A Valentine’s Day ode to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade

February 13, 2024 Mary Frost

A heart drawn on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade

A secret admirer drew this big pink heart (in chalk) on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, just in time for Valentine’s Day. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle

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A secret admirer drew a big pink heart on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade a day or two before Tuesday’s snow storm. The Brooklyn Eagle is dedicating the heart on this Valentine’s Day to the beloved, garden-lined walkway — a sliver of tranquility and greenery offering sights so magnificent they are the only historically-protected views in the entire city.

Overlooking not only the Islands, the Statue of Liberty, the canyons of Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge, the Promenade’s sweeping vista has evoked an almost spiritual awe in inhabitants since the last Ice Age, when the Heights were formed as part of the terminal moraine left by the retreat of the Laurentide ice sheets.

Making maximum use of the ancient bluff, the Promenade’s uncluttered sightlines constitute a protected Special Scenic View District. The structure’s just-right scale and romantic, gaslight-era appearance (it is part of the Brooklyn Heights’ National Historic Landmark District) have made it a favorite location for films such as “Annie Hall,” “Moonstruck” — actually, almost any film set in Brooklyn.

Locals residents have fought ferociously over the past decade to defend and preserve the walkway and its stunning views from city agencies envisioning it as a great place to dump a temporary superhighway, and developers pushing plans to transform and “activate” the space.

And so this ode to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, still surviving on Valentine’s Day 2024.

As Abraham Lincoln said, while visiting Brooklyn Heights in 1864, looking out across the harbor from a perspective similar to today’s Promenade, “There may be finer views than this in the world, but I don’t believe it.”