Brooklyn Heights
Neighborhood Intelligence

Brooklyn Heights sits on a bluff directly across the East River from Lower Manhattan. Much of the neighborhood is part of the Brooklyn Heights Historic District, which is both a New York City and a National Historic Landmark district, and it is noted for its low-rise architecture, its many brownstone rowhouses (most built before the Civil War), and an abundance of churches and other institutions. Before the Civil War the neighborhood was a center of the abolitionist movement, with Henry Ward Beecher preaching at Plymouth Church. The Brooklyn Heights Promenade, a pedestrian walkway on the neighborhood's western edge, looks out over the harbor and the Lower Manhattan skyline.

Montague Street is the main commercial strip, and Willowtown, around Willow Street, is a small residential enclave within the district. Plymouth Church on Orange Street, St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church on Montague Street, and First Presbyterian Church on Henry Street are among its historic congregations, and the Center for Brooklyn History, formerly the Brooklyn Historical Society, occupies a landmark building on Pierrepont Street. The former Hotel Bossert on Montague Street housed several Brooklyn Dodgers players in the 1950s, and the New York Transit Museum is housed in a decommissioned subway station at the neighborhood's southeastern edge.