25th Hour | Washington Street, Dumbo — Cobblestones on the Way to the Club

An hour into the night the three of them head for the club, and the approach is a cobbled street in Dumbo with the Manhattan Bridge standing over the end of it. Belgian block underfoot, brick warehouses shouldering in on both sides, the bridge tower closing the frame. This is the pre-boutique Brooklyn — dark, industrial, still smelling of the river — and it is the last stretch of ordinary city Monty walks through before the night turns into something he cannot take back.

The street is Washington Street between Water and Front. It has since become the most photographed thirty metres in Brooklyn, because the alignment drops the Manhattan Bridge tower dead centre and frames the Empire State Building inside its arch. On a clear morning there is a queue, and a volunteer waving people out of the roadway between cars. Trains cross overhead every couple of minutes and the whole block rings like a struck pipe.

Get there before eight if you want it to yourself. Then walk the two blocks down to Main Street Park, where the warehouses stop and the harbour opens out, and it becomes obvious why Lee staged the last free night of a man's life on this side of the water rather than the other.