The borough with a view
Brooklyn offers new hotels, other perks
NEW YORK – Jake Gyllenhaal is walking into my New York hotel.
It’s not on Fifth Avenue or one of the trendy corners of Lower Manhattan. It’s in Brooklyn. And it — the 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge — might be the buzziest new hotel in the city, star sightings or no.
Because the 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge, like the new William Vale Hotel and the Williamsburg Hotel, both new to Brooklyn’s waterfront, have something that Manhattan doesn’t have: the skyline panorama.
Developers have newly awoken to the Wall-Streetto-Harlem vista framed across the East River and begun touting it via rooftop bars, hotel rooms and improved parks.
From early fan Walt Whitman to the contemporary Avett Brothers, centuries of artists have sung the praises of Brooklyn, among the largest cities in the nation before neighboring New York swallowed it in 1898. It’s the epicenter of the country’s craft renaissance, where creative entrepreneurs and artisanal food producers thrive, giving rise to hipster culture that has spread flannels and beards to the Nashvilles, Austins and Omahas of the nation.
But for a traveler visiting New York, is Brooklyn enough? Can you do the Big Apple without taking a bite of Manhattan?
The short answer is no. Broadway, and specifically the teen-angst Tony-winner “Dear Evan Hansen,” was too compelling to keep me solely in the borough. But the long answer is mostly. And here’s why. (20 minutes by train) to a very quiet downtown Brooklyn at 11 p.m. on a Friday night. We dubbed it the “city that sleeps,” and that’s not such a bad thing when it comes to hotels, which are proliferating here.
We found great value, compared with Manhattan quarters, in both the recently renovated New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge (rates from around $200) and the 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge (from $350). The latter’s views of the iconic bridge and the more distant Statue of Liberty warrant roomservice dinner. And a mini-boom of entrepreneurial guide services has made finding them easier than ever.
I joined the Brooklyn startup Local Expeditions on one of its locals-led neighborhood itineraries, a three-hour bike tour of DUMBO ($40), the historic area Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass where viaducts shelter weekly flea markets and historic warehouses frame distant skyscrapers in Instagram-popular images.
Ironically, I had to meet my guide on the Manhattan side of the bridge.
“I like to start over here because the biking across the bridge is spectacular, and there are always Citi Bikes (a bicycle-sharing program) available on this side,” said Nancy Blaine, a former textbook editor, nearly lifelong Brooklynite and founder of Local Expeditions, as we pedaled over the scenic span.
Based on guides’ interests and expertise, Local Expeditions itineraries explore the multifaceted borough from Jackie Robinson’s Brooklyn to the murals of Bushwick, but they always include a snack stop. Ours was at the petite Almondine Bakery where Nancy bought us creamy almond croissants to share.
“We want to get to know people, and around food, it goes so well,” she said.