Bridge-Crossing Gets Tourist-Friendly

For an out-of-towner who is navigating the streets of Brooklyn Heights and DUMBO, finding the pedestrian entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge is no small feat. Honestly, we always liked it that way — the hardly-marked entrance felt like a secret passageway, and the only signs pointing to it were small and appeared to be handmade. But according to the Times, that’s about the change:

“The Metrotech Business Improvement District is producing and putting up 120 orange-and-blue signs throughout Downtown Brooklyn, in a $1.5 million project subsidized by the City Council and the borough president, Marty Markowitz. Sixty of the signs will feature large-scale maps on one side showing major neighborhood features, like the Brooklyn Bridge and the Navy Yard, and five or six more will point directly toward the bridge.”

Now, if you’re wondering who posted those old handmade signs, you’ve got to turn to the Brooklyn Paper (the publication formerly known as the Brooklyn Papers — they recently dropped the “s”)…

The anonymous sign-maker wrote the local paper a letter to reveal herself, after they mentioned her good work in an article last month. “Roslyn Beck is quite an unlikely rebel in red hat and matching gloves,” the Paper reports. “The lifelong Brooklynite, who taught at Long Island University for 35 years and officiated at grand-slam tennis tournaments on the side, said she is motivated by nothing but goodwill.”
To Cross the Bridge [NY Times]
Heights Hero Reveals Herself [Brooklyn Paper]
Top photo by Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times; bottom-right photo by Dana Rubinstein for the Brooklyn Paper