Walking tour · Brooklyn

Under the Bridges: DUMBO

1.4 mi walk

Open in Stride Stories

The stories on this route

1. Vinegar Hill

   Look down. Front Street and Hudson Avenue keep their early paving: Belgian blocks, cut granite, though people here call them cobbles.

2. The railroad in the street

   Look down at the street. Those pairs of steel rails, set into the granite blocks, aren't trolley tracks. Trolleys never ran here. In 1904 Charles Arbuckle, of the Arbuckle coffee company, started a little railroad to move freight cars off barges and into his factories.

3. The Manhattan Bridge and the Archway

   Look up at the stone vault over your head. You're standing in the Archway, the great arch through the Brooklyn anchorage of the Manhattan Bridge. It's about 45 feet high and 152 feet long.

4. Gleason's Gym and Washington Street and The Clocktower and Robert Gair

   Look for the Gleason's Gym sign at 130 Water Street. It's been called the oldest boxing gym in New York. It was founded by a former bantamweight called Peter Gagliardi, who changed his name to Bobby Gleason.

5. Empire Stores

   Look at this long, dark-red brick front, with its round-arched openings and heavy iron shutters. It looks like one building. It's actually seven warehouses in a row. They held raw goods straight off the ships: coffee beans, hides, grain, raw sugar and molasses.

6. Jane's Carousel

   Look into the clear box by the water, with the bridges behind it. Inside is Jane's Carousel: 48 carved wooden horses, 30 jumpers and 18 standers, two chariots, and a band organ playing the music.

7. St. Ann's Warehouse

   Look at the old brick walls with their round-arched openings. This was the Tobacco Inspection Warehouse. By the 1890s, ninety percent of Brooklyn's tobacco trade passed through here. It was once five storeys, later cut down to two, and for years it stood without a roof inside a state park.

8. Eagle Warehouse

   Look up at this brick fortress on Old Fulton Street. Over the great arch: Eagle Warehouse & Storage Co. Up top, a big clock sits in the middle of the company's name. And on the front, an old metal eagle.

9. Bargemusic and Fulton Ferry Landing

   Look up at the bridge tower beside the landing. It rises 272 feet above high water. Down here at the water's edge is where the Fulton Ferry ran. The city's landmarks commission calls this spot the place where Brooklyn began.

10. Brooklyn Bridge Park, Pier 1

    Look around at these lawns, with the Brooklyn Bridge overhead and the harbor in front of you. This wasn't always a park. Between 1956 and 1964, the New York Dock Company built piers here for cargo ships. In 1983, the Port Authority ended cargo operations.

Stories researched October 2026 · every fact checked against a source