Ask a historian: What writers lived in Brooklyn Heights?
Lauren from Brooklyn Heights asks: What writers lived in Brooklyn Heights?
Great literary writing started in Brooklyn Heights, Lauren, but it has spread over the borough, attracting literary notables. Conversely, most of the Brooklyn celebrities began elsewhere. Brooklyn bestowed literary prominence upon them.
Brooklyn Heights has been a writers’ paradise since the days of Walt Whitman in the 1840s. “He drew energy from Brooklyn,” reported Evan Hughes in “Literary Brooklyn.” Whitman worked at Rome Brothers, a print shop on Cranberry and Fulton streets where, in his off hours, he set type for a long, wild poem that would become “Leaves of Grass.” His daytime job as editor at 26 of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle lasted until he was fired for criticizing the publisher’s politics. Walt, an elementary school dropout, struggled to support his family. They led a peripatetic life moving in the Heights from Front Street to Henry to Adams to Tillary.