BBR_NewYork-34

This route leads from Fort Greene Park through the historic neighborhood of Fort Greene, known for being more diverse than most New York communities. One of Fort Greene’s most celebrated cultural icons, the author Richard Wright, was an early harbinger of this trend. Following in his footsteps, you’ll cycle past elegant brownstones into the historic parts of the neighboring communities of Clinton Hill, Crown Heights, and Bedford-Stuyvesant before returning to Fort Greene Park, where Wright’s bench at the park’s summit forms an ideal spot for a post-ride picnic.

Start: The northeast corner of Fort Greene Park, at Myrtle Avenue and Washington Park

Length: 7.5-mile loop

Approximate riding time: 1 hour

Best bike: Hybrid, road, or mountain bike

Terrain and trail surface: The trail is paved throughout and the terrain is mostly flat. It goes slightly downhill from Fort Greene Park toward the Brooklyn Academy of Music at the beginning of the ride. It goes slightly uphill to the park toward the end of the ride.

Traffic and hazards: This route leads mainly along on-road bike lanes with light to moderate traffic. Lafayette Avenue, through historic Fort Greene, has the heaviest traffic, so stay especially alert on this stretch. Road-side bike signage helps alert drivers of cyclists.

Things to see: Fort Greene, Fort Greene Park, Richard Wright Landmarks, Clinton Hill, Crown Heights, Bedford-Stuyvesant

Maps: New York City Bike Map, Literary Brooklyn Map: www.literarybrooklyn.com

Getting there: By public transportation: Take the B, Q, or R subway to the DeKalb Avenue stop. Head north on Flatbush Avenue. After about 250 feet, veer right onto Fleet Place / Fleet Street. After 0.2 mile turn right onto Myrtle Avenue and bike to the northeast corner of Fort Greene Park along Myrtle Avenue 0.3 mile. GPS coordinates: N40 41.581’ / W73 58.446’

THE RIDE

Fort Greene is associated with innumerable literary giants—Walt Whitman, Marianne Moore, and Henry Miller, to name a few. But the writer most closely linked to this Brooklyn neighborhood may well be Richard Wright, a seminal figure of African-American literature and the author of the groundbreaking novel Native Son. Wright’s literary works are often credited with having reshaped race relations in the United States. Since Wright’s time, Fort Greene has attracted a host of other icons of black culture—the saxophonist Branford Marsalis, film director Spike Lee, author Colson Whitehead, and the singer-songwriter Erykah Badu, among others.

The first Wright residence of your journey sits on Carlton Avenue, a tranquil street of brownstones, where Wright lived in 1938 in the back room of the apartment of his Chicago friends Jane and Herbert Newton. A plaque on the wall commemorates the spot. To continue, return to Fort Greene Park, hugging its eastern and southern edges. Historic brownstones along the way house a growing number of chic ground-floor cafes and boutiques. At the foot of the park, you’ll head toward the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the United States’s oldest performing arts center. Founded in 1861, it opened at its current location in 1908 and has been a Brooklyn mainstay ever since.

After crossing Fulton Street, Lafayette Avenue then takes you back into historic Fort Greene, where stately brownstones frame the way once more. On your right, you’ll pass the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, a progressive church with a 150-year history. Founded by abolitionists and known for its multiracial and multicultural congregation, the church’s interior features a large-scale mural depicting local street life. Just a few blocks onward, you’ll pass the imposing Brooklyn Masonic Temple. On Saturday during summer months, you’ll find a popular Brooklyn flea market in the lot across the road—the Brooklyn Flea.

Leaving Fort Greene behind, you’ll then enter Clinton Hill, a neighborhood that looks strikingly similar to Fort Greene. On Clifton Place, you’ll pass the former home of Truman Capote, author of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood. He lived here in the mid-1940s, not long after Wright was in the neighborhood (from about 1938 to 1941). Just a few blocks south, you’ll pass Wright’s former home on Grand Avenue, where he and his wife, Ellen (Poplar), lived for a short while with the Newtons.

Continuing onward, you’ll exit Clinton Hill’s historic district, heading toward Crown Heights along Lefferts Place. Wright lived here, too, with his friends the Newtons at 101 and with his wife at 89. It was here that he finished his influential memoir Black Boy. Lefferts Place then journeys underneath the elevated shuttle train and heads south toward the Crown Heights historic district. Stay especially alert as you cross Atlantic Avenue, where traffic is heavy. You’ll then reach the historic district along Dean Street, another residential, tree-lined street of brownstones. And Wright lived here, too, on Revere Place.

