Walking Brooklyn. Adrienne Onofri

      Well, that only took a hundred years. … Brooklynites had anticipated a boom for Downtown Brooklyn when the then-independent municipality of Brooklyn was consolidated into the City of New York in 1898 as a borough. But instead of New York’s business district spilling across the Brooklyn Bridge as expected, Manhattan expanded northward and Midtown developed as the new commercial center. But now, more than a century later, Downtown Brooklyn is finally getting its boom. Completed and planned construction is adding more than 10,000 apartments and nearly 1.5 million square feet of office space since 2004. Most hotel chains are opening properties in the neighborhood. And Brooklyn’s three tallest buildings are all in Downtown, and all were completed since 2014. The real estate blog Bisnow summed up the goings-on in Downtown Brooklyn: “We’re practically seeing a whole new city being built right before our eyes.” There’s still plenty left from the old city filling out Downtown’s streetscape.

      Walk Description

Upon exiting the subway, go to your right on Schermerhorn Street, then left on Hoyt Street. Turn right at State. The State Street Houses comprise 23 residences in Greek Revival and Italianate styles that are recognized by both the city landmarks commission and the National Register of Historic Places. Most of them are on your left, #324–290, but they also include #299–291 on your right. They were not built as a unit but at different times between 1847 and 1874 and have been meticulously preserved—the cast-iron balconies outside #297–293 are original.

      Before you turn right on Smith Street, look across to that tall building on the left. The dearth of windows may tip you off: it’s the House of Detention—a jail whose presence has not deterred luxury residences from sprouting up en masse in the vicinity. Detainees are taken across State Street for their day in court, and you can check out the courthouse from different sides as you turn onto Smith and then left on Schermerhorn. Constructed during the Art Deco age but in an older Renaissance Revival style, this is the one elegant building among Downtown Brooklyn’s otherwise plain courthouses. Those eagle-topped shields between the arches feature the seals of Brooklyn (on the left) and New York City (on the right) beneath the cherub faces. Farther down the block on Schermerhorn is the Friends Meeting House, used ever since it was built in 1857 for gatherings of Quakers, the religious society committed to peace and justice.

      Make a right on Boerum Place. The building across the street, which has the address 22 Boerum Place on this side but officially is 110 Livingston Street, was designed by Beaux Arts icons McKim, Mead & White in 1926 for the Elks Club—with bowling alley, swimming pool, and guest rooms inside—but from 1939 to 2003 was the headquarters of the New York City Board of Education. The penthouse floors were added when it was converted to million-dollar condos.

Under the building, you find the New York Transit Museum, located inside a deactivated subway station that you enter near the Schermerhorn corner. The museum’s collection includes old buses, turnstiles, subway signage, trolley models, and vintage subway cars that visitors can board. At street level, 22 Boerum is home to ISSUE Project Room, an arts incubator that commissions and presents works in different performance genres.

      Proceed north across Livingston Street, then take Red Hook Lane to your right. This alley is all that’s left of a road that once extended to the neighborhood of Red Hook over a mile away—a road predating all development in Brooklyn, as