A borough that's boffo

Author: By William A. Davis, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, June 15, 1997

Page: M1

Section: Travel

Friendly locals do their best to clue him in. ``It'd take a guy a lifetime to know Brooklyn t'roo and t'roo,'' Wolfe has one Brooklynite say.``An' even den, you wouldn't know it all.''

Literary exaggeration, certainly, but not by much. New York City's largest and most populous borough, Brooklyn is sprawling and diverse. Getting to know it is a challenge, but the effort is richly rewarded.

Most visitors to New York (and many New Yorkers as well) think of Brooklyn as a mere appendage to Manhattan, a sort of suburb on the other side of the East River. But with 2.3 million inhabitants, the borough is really an urban entity unto itself. If Brooklyn had not been annexed to New York in 1898 and remained a separate community, Brooklynites like to point out, it would today be the fourth-largest city in the country.

And Brooklyn has virtually all the attributes of a major city. Among them: a first-rate art museum, a bustling downtown business district, a clutch of colleges and universities, superb public parks, distinctive residential neighborhoods (including some of the toniest and most livable in New York), elegant shopping streets, vital ethnic enclaves, interesting dining, and some of the glitziest nightclubs this side of Las Vegas.

Two significant urban amenities that Brooklyn lacks are a major hotel and a major league baseball team. However, attempts are being made to remedy these deficiencies. Renaissance Plaza, a downtown commercial development scheduled to be completed next year, includes a 350-room Marriott Hotel. And a group of local political and business leaders wants to buy the up-for-sale Los Angeles Dodgers (formerly of the borough's Flatbush neighborhood) and bring the team known to its legendarily rowdy local fans as ``them bums'' back home to Brooklyn.

Brooklyn's best-known link with Manhattan -- and a good place to start a visit -- is the Brooklyn Bridge, which can be walked as well as driven across and offers spectacular views en route. Brooklyn Heights, which looks down on the bridge and across at the Manhattan skyline, is arguably New York's most desirable neighborhood to live in.

Convenient to Manhattan but removed from most of its tensions and with streets lined with handsome 19th-century row houses (many reminiscent of Boston's Back Bay and South End) and dotted with imposing churches, Brooklyn Heights is elegant but also cozy and neighborly. Heights residents are proud and protective of their turf, and this was the first New York neighborhood to be designated a protected historic district.

Brooklyn Heights' main thoroughfare is Montague Street, which has chic restaurants, trendy bars and cafes, and upscale shops much like mid-Manhattan but also the useful and unglamorous stores and services of a real neighborhood. Montague Street leads to the promenade (a.k.a. the esplanade), which alone is reason enough to visit Brooklyn Heights.

Paralleling the East River and dramatically cantilevered over the Bronx-Queens Expressway, the promenade has sweeping, unimpeded views of the towers of Manhattan. The view is never less than impressive, but at night -- when the skyline is ablaze and landmarks like the Chrysler building are illuminated -- it's an extraordinary sight, a mind-blower.

At the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, and overshadowed by it, is the waterfront Fulton Ferry District, where ferryboats docked before the bridge was built. There are two noted restaurants on barges anchored here: Bargemusic (which offers concerts as well as food) and the River Cafe, a chichi establishment with a four-star rating and prices to match.

Right by the water (but not floating on it) is Pete's Downtown, housed in a century-old dockside building on Old Fulton Street. Operated by a family that started in the restaurant business in this neighborhood in 1894, Pete's has a great view of Manhattan (it looks across to the twin towers of the World Trade Center), a cheerful atmosphere, and a moderately priced seafood-oriented menu.

Downtown, just to the east of Brooklyn Heights, is the borough's mini-Wall Street with a cluster of skyscrapers mostly occupied by banks, including the Chase Bank (formerly Chase Manhattan), which now has its corporate headquarters in Brooklyn. The imposing Grecian-style Borough Hall on Fulton Street was originally Brooklyn's City Hall, and still exudes civic pride.

Also on Fulton is another downtown landmark, Gage & Tollner, Brooklyn's most famous restaurant. Virtually unaltered since the 1870s, the long dining room has the original mirrors, paneling, tin ceiling, and leather wall covering, and is still illuminated by gas lamps.

South of Brooklyn Heights are Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, pleasant neighborhoods that aren't as chic as the heights but almost as old as residential communities and with many streets of Victorian row houses, ranging from working men's simple homes to merchants' grand mansions. Houses in Carrol Gardens are noted for their large front gardens, most lovingly tended by a still predominantly Italian-American community.

Between Carroll Gardens and Prospect Park is Park Slope, a middle-class enclave that can't compete with Brooklyn Heights for views or easy access to Manhattan but has a similar gentrified feeling to it, and real estate prices that reportedly nearly match. Park Slope's main drag is Seventh Avenue, noted for trendy shopping, fashionable cafes, and bistros striving to be on the culinary cutting edge.

Prospect Park is best approached from Grand Army Plaza, which is dominated by the hugely triumphant Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch, a Civil War monument erected in the 1890s. The monument, like the 526-acre park behind it, was designed by two of the most eminent architects of the day, Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, who earlier designed Central Park in Manhattan. Although two-thirds the size of Central Park, Prospect Park is considered by many landscape architects to be the more beautiful and user-friendly of the two and Vaux and Olmsted's masterpiece.

Prospect Park and its environs include some of Brooklyn's greatest attractions, and a happy day could easily be spent in and around the park. On weekends, a free shuttle bus circles the area, stopping at all major sites.

