Join us to explore the adjacent neighborhoods of Greenwood Heights and Sunset Park that straddle Fourth Avenue and butt up against Gowanus Bay and the Upper Bay of New York Harbor. These are working class and immigrant neighborhoods that—fingers crossed—have not yet been gentrified.

In both neighborhoods, we will show you a mix of vernacular lettering (with Mexican influence), classical roman capitals and 19th century grotesques for government institutions, a small bit of Art Deco, and some 1950s scripts. We will take a small detour into Green-Wood Cemetery (established 1838), one of the historically most important cemeteries in the United States, and we might finish up at a letterpress shop.

Paul Shaw has conducted regular walking tours of lettering in New York City since 2005 for the Type Directors Club and other organizations. He has also led similar tours of Boston, Buffalo, and Atlanta for SoTA (the Society of Typographic Aficionados).

Paul is the author of Helvetica and the New York City Subway System, which has been republished by The MIT Press this year. He has been a calligrapher for over 40 years and has designed 18 typefaces. He is the principal of Paul Shaw / Letter Design and teaches calligraphy at Parsons School of Design and the history of typography at the School of Visual Arts.

Participants will be notified of the meeting point in Brooklyn prior to the event. (Note: The Type Directors Club in Manhattan is not the starting point for this walk!)