3. Walt Whitman may have finished “Leaves of Grass” while living at 99 Ryerson Street
Less than two blocks from the Brooklyn Navy Yard sits an unassuming aluminum-sided townhouse that hides a rich history. 99 Ryerson Street was where Walt Whitman lived alongside his brother and parents from 1855 to 1856, when he was finishing up and publishing his collection Leaves of Grass. While living at this address, he also worked on the second edition of Leaves of Grass, which includes the first version of the poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” All of Whitman’s other homes in Brooklyn have been demolished. This home was built for mechanics and tradesmen, representative of the type of house Whitman and his family would have lived in.
Despite Whitman’s contributions to New York culture, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission declined to designate the home in 2017. 99 Reyerson Street has a third floor that was not there in 1855, instead added years later, and because the family lived there for just six months according to the commission, no part of Whitman’s epic poem was written in the home. However, Whitman himself wrote that he lived there for a year, and he needed just a title page to file for copyright law, meaning he likely wrote much of the text while in the home. Ralph Waldo Emerson also visited the home in November 1855. 99 Ryerson Street is also an important LGBTQ site since Whitman himself was gay, and landmarking the building would make it one of just a few LGBTQ landmarks in New York City.