An H.P. Lovecraft Walking Tour (Brooklyn Edition)

Long time followers know of our affection for mystical horror/ fantasy scribe (and Pride of Providence) H.P. Lovecraft, and may even have read our account of the Providence Lovecraft walking (and driving) tour led by the uncanny Rory Raven. Thus when our new friend Jane Rose (whom we met on the set of Inappropriate Film's upcoming movie The Moose Over the Mantel) offered a similar tour in Brooklyn through the Morbid Anatomy Museum, we lept at the chance to take it. The tour was on Saturday -- one of the most pleasurable Saturdays we have enjoyed in a long while.

Famously reclusive and much attached to his hometown of Providence, Lovecraft only lived in Brooklyn for two years (1924-1926), initiated by his short-lived marriage to Sonia Greene. The two lived in an apartment at this building in Flatbush. It is where Lovecraft wrote The Shunned House:

Nearby is the Flatbush Reformed Protestant Dutch Church, which Lovecraft referred to in The Horror of Red Hook: 

Out back, in the churchyard, we found many graves:

Among the interred are several from the old Dutch Martense family. Lovecraft was to use this name in The Lurking Fear:

There is also a nearby street named after the family. Lovecraft refers to this street in The Horror of Red Hook:

After a few months, the marriage with Greene broke up. Lovecraft was both unemployed and unemployable. A business venture of Greene's had failed and the only job she could get was in -- horror of horrors -- Ohio, an outpost which the snobbish Lovecraft would not lower himself to partake of. He found himself a room in a building at the corner of State and Clinton Streets (then part of Red Hook, now considered part of Brooklyn Heights):

While living here, he wrote The Horror of Red Hook and He. Those who know Lovecraft's writing know that his profound alienation and his revulsion at thoughts of The Other extended beyond Shades and Demons to include human beings...pretty much all of them but especially those of dusky and swarthy hues, those hailing from Asia and Africa. Jane gave us a nice feel for the diversity of the neighborhood at the time, when it was somewhat run-down and very much a waterfront community inhabited by sailors (many of them foreign) and those who serviced them. Lovecraft was a bit of fish out of water in such an environment. She also spoke of several real-life tunnels that may have inspired the ones Lovecraft imagined leading from the wharves and forming a catacomb underneath Brooklyn. We wound up at the harbor, our heads full of images mystical and horrid. We know we will re-read Lovecraft's stories next time with more insight.

As luck would have it our 3 1/2 hour tour dumped us off near the terrific Table 87, a very old school Italian place on Atlantic Ave, where we stopped and got lunch. We loved this discovery so much that we do believe we will return there many a time. We wrapped it all up with beers with Jane at Montero's, one of the city's best, most atmospheric dive bars, much beloved for its ancient nautical decorations:

If and when she offers this tour again -- take it! (The next one is June 27) make reservations and buy tickets here.