (including a striptease artist who became a novelist while living there) of various aesthetic and […]
February House Musical Gets Mixed Reviews in New Haven; Comes to NYC May 8
Composer Gabriel Kahane and playwright Seth Bockley have collaborated on a musical play, February House, evidently inspired by Sherill Tippins’ book by the same title, about the house at 7 Middagh Street (demolished to make way for the BQE) that, in the early 1940s, sheltered a brilliant and bizarre collection of poets, novelists, composers, and […]
Literary Brooklyn: The Book
Literary Brooklyn, written by Evan Hughes, chronicles the writers and artists who made Brooklyn home before Jonathan Lethem did. Today’s Daily News does a write-up of the book, along with the who’s who of Literary Brooklyn Heights: your Truman Capote, W.H. Auden, and the gang at February House. Read all about it here.
Columbia Heights “America’s Most Literary Street”
According to Evan Hughes, in the Daily Beast’s “Book Beast”: Columbia Heights, a short street in Brooklyn, just might be the most literary street in America. Columbia Heights is the closest street to the water in the quiet, leafy Brooklyn Heights neighborhood, and the authors who have lived there, if they were lucky, enjoyed commanding […]
CBS Sunday Morning on Former Brooklyn Heights Resident Gypsy Rose Lee
CBS Sunday Morning jumped aboard the Gypsy Rose Lee Centennial bandwagon today with a report featuring her son Erik Preminger:
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