Fort Greene, Brooklyn
Fort Greene is a neighborhood in the northwestern part of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Flushing Avenue and the Brooklyn Navy Yard to the north, Flatbush Avenue Extension and Downtown Brooklyn to the west, Atlantic Avenue and Prospect Heights to the south, and Vanderbilt Avenue and Clinton Hill to the east. The Fort Greene Historic District 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.
The neighborhood is named after an American Revolutionary War era fort that was built in 1776 under the supervision of General Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island. General Greene aided General George Washington during the Battle of Long Island in 1776. Fort Greene Park, originally called "Washington Park" is Brooklyn's first. In 1864, Fort Greene Park was redesigned by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux; the park notably includes the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument and crypt, which honors some 11,500 patriots who died aboard British prison ships during the American Revolution.
Fort Greene contains many examples of mid-19th century Italianate and Eastlake architecture, most of which is well preserved. It is known for its many tree-lined streets and elegant low-rise housing. Fort Greene is also home to the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower, which, for over 80 years, was the tallest building in Brooklyn. The neighborhood is close to the Atlantic Terminal station of the Long Island Rail Road and has access to many New York City Subway services.
Fort Greene is part of Brooklyn Community District 2, and its primary ZIP Codes are 11201, 11205, 11217, and 11238. It is patrolled by the 88th Precinct of the New York City Police Department. Politically it is represented by the New York City Council's 35th District. Fort Greene, a largely African-American neighborhood in the 20th century, has been significantly gentrified over the years, with the Black population decreasing from 41.8% in 2000 to 25.8% in 2017.
History
Early history
In approximately A.D. 800, a gradual movement of Native Americans advanced from the Delaware area into lower New York, ultimately settling as part of the Canarsie tribe among 13 tribes of the Algonquin Nation. In 1637, Walloon reformed Joris Jansen Rapelje purchased of Native American land from Dutch West India Company in the area of Brooklyn that became known as Wallabout Bay. This is the area where the Brooklyn Navy Yard now stands on the northern border of Fort Greene. An Italian immigrant named Peter Caesar Alberti started a tobacco plantation near the bay in Fort Greene in 1649 but was killed six years later by Native Americans. In 1776, under the supervision of General Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island the American Revolutionary War era Fort Putnam was constructed. Later renamed after Greene, the fort was a star-shaped earthwork that mounted six 18-pound cannons, and was the largest on Long Island. After the American defeat in the Battle of Long Island, George Washington withdrew his troops from the Fort under the cover of darkness, a brilliant move that saved the outnumbered American army from total defeat by the British. Although the fort was repaired in advance of an expected attack on Brooklyn by the British during the War of 1812, it thereafter slowly deteriorated.19th century
Settlement
In 1801, the U.S. government purchased land on Wallabout Bay for the construction of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, stimulating some growth in the area. Ferry service linking Manhattan and Brooklyn launched in 1814, and Brooklyn's population exploded from 4,000 to nearly 100,000 by 1850. Fort Greene was known as The Hill and was home to a small commuter population, several large farms—the Post Farm, the Spader farm, the Ryerson Farm, and the Jackson farm—and a burial ground. As early as the 1840s the farms' owners began selling off their land in smaller plots for development. Country villas, frame row houses, and the occasional brick row house dotted the countryside, and one of them was home to poet Walt Whitman, editor of the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper.Since the early 19th century, African Americans have made significant contributions to Fort Greene's development. New York State outlawed slavery in 1827 and 20 years later "Coloured School No. 1," Brooklyn's first school for African-Americans, opened at the current site of the Walt Whitman Houses. Abolitionists formed the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in 1857, and hosted speakers such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman and also aided in the work of the Underground Railroad. Skilled African-American workers fought for their rights at the Navy Yard during the tumultuous Draft Riots of 1863 against armed hooligan bands. The principal of P.S. 67 in the same year was African American, and Dr. Phillip A. White became the first black member of Brooklyn's Board of Education in 1882. By 1870, more than half of the Black population in Brooklyn lived in Fort Greene, most of them north of Fort Greene Park.
Crowding
In the 1850s, Fort Greene's growth spread out from stagecoach lines on Myrtle Avenue and Fulton Street that ran to Fulton Ferry, and The Hill became known as the home of prosperous professionals, second only to Brooklyn Heights in prestige. During the 1850s and 1860s, blocks of Italianate brick and brownstone row houses were built on the remaining open land to house the expanding upper and middle class population. The names of the most attractive streets came from fine Westminster terraces and streets of the early 19th century. By the 1870s, construction in the area had virtually ended, and the area still maintains hundreds of Italianate, Second Empire, Greek Revival, Neo-Grec, Romanesque Revival and Renaissance Revival row houses of virtually original appearance.As Manhattan became more crowded, people of all classes made Fort Greene their home. The unoccupied areas of Myrtle Avenue became an Irish shanty town known as "Young Dublin", In response to the horrible conditions found there, Walt Whitman called for a park to be constructed and stated in a column in the Eagle, " the inhabitants there are not so wealthy nor so well situated as those on the heights...we have a desire that these, and the generations after them, should have such a place of recreation..." The park idea was soon co-opted by longtime residents to protect the last open space in the area from development.
