If you’re unfamiliar with the neighborhood that could end up standing in the shadows of Bruce Ratner and Frank Gehry’s Atlantic Yards towers, you owe yourself a get acquainted tour of Prospect Heights. Via No Land Grab, we found news of a great tour being offered by the Municipal Art Society on Saturday, September 15 at 2:00PM. Here’s the MAS verbiage about the tour:

Every once in a while, you walk the streets of a neighborhood and can’t believe it wasn’t designated as a historic district years ago. Prospect Heights in Brooklyn features some of the best late 19th-century brownstone blocks in the city, filled with outstanding Italianate and neo-Grecian row houses, as well as fine churches, institutional buildings, commercial buildings, and apartment houses, all in a vibrant multi-racial enclave that in recent years has filled with good restaurants, cafes, and shops. The Municipal Art Society worked with the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council to survey and catalogue more than 1,100 buildings in the neighborhood. That work formed the basis for a submission to the Landmarks Preservation Commission for historic district designation. Join us for a tour full of surprises in the area between Grand Army Plaza and the Vanderbilt railroad yards, where the “Atlantic Yards” mega-development has been proposed. Leader: Francis Morrone, architectural historian. Meet at the N.E. corner of Vanderbilt Ave. and Sterling Pl., a short walk from the Grand Army Plaza. (Transit: # 2, 3, 4 trains to Grand Army Plaza; Q train to Seventh Ave.)

The tour starts at 2PM and the cost is $12 for MAS member and $15 for non-members. No reservations are needed.