Heart of America has a Brooklyn beat in borough with a sumptuous past

NEW YORK — It isn't easy trying to paint a borough of 2.5 million people with a broad brush, particularly one with 90 distinct neighborhoods, more than 150 ethnic groups and layers upon layers of history.

That doesn't stop Dorothy Pecorara from trying.

"Brooklyn is the center of the universe," says the 70-year-old lifelong resident of the Bensonhurst section. "It's the motherland."

Hyperbole? Yes. But it's not as much of an exaggeration as you might think.

According to some estimates, as many as one in four Americans can trace roots to Brooklyn, the most populous of New York City's five boroughs. And few places can match its roster of famous natives or the imprint it has left on American culture through the films, TV shows and books inspired by its locales, lore and people.

To many Brooklynites, Brooklyn is New York. If the stereotypes of the New Yorker — the accent, the rough edges, the street smarts, the sarcasm, the energy — weren't born here, they certainly fermented in its largely working-class neighborhoods.

"Brooklyn has its own specific fascination," says veteran tour operator Justin Ferate. "It's a magical place."

Center of the universe or not, Brooklyn has much to offer as a tourist destination — charming, ethnically diverse neighborhoods, many caught in a time warp from more than a century ago; the largest collection of row houses in the country; trendy restaurants, galleries and shops.

There's also the Brooklyn Bridge, hailed as the Eighth Wonder of the World when it opened in 1883; Coney Island, perhaps the world's best-known amusement park and still home to the Cyclone, the Wonder Wheel and the original Nathan's Famous hot-dog restaurant; and the world-class Brooklyn Museum of Art and avant-garde Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).

Tourism in New York City has been in the doldrums since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but there are signs it is picking up again, says Ferate, the Brooklyn tour operator. Most of the tourism in Brooklyn is focused on the gentrified neighborhoods in the northwest. Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, Clinton Hill, Cobble Hill, Fort Greene, and parts of Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens, Crown Heights and Bedford Stuyvesant look much as they did a century ago.

Long on history

There are 16 historic preservation districts, some extending for more than 20 blocks. Many of Brooklyn's neighborhoods — preserved and otherwise — have a small-town feel, with wide commercial avenues flanked by quiet residential streets.

For me, Brooklyn's biggest allure is its colorful past and the remarkable list of natives who have helped make it the ultimate nostalgia trip. For an overview of its famous sons and daughters, you can stroll through the Celebrity Path at Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, where more than 100 of them are immortalized in concrete paver stones.

Better yet, get a good map and drive and walk the neighborhoods where they lived. A word of caution before you set out to do so: Brooklyn is vast — nearly 12 miles north to south and 10 miles east to west. Standing alone, it would be the nation's fourth-largest city — more populous than Boston, Atlanta, Miami, Washington, D.C., and St. Louis combined. Unless you rent a helicopter, you can't see it all in a day or two.

Brooklyn's literary figures were largely congregated in Brooklyn Heights and adjacent neighborhoods. The heaviest concentration of entertainers — particularly comedians — was in the traditionally Italian and Jewish neighborhoods of south and central Brooklyn.

Kramden and Kotter

A good starting point for a driving-walking tour of pop-culture Brooklyn is Bensonhurst, the borough's Little Italy, and the fictional home of Ralph Kramden, the volatile bus driver in the "Honeymooners"; the Sweathogs in TVs "Welcome Back, Kotter"; and Tony Manero, aka John Travolta, in "Saturday Night Fever."

Cruise down 86th Street — preferably on a warm summer night — beneath the elevated subway line as Travolta and his screen buddies did when they weren't dancing at the Odyssey 2000 disco in neighboring Bay Ridge. It's the same street where portions of one of the greatest car-chase scenes in cinema history was shot, in the 1971 film "The French Connection."

From there, it's a short jaunt to New Utrecht High School at 1601 80th St., inspiration for Buchanan High School, home of Barbarino, Horshack and the Sweathogs. Curly Howard of the Three Stooges walked the halls there before dropping out, and during the mid-1920s he and his brothers had four houses built on nearby Bay 43rd Street and Bath Avenue. They're still standing today.

