Today our english class took a trip around the outskirts of downtown Brooklyn. This area was pretty familiar for me because I used to do deliveries all over downtown. Even though, I still enjoyed it from the perspective of a student learning more about each landmark I had passed and payed no mind to originally. Our first stop was the post office/ bankruptcy court. This building says a lot about what downtown Brooklyn is going through right now as far as restoration and construction. One thing I had not known before this trip is that this very building used to be a huge theater where one of Brooklyn’s worst tragedies occured. There was a fire that burned down the whole building and killed hundreds. This is very sad but also very significant. I’m glad I have the knowledge now. Brooklyn is also happy to have the knowledge because they changed their whole building code to try to avoid anymore of these terrible incidences. Our second stop was the statue of Henry Beecher in Columbus Square. Although I had a little bit of trouble hearing at this particular checkpoint, I gathered that he was an abolitionist of slavery and he was successful in freeing as many as he could by holding “mock auctions”. The next and third stop was a church with yet again, another statue of Henry. This time he seemed more in the spirit of preaching considering his posture and gestures. The court yard that he was front and center of was beautiful with green grass and an architecturally masterful building behind. The fact that there was a preschool just to the left is perhaps a juxtaposition of young and old. It also shows how they can benefit each other. Our last stop before the museum was the water front, which I had been to before, but never really had the clarity or necessity to take it all in. I saw everything I had seen before, just from a different view. As we walked from there to the museum, I noticed that we not only had walked for a bit of a distance, but we walked in one big circle. This would mean that the museum was just in our own backyard. I had passed the building many times as it is not far from my old job and maybe had looked up and said, “Wow those are some interesting heads.” I had never thought that there was a library and an entire historical society that had been around for well over a hundred years. Everything in that building, even though it may be recent, has some historical significance. Some of the books are so old that you need to keep them in certain light and humidity to keep them preserved, along with many other rules and regulations upon entry. These books and stories help us understand the past. Even though they may not be true; but only someones interpretation or ideas; they still come from a time that we don’t have a chance to visit other than records that can be proven to come from that time period. Having a tour guide definitely helps me understand things a lot better because you can ask any questions and they will more often than not have the answer. If they don’t, they can certainly point you in the right direction so that you can figure it out. I can take my experiences today and improve on my understanding of my Project #2 location by going back and considering what may have been there before that; what brought it to be located where it is; and other historical factors such as those. Certainly I could go to the society when it is open to do a little research and just become more well-rounded on the subject all together.