Is Brooklyn Heights the most charming area in New York City? A remarkable number of celebrity residents seem to think so.

No wonder this elegant brownstone wonderland was the first district in the city to be awarded historic landmark status. The leafy enclave where Gilded Age bankers and merchants built handsome townhouses has also been called ”America’s First Suburb”.

On this self-guided walking tour, you’ll hear about the poets, preachers, abolitionists, suffragists and free love advocates who made the Heights a hotbed of progressive thought. The tour starts outside Plymouth Church, the “Grand Central Depot of the Underground Railway”. From there, you’ll hear about Reverend Henry Ward Beecher – “the most famous man in America” – and how he profoundly transformed religion, helped Abe Lincoln win the Civil War, did a little gun running, and slept with the wives of his best friends.