Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
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Clinton Hill is a small neighborhood in north-central Brooklyn, New York. It is bordered on the east by Bedford-Stuyvesant, on the west by Fort Greene, on the north by Wallabout and on the south by Atlantic or Fulton Avenues.
By the 1840s, Clinton Hill had become a fashionable neighborhood for the wealthy of Brooklyn, who could commute to Manhattan by way of stagecoach to the Fulton Ferry in nearby Brooklyn Heights. By the 1880s and '90s, Clinton Avenue was lined with mansions of millionaires, many of which have survived to the present day. The most prominent of these are linked to Charles Pratt, who built a mansion for himself and one each for three of his four sons. These four mansions can be seen on Clinton Avenue between DeKalb and Willoughby. The Pratt Institute of Art, founded by Charles Pratt in 1887, is located a few blocks from his former home.
The poet Marianne Moore lived and worked for many years in an apartment house on Cumberland Avenue. Her apartment, which is lovingly recalled in Elizabeth Bishop's essay, "Efforts of Affection", has been preserved exactly as it existed during Moore's lifetime--though not in Clinton Hill. To see the Moore apartment you need to travel to Center City Philadelphia, to the Rosenbach Museum. After her death, the furnishings and contents of Marianne Moore's apartment were purchased by the Rosenbach brothers, renowned collectors of literary ephemera. These pieces were then painstakingly reassembled in the top floor of their Philadelphia townhouse.
External links
- Clinton Hill Society (http://www.clintonhillsociety.org/)
- Pratt (http://www.pratt.edu/)