The Travel Packet provides directions, travel maps, historic information, and will guide your audio tour experience. Download the packet, print it out, and bring it along with you on your journey.
The following ZIP file contains all of the audio tracks for the walking tour. Please download the file and then unzip it. Once you have finished unzipping the files, transfer them to your portable MP3 player.
A packet containing text of all the audio files associated with the walking tour is also available for download.
The document contains a list of sources used in the creation of this walking tour.
Download Resources
Click
here for subway routes to the
Fulton Ferry landing.
Click
here for a New York Subway map.
Click
here for the New York Water Taxi schedule and routes.
Throughout the Crossing Brooklyn Ferry Online Critical Edition, a variety of online interactive tools have invited us to look anew at Walt Whitman and his poetry. This section invites us to use those same tools to go offline, to break away from our computers and classrooms and look at the importance of location and context in the shaping of creative work. Place certainly had a powerful influence on Whitman and his writing; the bustling city scenes and urban environment, with its innumerable characters and sights, all played a vital part in shaping his democratic, cataloguing free verse. This walking tour gives us an opportunity to explore the same grounds Whitman once traversed and to let his words guide us in this experiential and dynamic investigation of his life and poetry. As we travel, we will undoubtedly find many similarities and differences between Whitman’s city of 150 years ago and ours, and as we contemplate these connections, perhaps we will be better able to answer his still provacative questions, “What is it then between us?/ What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?”
Walking with Whitman: The Brooklyn Walking Tour takes us through the historic streets of Brooklyn Heights where we will be able to look out from the Fulton Pier and the Brooklyn Promenade at Manhattan. You then will have the choice to either walk over the Brooklyn Bridge and see the majestic skyline of Manhattan unfold before you, or take the Water Taxi and experience a modernized version of Whitman’s travels across the East River. At each stop on the tour, Whitman's words and spirit will accompany you through the downloadable audio tracks offered on this page.
Getting Started
- Download the Travel Packet and print it out.
- Download all audio files and transfer them onto your portable MP3 player.
- Take your prefered method of transportation to the starting point of the tour.
- When you see the Whitman icon on your travel map, refer to the corresponding number in your travel packet for more information and audio tracks related to that site.