The park's original zoo is now the Brooklyn Wildlife Center, an interactive facility designed especially for children, and a place where animals live in naturalistic habitats. Near the zoo is a restored Coney Island-style carousel and a small children's museum in an 18th-century homestead.

Adjacent to the park is the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, an urban oasis if ever there was one. The 52-acre Botanic Garden is known for its themed gardens -- among them an exquisitely beautiful Japanese garden complete with waterfall, Shinto temple, and resident herons -- and has a conservatory complex with replicated botanical environments ranging from desert to tropical. Amenities include a garden (naturally), restaurant, and a gift shop selling an array of exotic bulbs, seeds, and plants.

The Brooklyn Museum, next to the Botanic Garden at the corner of Eastern Parkway and Washington Avenue, is one of America's oldest and largest art museums. Housed in a grand and recently renovated and expanded turn-of-the-century building, the Brooklyn Museum can't be compared to the Metropolitan Museum but still ranks among the country's best.

The museum exhibits art from just about every culture, and the Egyptian collection and displays of African tribal art are world-class. There are also strong collections of American art, particularly the Hudson River and Ashcan schools. Among the most popular paintings on permanent exhibit are several views of Brooklyn, including a charming early 19th-century winter scene of a village-like Brooklyn by Francis Guy and a rendering of the Brooklyn Bridge by Georgia O'Keeffe that has become something of a local icon.

The indefatigable Vaux and Olmsted also laid out Ocean Parkway which runs from Prospect Park to Coney Island, about 10 miles. Coney Island is also easily accessed from just about anywhere in New York City by B, D, F, or Q trains.

The famous Coney Island strip -- a lineup of unconnected amusement parks, attractions, and rides along Surf Avenue -- looks tawdry and depressing off season and in bad weather but comes into its own on sunny summer days, providing a spectacle of multicultural and polyglot humanity at play -- a spectacle possible only in New York. Although vast crowds converge on it to escape New York's infamously hot and humid summer weather, the beach here is wide, extends for miles, and absorbs all comers.

If Coney Island has a heart, it's probably Nathan's original hot dog stand, a beachside boardwalk institution since 1916. Other local landmarks include the nonprofit Coney Island USA (performances by sideshow artists such as the illustrated man and the snake woman) and the New York Aquarium (new ecological exhibits along with old-fashioned favorites such as the shark tank.)

Just to the east of Coney Island is Brighton Beach, known as ``Little Odessa'' and home to the largest Russian emigre community in the country. Signs in Russian are as common as those in English here, and the main street, Brighton Beach Avenue, is lined with Russian grocery stores, restaurants, cafes, souvenir stands, and bookstores. This is the place for authentic borscht, knishes like grandmother made, and discounts on imported caviar and vodka.

In recent years, Brighton Beach has become known for its garish but entertaining and economically priced Moscow-style nightclubs. At night, at spots such as National, Odessa, and Ocean, for a cover charge as low as $35, customers get a full-course Russian banquet, some complimentary drinks, dancing, and a lavish floor show featuring a chorus line of Slavic beauties, most of who claim to be graduates of the Bolshoi Ballet.

Brooklyn has several such contentedly self-contained ethnic communities. Williamsburg, for instance, is home for some 30,000 Hasidim, ultra Orthodox Jews who adhere strictly to custom and religious law, speak Yiddish among themselves, and still wear the traditional dress of the Jewish shtetls of Eastern Europe.

Greenpoint, also in Northern Brooklyn, is Little Warsaw: an old Polish community that has been revitalized and expanded in the last 10 years by an influx of mostly young immigrants from Poland. Manhattan Avenue, the neighborhood shopping street, is lined with stores selling Polish sausages, cheeses, crafts, chocolate, icons, magazines, and vodka.

Restaurants in Greenpoint are moderately priced and mostly serve stick-to-the-ribs Slavic fare. At Christina's on Manhattan Avenue, for instance, the most expensive lunch item on the menu at $6 is ``Hungarian Pancake,'' a very large potato pancake stuffed to overflowing with chunks of savory goulash. It's just the thing to eat before setting out on a walk from Prospect Park to Coney Island.

A typical such B & B is Baisley House (phone 718-935-1959) on Hoyt Street in Carroll Gardens. ``I grew up in the neighborhood and always wanted to move back, restore an old house, and turn it into a B & B,'' says Harry Paul. An interior decorator and landcape designer, Paul bought the house (a three-story brownstone built in 1853 by local merchant Stephen Baisley) three years ago and spent nearly two years restoring it to high Victorian glory.

Authentic period touches include hand-painted ceilings, William Morris pattern wallpaper, antique furniture (including an Egyptian revival parlor suite), 19th-century oil paintings, and a paneled library filled with books about Brooklyn. The former paved-over back yard is now a lush rear garden with colorful perennials and Victorian lawn furniture.

Baisley House has three guest rooms with shared bath. Paul charges $85-$95 a night with enhanced continental breakfast, about average for Brooklyn B & Bs.

A list of Brooklyn B & Bs and reservation services is available from the Brooklyn Tourism Council, which also puts out ``Meet Me In Brooklyn,'' a quarterly brochure listing upcoming events and describing places of interestin the borough. Write to the Brooklyn Tourism Council, 30 Flatbush Ave., Suite 427, Brooklyn, NY 11217. Or call (718) 855-7882 or fax (718) 802-9095. The council also maintains a Brooklyn information Web site: www.brooklynx.org.

For general information about New York City, including Brooklyn, call the Visitor Information Center at (800) 692-8474.