Bensonhurst figures prominently in the history of organized crime, with all of New York's major families — the Gambinos, Luccheses, Colombos, Genoveses and Bonannos — having had operations there. Joseph Colombo Sr. lived with his family in a split-level house at 83rd Street and 11th Avenue, just up from the Dyker Beach Golf Course. Gambino underboss and turncoat Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano lived in a brick row house on 78th Street near 18th Avenue. He ran an after-hours social club at the corner of 62nd and 17th and had his headquarters at the Talis restaurant. Its current owners call it the Danzas, at 6205 18th Ave.

People paid their respects to many of the deceased mob figures — some died of natural causes and others from bullets to the back of the head — at Scarpacis Funeral Home at 1401 86th St.

What crime?

It should be pointed out, by the way, that Brooklyn is generally a safe place. In 1999, the last year for which statistics are available, only two of the 35 largest U.S. cities had lower crime rates than New York City — San Diego and San Jose. Brooklyn's crime rate, which has fallen 65 percent during the past eight years, is only slightly higher than New York City's average, and many of its neighborhoods have lower crime rates than those in suburban towns.

To get a feel for "suburban" Brooklyn, go north on Bedford and you will soon drive past beautiful brick and stucco homes, with lawns, gardens and garages. Visitors to Brooklyn are often surprised by the number of neighborhoods with single-family homes — many of them elegant. Midwood, Manhattan Beach, Marine Park, Ditmas Park and parts of Windsor Terrace, Crown Heights and Bay Ridge all have some homes that sell for more than $1 million.

Familiar Flatbush

One of New York's most famous high schools, Erasmus Hall, is in the Flatbush area. The imposing Gothic structure, which opened in 1786 and has aged badly in recent years, was built with money contributed by Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay.

From there, in central Brooklyn, no matter which direction you go, you'll run headlong into vestiges of American culture. To the east is East New York, where Murder Inc. — the enforcement arm of the mob believed responsible for 400 rubouts in the 1930s — was born.

The heart of Flatbush was a common backdrop for films in the 1940s and, more recently, the setting for "The Lords of Flatbush" with Sylvester Stallone and Henry Winkler, and "Sophie's Choice" with Meryl Streep.

The hallowed ground where Ebbets Field — home of the Brooklyn Dodgers — stood until 1957 is at 55 Sullivan Place. In its place today is a fitting monument to the sacrilege of its destruction — a bleak, 20-story, high-rise housing project. A few blocks away is Prospect Park, considered by its architects — Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux — to be superior to Manhattan's Central Park, which they also designed.

Follow Flatbush Avenue, which bisects the park, northwest to DeKalb Avenue. It's here where the old Brooklyn Paramount was the epicenter of live and rock 'n' roll during the mid-1950s. The concerts were moved later to the nearby Brooklyn Fox. In 1962, the Paramount was converted into a gym at Long Island University's Brooklyn campus and the Fox is now an office building.

The legendary waterfront

Keep going west and you'll end up in Sunset Park and Red Hook, two legendary waterfront neighborhoods, with their aging piers, factories and warehouses. Brooklyn, which was an independent city until it merged with New York City in 1898, became an important commercial center in the first quarter of the 19th century.

By the 1870s, it had 45 breweries and 50 oil refineries, and boasted the largest sugar-refining and grain-depot operations in the world. Although Brooklyn's importance as a port has greatly diminished, many of its cobblestone streets, turn-of-the-century warehouses and brick factories remain, not only in Red Hook and Sunset Park, but in Greenpoint, Fulton Ferry, Bushwick and Williamsburg, a trendy artists enclave.

If you head south from central Brooklyn a few miles, you'll come to Brooklyn's recreational coast, where there are good beaches, boating, sports fishing, a 2.5-mile boardwalk — the fourth largest in the nation — and, of course, dowdy Coney Island, with its amusement parks, aquarium, sideshows and games.

Many believe things are looking up for Brooklyn.

To Bensonhurst's Pecorara, who has lived in the same apartment for 40 years, Brooklyn has never been down.

"I never once thought of leaving Brooklyn," she says. "When I do leave, I want to go out horizontally, just like my parents."