‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco’ was written here in Brooklyn
Tony Bennett’s Beloved Ballad Was Composed in Brooklyn Heights
As summer nears its end and autumn winds will fill the air, it’s nice to dream of a place where warm sunny days won’t disappear. Back in the 1950s, two Brooklyn songwriters did just that. George Cory and Douglass Cross had moved east and were living in Brooklyn Heights in 1953 when they began to wax nostalgic about how much they missed the West Coast. That bout of musical melancholia gave birth to the iconic ballad “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”
According to an article in the U.K. Daily Mail, Cory and Cross were amateur
writers who grew up in San Francisco but moved to New York following wartime military service. Cory wrote the music while playing the piano in bars; Cross, who worked in radio, wrote the lyrics. The article also claims that besides being songwriting partners, Cory and Cross were also lovers.