The Brooklyn Nobody Knows

The Brooklyn Nobody Knows: An Urban Walking Guide
William B. Helmreich
Princeton University Press, October 2016



Paperback | 5.5 x 8 inches | 424 pages | 89 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-0691166827 | $24.95

Publisher's Description:

Bill Helmreich walked every block of New York City—6,000 miles in all—to write the award-winning The New York Nobody Knows. Now he has re-walked Brooklyn—some 816 miles—to write this one-of-a-kind walking guide to the city’s hottest borough. Drawing on hundreds of conversations he had with residents during his block-by-block journeys, The Brooklyn Nobody Knows captures the heart and soul of a diverse, booming, and constantly changing borough that defines cool around the world. The guide covers every one of Brooklyn’s forty-four neighborhoods, from Greenpoint to Coney Island, providing a colorful portrait of each section’s most interesting, unusual, and unknown people, places, and things. Along the way you will learn about a Greenpoint park devoted to plants and trees that produce materials used in industry; a hornsmith who practices his craft in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens; a collection of 1,140 stuffed animals hanging from a tree in Bergen Beach; a five-story Brownsville mural that depicts Zionist leader Theodor Herzl—and that was the brainchild of black teenagers; Brooklyn’s most private—yet public—beach in Manhattan Beach; and much, much more. An unforgettably vivid chronicle of today’s Brooklyn, the book can also be enjoyed without ever leaving home—but it’s almost guaranteed to inspire you to get out and explore one of the most fascinating urban areas anywhere.

dDAB Commentary:

Recently the New York Times set up a "Those We've Lost" section on its website, where obituaries for those who died from the coronavirus are being compiled. The first obituary on that page is an architect, Vittorio Gregotti, who died in Milan on March 15th at the age of 92. Closer to my NYC home are Michael Sorkin, who was just 71 when he died on Thursday (I studied under at City College and wrote about one of his books over the weekend), and William B. Helmreich, who died at the age of 74 on Saturday. Helmreich may not be as familiar a name in architecture circles as Sorkin's, but the two treaded very similar territories in life: Helmreich also taught in the City University (CUNY) system, at the Graduate Center; they both lived in New York City most of their lives; and both were walkers. In our design studios at CCNY Sorkin promoted walking as the preferred mode of getting around — and therefore designing — the city, while Helmreich, a professor of sociology, walked to experience not just the city, but the city's inhabitants. Further, both were progressive voices, Sorkin more overtly so, fighting for a just, free metropolis, and Helmreich often throwing himself into controversial or even dangerous situations out of his curiosity and gregariousness, to use a couple words from the Times obit.

Helmreich walked a lot: every street in New York City — more than 6,000 miles. He put his experiences, anecdotes of those he encountered, and his sociological takes on immigrants, gentrification, and other aspects of the five boroughs into The New York Nobody Knows, published by Princeton University Press in 2013. Helmreich and the Press were releasing more detailed accounts for each borough, structured more as guides than the first book: The Brooklyn Nobody Knows came out in 2016 and The Manhattan Nobody Knows in 2018. I'm not sure the status of the remaining three boroughs, but the fact the Press made covers for each makes me hopeful that Helmreich may have gotten those all on paper before he died. Even if he didn't, the Nobody Knows he wrote are valuable for revealing parts of the city most people — tourists and residents — don't encounter. I used the first book and the Brooklyn book when researching my NYC Walks architecture guidebook. I particularly liked his chapter on gentrification in The New York, while for me The Brooklyn illuminated social aspects of neighborhoods, things that made it feel like I was exploring them with a local. One need only look at the maps, which label restaurants, shops, and other haunts rather than architectural landmarks, to see what Helmreich was attracted to: the places where people live their lives and make a mark on the communities they are part of.

Images:


Author Bio:

William B. Helmreich is the author of many books, including The New York Nobody Knows (Princeton), which won the inaugural 2014–15 Guides Association of New York Award for Outstanding Achievement in Book Writing. He is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the City College of New York's Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership and at CUNY Graduate Center. The Brooklyn Nobody Knows is the first of five planned walking guides, one for each borough of New York City.

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