Fort Greene Park
Encyclopedia
Fort Greene Park is a municipal park
Park
A park is a protected area, in its natural or semi-natural state, or planted, and set aside for human recreation and enjoyment, or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. It may consist of rocks, soil, water, flora and fauna and grass areas. Many parks are legally protected by...
in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, comprising 30.2 acres (122,000 m²).
The park includes the high ground where the Continental Army
Continental Army
The Continental Army was formed after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War by the colonies that became the United States of America. Established by a resolution of the Continental Congress on June 14, 1775, it was created to coordinate the military efforts of the Thirteen Colonies in...
built Fort Putnam during the American Revolutionary War
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...
. The site was chosen and the construction supervised by General Nathanael Greene
Nathanael Greene
Nathanael Greene was a major general of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War. When the war began, Greene was a militia private, the lowest rank possible; he emerged from the war with a reputation as George Washington's most gifted and dependable officer. Many places in the United...
. During the War of 1812
War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a military conflict fought between the forces of the United States of America and those of the British Empire. The Americans declared war in 1812 for several reasons, including trade restrictions because of Britain's ongoing war with France, impressment of American merchant...
, when the possibility of a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
invasion led to the re-use of the site for defense, the newly rebuilt fortification was named Fort Greene in his honor.
In 1847, the site became Brooklyn's first park (but see also Commodore Barry Park
Commodore Barry Park
Commodore Barry Park is an urban park in the Fort Greene neighborhood of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The park is operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. It encompasses an area of and holds baseball, basketball, football, and playground fields/facilities...
) under the name of Washington Park. Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
, then the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle
Brooklyn Eagle
The Brooklyn Daily Bulletin began publishing when the original Eagle folded in 1955. In 1996 it merged with a newly revived Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and now publishes a morning paper five days a week under the Brooklyn Daily Eagle name...
, was a strong advocate of claiming the space for a public park. In the 1860s, Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted was an American journalist, social critic, public administrator, and landscape designer. He is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture, although many scholars have bestowed that title upon Andrew Jackson Downing...
and Calvert Vaux
Calvert Vaux
Calvert Vaux , was an architect and landscape designer. He is best remembered as the co-designer , of New York's Central Park....
, who also designed Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
and Prospect Park
Prospect Park (Brooklyn)
Prospect Park is a 585-acre public park in the New York City borough of Brooklyn located between Park Slope, Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Kensington, Windsor Terrace and Flatbush Avenue, Grand Army Plaza and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden...
, prepared a design for the park. Its name was changed to Fort Greene Park in 1896.
One of the park's distinctive features is the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument
Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument
The Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument in Fort Greene Park, in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, is a memorial to the more than 11,500 prisoners of war who died in captivity, known as the prison ship martyrs. The remains of a small fraction of all those who died on the ships are in a crypt below...
. During the Revolutionary War, the British had kept American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
prisoners on ships in Wallabout Bay
Wallabout Bay
Wallabout Bay is small body of water in Upper New York Bay along the northwest shore of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, between the present Williamsburg and Manhattan bridges, opposite Corlear's Hook on Manhattan to the west, across the East River...
under terrible conditions. Around 11,500 prisoners died from disease and malnutrition. Olmsted and Vaux envisioned a crypt
Crypt
In architecture, a crypt is a stone chamber or vault beneath the floor of a burial vault possibly containing sarcophagi, coffins or relics....
to hold their remains, with an appropriate monument. The crypt was built, and the remains of the prisoners were re-interred there in 1873. There was also a small monument. Eventually, funds were raised for a larger monument. The architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White
McKim, Mead, and White
McKim, Mead & White was a prominent American architectural firm at the turn of the twentieth century and in the history of American architecture. The firm's founding partners were Charles Follen McKim , William Rutherford Mead and Stanford White...
won a design competition, and the monument was unveiled in 1908. It is a 149 foot (44 m) high granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
Doric
Doric order
The Doric order was one of the three orders or organizational systems of ancient Greek or classical architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian.-History:...
column
Column
A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a vertical structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. For the purpose of wind or earthquake engineering, columns may be designed to resist lateral forces...
over the crypt, which was the tallest freestanding Doric column in the world at the time it was built. At the top is an eight ton urn.
The neighborhood around the park is also known as Fort Greene
Fort Greene, Brooklyn
Fort Greene is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Part of Brooklyn Community Board 2, Fort Greene is listed on the New York State Registry and on the National Register of Historic Places, and is a New York City-designated Historic District...
. Across the street from the DeKalb Avenue
DeKalb Avenue
DeKalb Avenue is a street in the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, with the majority of its length in Brooklyn. It runs from Woodward Avenue in Ridgewood, Queens to Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn...
entrance at Ft. Greene Place is Brooklyn Technical High School
Brooklyn Technical High School
Brooklyn Technical High School, commonly called Brooklyn Tech or just Tech, and also administratively as High School 430, is a New York City public high school that specializes in engineering, math and science and is the largest specialized high school for science, technology, engineering, and...
.
To the west is the oldest hospital in Brooklyn, Brooklyn Hospital Center
Brooklyn Hospital Center
Brooklyn Hospital Center is an affiliated hospital within the NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare System in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City, USA. It is the oldest hospital in the borough of Brooklyn.-History:...
. North of the Park are the Walt Whitman Houses, one of the largest housing projects in New York City.
Fort Greene Park is host to the annual Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival, an event featuring young writers aged 7-18 reading alongside established writers, such as Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, Jhumpa Lahiri, Sapphire, Gloria Naylor
Gloria Naylor
Gloria Naylor is an African American novelist and educator.-Early life:Born in New York, she was the first child to Roosevelt Naylor and Alberta McAlpin. As Naylor grew up, her father was a transit worker and her mother was a telephone operator. When Naylor was young, her mother encouraged her to...
and Jennifer Egan
Jennifer Egan
Jennifer Egan is an American novelist and short story writer who lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Egan's novel A Visit From the Goon Squad won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction....
. The Fort Greene Park Conservancy operates a summer concert series.