Enjoy the neighborhood this weekend by participating in a Jane’s Walk through the historic Wallabout neighborhood! Jane’s Walk, founded on the principles of urbanist and author Jane Jacobs, offers an opportunity for locals to get together to meet, share, learn about and appreciate their neighborhood. The Wallabout walk will be one of more than 100 offered around the city on the weekend of May 4-5.

The Wallabout walk will begin at 12:00 at the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument in Fort Greene Park and end in front of 99 Ryerson Street. No registration is required.

The walk will explore the Wallabout neighborhood, located in northern Brooklyn near the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and discuss its 380+ year history as a community. The walk will lead past neighborhood landmarks and explore how these places, and the famous residents associated with them, represent the community’s social development over the centuries. The stories will discuss the area’s first European settlers, its role in the Revolutionary War, the area’s 19th century industrialization, famous residents such as Walt Whitman, and the neighborhood's decline and how these past events and people have defined the revitalized neighborhood we see today.

Find more info on The Municipal Art Society’s website.

P.S. 67, the Charles A. Dorsey School, which is located at 51 St. Edwards Street, just north of Myrtle Avenue, was selected February's 'Place of the Month' by placeMATTERS.

Check out the link on the placeMATTERS website.

The school, named for its first principal, is located on St. Edwards, next door the the historic Walt Whitman Library and across from St. Michaels-St. Edwards Church. Fort Greene Park is across the street, to the south.

placeMATTERS, a project of City Lore and the Municipal Art Society, seeks to promote and protect places that connect New Yorkers to the past, host ongoing cultural and community traditions, and keep our city distinctive.

photo credit: NYC Department of Education

Wallabout has another district listed on the National Register of Historic Places! The Industrial Wallabout historic district, which runs from Clinton to Grand Avenues between Park and Flushing Avenues, was officially listed on the National Register last month. The district includes 40 historic buildings, most of which were originally designed and built for industrial uses. Noteworthy buildings in the district include the Mergenthaler Linotype Complex on Ryerson, the Rockwood Chocolate Factory Complex on Washington, Flushing and Waverly Avenues. The oldest industrial buildings in the area were built for and housed wholesale food companies. These companies served the nearby Wallabout Market, which was located in what is now the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The area is still predominately used for industry, although several buildings now house residences and a variety of different businesses.

The district was added to the New York State Register of Historic Places in early March. The district’s nomination report was written by Andrew Dolkart, Director of the Historic Preservation program at Columbia University, and additionally supported by MARP and a grant from the Preservation League of New York State.

At a Historic Wallabout Association community reception & meeting tomorrow night, Sept 13th from 7-9pm at BLDG 92 in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the new Wallabout Homeowner's Preservation Manual will be released. The event will also serve as a chance for the neighborhood to celebrate recent preservation successes and for property owners to learn more about available incentives that can assist in home rehab and restoration projects.

The 90-page manual, commissioned by MARP and the Historic Wallabout Association, is a valuable resource for owners of historic properties in the Wallabout neighborhood. The manual provides guidance on how to maintain and rehab a historic property, and also discusses available tax credit and other financial incentive programs available to those properties located in the recently designated historic districts in Wallabout.

In addition to the manual being available at tomorrow's community event, representatives from the State Historic Preservation Office and the New York Landmarks Conservancy will also be available to discuss incentive programs that can assist property owners with rehabbing their historic homes. A complimentary copy of the manual will be available to all Wallabout property owners, and will be available to purchase for $10 to those outside of Wallabout.

The manual was researched and written by BKSK Architects LLP and was funded, in part, by a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Elizabeth and Robert Jeffe Preservation Fund. Additional support was provided by a grant from the Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation.

This week, the city installed new historic district signs in the Wallabout Historic District on Vanderbilt Avenue (between Myrtle and Park Avenues). The brown and white signs, a common sight on New York streets, help identify which areas of the city have been designated as historic districts. In addition to a map of the district, the signs also include a brief history to help passerby learn about the historic significance of the surrounding neighborhood.

The new historic district markers were paid for with funds raised by residents of the Wallabout Historic District and the surrounding blocks. The local fundraising was matched by a grant from the New York Landmarks Preservation Foundation.

The Wallabout Historic District was created in 2011 and includes 55 historic wood-frame and masonry homes. The district has one of the highest concentrations of pre-Civil War homes in New York City.

Tomorrow, July 17th at 11:00am, the Historic Landmarks Preservation Center, in collaboration with the Fort Greene Association, will unveil a cultural medallion at 175 Carlton Avenue in honor of famed African-American author Richard Wright. Wright lived at the home in 1938, when he began to pen his most famous work, Native Son.

All are welcome to come to the unveiling to remember and celebrate one of Fort Greene’s most famous residents. The home is between Willoughby and Myrtle Avenues.

The Historic Landmarks Preservation Center has previously installed another medallion in Fort Greene, which honors the poet Marianne Moore at 260 Cumberland St.

Curious to what Fort Greene and Clinton Hill was like in the 1940’s? A spectacular new website, 1940snewyork.com, offers us a glimpse. The website features an interactive map that allows you to zoom into Fort Greene and Clinton Hill , simply called Fort Greene Park at the time, to learn about rent prices and demographics. Also, the site has a few neighborhood pictures that worth checking out.

The site was developed by the Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center, in collaboration with The Gotham Center for the New York History.

Photo taken from www.1940snewyork.com.

68 years ago today, the Ingersoll Houses opened its doors in Fort Greene. The historic photo above, taken only 8 months after the opening in 1944, shows the new housing across the street from small commercial shops and the Myrtle Ave “El.” Today, lush trees have replaced the small saplings in front of Ingersoll and across the street sits the Andrea building, which houses the new Red Apple supermarket and CVS.

This past weekend, The New York Times' Lens Blog ran an interesting piece describing long-time resident William Gedney’s journal, which he wrote in 1969 and serves as a love letter to the Myrtle Avenue he knew. Gedney, an artist who moved to the area in the 1950’s, was a gifted photographer and, as his journal shows, had an admiring eye for the urban beauty found on Myrtle over 40 years ago.

Check out the article to view some of his photographs and to flip through his 92-page journal.

Photo credit: William Gedney, 1969. From MARP's photo collection.

Join MARP and Open House New York (OHNY) for a Fall walking tour of Wallabout! Two tours are being offered on Sunday, October 16th at 10am and 2pm. Space is limited, so hurry to OHNY's website and reserve a space.

The tour will begin at the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument in Ft. Greene Park, continue through the new Wallabout Historic District, pass the Navy Yard and industrial Wallabout area, and end at Walt Whitman’s only remaining home in Brooklyn.

The 1.5 mile tour will begin in Ft. Greene Park and last approximately 2 hours.