Gracie loves Jane’s Carousel, and she’s not alone: when she visits on a summer morning, the other riders include small children with caregivers, middle-aged women, and a bride and bridegroom in full regalia having their photographs taken. She thinks it’s far too hot to be wearing a wedding gown. She hears the women discuss whether they want to ride the horses that go up and down, or the ones that stand still.

“Up and down, of course!” they say.

Gracie herself prefers a stationary horse. She can be perfectly still, while the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges revolve around her.

The carousel was originally built in 1922 and situated in Youngstown, Ohio. It was purchased at auction in 1984, and then lovingly and painstakingly restored. It has been open to the public in Brooklyn Bridge Park since 2011.

Judging by the number of people who have bought batches of tickets so they can take several trips without having to get off, the retro delights of going around and around and up and down on a painted and bejeweled horse while lights twinkle and organ music plays have managed to survive into the internet era.

After her ride, Gracie opts for ice cream by the ferry landing.

The views of Manhattan from the landing are, as always, inspiring. Around the fencing are quotes from Walt Whitman’s poem Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, which tells of his own inspiration more than 150 years ago. Even though the view was somewhat different then.

Of course, the main attraction in Brooklyn Bridge Park is Brooklyn Bridge.

Brooklyn Bridge has been beloved by so many poets, from Hart Crane to Marianne Moore to Jack Kerouac, and the subject of so many poems, that Poets’ House conducts an annual Brooklyn Bridge Walk. People walk across the bridge and read Brooklyn Bridge poems, concluding with Whitman’s.

Gracie thinks she could probably write a decent poem herself.

But it’s too hot to write a poem today. Today she just wants to enjoy the view.

Gracie and her clothes and accessories are made almost entirely from material given to me by my friend Wendy M (the exceptions are: her paws, ears, eyes, sunglasses, and embroidered details). It’s a fun challenge, to take a random collection of fabrics and try to bring them together. It’s fortunate that the stitch faces have eclectic tastes. Gracie’s bracelet and the pin on her tote bag are also gifts from Wendy.

Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore,

Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,

Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east,

Others will see the islands large and small;

Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high,

A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them,

Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the falling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide.

. . . 

It avails not, time nor place—distance avails not,

I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence,

Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,

Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,

Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh’d,

Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood yet was hurried,

Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-stemm’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d.

. . .

Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!

Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg’d waves!

Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the men and women generations after me!

Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!

Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!

—excerpts from Crossing Brooklyn Ferry by Walt Whitman (1856)

Special thanks to Deirdre and Wendy.