The last part of your journey takes you across Atlantic Avenue once more to head north into Bedford-Stuyvesant, Fort Greene’s increasingly gentrified eastern neighbor. Wright lived on Gates Avenue here, again with the Newtons, in a cramped apartment on what was then a busy commercial strip. From here a sweeping journey westward leads back to historic Fort Greene along the on-road bike lane on DeKalb Avenue. After passing Pratt Institute, a private art school with a leafy campus, your route will be lined with gracious brownstones once more until you reach Fort Greene Park.

Stop off at a deli—or Red Lantern Bicycles—on Myrtle Avenue just east of the park to pick up provisions for a park picnic at the end of your ride. When you reach the park, dismount your bike, climb to the top of the park’s central hill, in the footsteps of Richard Wright, sit on his bench, and contemplate your environs.

Walt Whitman’s Fort Greene Park

Were it not for the poet and journalist Walt Whitman, Fort Greene Park might not exist. A site of forts during the Revolutionary War, community members began to frequent the spot as a place of leisure shortly after the War of 1812. Thereafter, in the mid-1840s, while working as a newspaper editor for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Walt Whitman began writing and publishing strong appeals for the creation of a pleasant recreational spot where “on hot summer evenings, and Sundays” city residents “can spend a few grateful hours in the enjoyment of wholesome rest and fresh air.” Through his newspaper editorials Whitman gathered popular support for the park project and, in 1847, the city approved its development as a public park (Brooklyn’s first). Designed by the same duo of landscape artists who fashioned Prospect Park, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the park was initially called Washington Park but became known as Fort Greene Park in 1897.

MILES AND DIRECTIONS

0.0Go south along Washington Park.

0.1Turn left onto Willoughby Avenue, followed by a left onto Carlton Avenue. Wright lived at number 175.

0.3Turn left onto Myrtle Avenue, followed by a left back onto Washington Park, hugging the east edge of Fort Greene Park.

0.6Turn right onto DeKalb Avenue. The bike lane is on the left side of the road.

0.9Turn left onto Ashland Place.

1.1Turn left onto Lafayette, where the bike lane is on the right side of the road. Up ahead at Fulton Street, the bike lane switches back to the left side of the road.

1.9Turn right onto Grand Avenue, followed by a right onto Clifton Place. Truman Capote lived at number 17.

2.1Turn left onto Saint James Place, followed by a left onto Greene Avenue, and a right back onto Grand Avenue, continuing south. Wright lived at number 343.

2.6Turn left onto Lefferts Place. Wright lived at numbers 101 and 89.

2.9Turn right onto Franklin Avenue.

3.1Turn left onto Dean Street.

4.0Turn left onto Albany Avenue, followed by a left onto Bergen Street. Wright lived at 11 Revere Place up ahead on your right. Continue west along Bergen Street.

4.2Turn right onto Kingston Avenue.

4.5Turn right onto Fulton Street, followed by a quick left onto Throop Avenue.

5.0Turn left onto Gates Avenue.

5.1Wright lived at 552 Gates Ave. Make a U-turn and return to Throop Avenue.

5.2Turn left onto Throop Avenue.

5.6Turn left onto DeKalb Avenue.

7.2Turn right onto Carlton Avenue.

7.4Turn left onto Myrtle Avenue.

7.5Arrive at your starting point.

RIDE INFORMATION

Local Event/Attraction

Fort Greene Park: Brooklyn’s first public park. www.nycgovparks.org/parks/FortGreenePark

Restrooms

Start/finish: There are restrooms in the park building in Fort Greene Park.

Wright wrote much of Native Son while living at 175 Carlton Ave. with his Chicago friends Jane and Herbert Newton in 1938. During this time, Wright reportedly rose around 6 a.m. every day, entered Fort Greene Park at Willoughby Avenue, climbed to the hilltop at the center of the park, and sat on a bench overlooking Brooklyn brownstones and the Navy Yard below, pen and notebook in hand. (Today, a bench at the top of the hill celebrates the author.) He then returned to the Newtons’ apartment and shared breakfast and debate with Jane Newton before withdrawing to his room, where he would write for a few more hours. His afternoons were spent at the Brooklyn Public Library or visiting friends in Manhattan.

The Newtons were Fort Greene harbingers of their own kind—Jane was white and Herbert was black, making them an interracial couple when interracial marriage was still illegal in most states. Today, Fort Greene is known for its exceptionally multiracial, multiethnic, and multicultural constitution. But the Newtons and, once Wright married the Jewish Ellen Poplar in 1941, the Wrights, too, were not always welcome in the area. The Newtons’ landlord at 101 Lefferts asked them to move out because their racial mixing unsettled him. They moved to 343 Grand Ave. and were joined by Wright and his wife in 1941 for a short while before the Wrights found a four-bedroom apartment in Crown Heights at 11 Revere Place for themselves. Before long, though, the two newlyweds returned to Clinton Hill at 89 Lefferts Place.