Brooklyn! It existed long before you were born, it will keep existing long after you’re dead. That being said, as long as you’re here, you may as well learn some cool and interesting stuff about its history, especially when that learning involves walking around on nice summer days. The Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership will help you do just that with four free weekend walking tours around Wallabout this summer. Learning guaranteed (provided you pay attention)!
Wait, Wallabout? Yep, that’s a place. Specifically, Wallabout is a neighborhood stretching north to south from the Navy Yard to Myrtle Avenue and east to west from Classon to Carlton Avenues, with architecture made up of pre-Civil War homes and 19th Century industrial buildings. The tour led by the Myrtle Avenue Partnership will go into the development of the neighborhood from way back when the Dutch settled it in the 1600s to today and go over some of the more notable residents to have called Wallabout home, including the birthplace of Space Jam star Michael Jordan and a former home of famed Titus Andornicus reference Walt Whitman.
Each Wallabout Tour lasts for 1 hour and 45 minutes and begins at Fort Greene Park’s Prison Ship Martyr’s Monument and will take place every third Saturday this summer, from June until September. The first tour is on June 21, and you can register for it here, or for future tours here, here and here. Just try to retain the knowledge you pick up during it if you’re gonna try to use it to impress someone at a bar. We don’t need any more messed up historical facts released into the world.