However, The New York Times soon found that the area was too expensive for some, and that many in the area were penurious:
Focusing on a certain section of the east Brooklyn area defined as "between Flushing and DeKalb Avenues, as far east as Classon Avenue and as far west as Ryerson, extending across Fulton Avenue," the Times item said the real estate boom has resulted in class conflict among a majority of the area's longtime residents and its new neighbors—middle to upper income homeowners The paper further explained the conflict as one that had existed for some time, evidenced perhaps by a letter to the editor of a local Brooklyn paper published prior to the Times profile. The author, a new homeowner, wrote:
Washington Park, renamed Fort Greene Park in 1897, was established as Brooklyn's first park in 1847 on a plot around the site of the old Fort. In 1864, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, by now famous for their design of Central Park, were contracted to design the park, and constructed what was described in 1884 as "one of the most central, delightful, and healthful places for recreation that any city can boast." Olmsted and Vaux's elegant design featured flowering chestnut trees along the periphery, open grassy spaces, walking paths, a vine-covered arbor facing a military salute ground, a permanent rostrum for speeches, and two lawns used for croquet and tennis. The park's success prompted the creation of the larger Prospect Park. At the highest point of the park, The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument and vault was erected in 1908 to house the bones of some of the 12,000 Revolutionary soldiers and civilians whose bodies were thrown off British prison ships and later washed ashore. The monument, designed by the firm of McKim, Mead, and White, was the world's largest Doric column at tall, and housed a bronze urn at its apex. Restoration work on the monument was completed in the late 2000s.
On April 24, 1888, the Fulton Street Elevated began running from Fulton Ferry to Nostrand Avenue, shortening the commute of Fort Greene residents, while also blocking light and adding street noise to residents facing Fulton Street. Elevated lines also ran along Lafayette Avenue and Myrtle Avenue.
20th century
Fort Greene in the early 20th century became a significant cultural destination. After the original Brooklyn Academy of Music in Brooklyn Heights burned down in 1903, the current one was built in Fort Greene, and opened in 1908 with a production of Charles Gounod's Faust featuring Enrico Caruso and Geraldine Farrar. At the time, BAM was the most complexly designed cultural center in Greater New York since the construction of Madison Square Garden 15 years earlier. Fort Greene also showcased two stunning movie theaters, built in the 1920s: the Paramount Theater, which was ultimately incorporated into Long Island University's Brooklyn campus; and the Brooklyn Fox Theatre at the intersection of Flatbush Avenue and Fulton Street, which was demolished in 1971. Built from 1927 to 1929, the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower, one of Brooklyn's tallest buildings, is located next to the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Brooklyn Technical High School, one of New York's most selective public high schools, began construction on Fort Greene Place in 1930.The poet Marianne Moore lived and worked for many years in an apartment house on Cumberland Street. Her apartment, which is lovingly recalled in Elizabeth Bishop's essay, "Efforts of Affection", has been preserved exactly as it existed during Moore's lifetime at the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia by the Rosenbach brothers, renowned collectors of literary ephemera. Richard Wright wrote Native Son while living on Carlton Avenue in Fort Greene.
File:USS North Carolina Fit out NARA 1941-04-17.jpg|thumb|right|250px|USS North Carolina in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1941
During World War II, the Brooklyn Navy Yard employed more than 71,000 people. Due to the resulting demand for housing, the New York City Housing Authority built 35 brick buildings between 1941 and 1944 ranging in height from six to fifteen stories collectively called the Fort Greene Houses. Production at the yard declined significantly after the war and many of the workers either moved on or fell on hard times. In 1957–58, the houses were renovated and divided into the Walt Whitman Houses and the Raymond V. Ingersoll Houses. One year later. Newsweek profiled the housing project as "one of the starkest examples" of the failures of public housing. The article painted a picture of broken windows, cracked walls, flickering or inoperative lighting, and elevators being used as toilets. Further depressing the area was the decommissioning of the Navy Yard in 1966 and dismantling of the Myrtle Avenue elevated train in 1969 which made the area much less attractive to Manhattan commuters.
From the 1960s through the 1980s, Fort Greene fought hard times that came with citywide poverty, crime, and the crack epidemic. While some houses were abandoned, artists, preservationists and Black professionals began to claim and restore the neighborhood in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Herbert Scott Gibson, a resident of the street called Washington Park, organized the Fort Greene Landmarks Preservation Committee which successfully lobbied for the establishment of Historic District status. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated two districts, the Fort Greene and BAM Historic Districts, in 1978. Spike Lee established his 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks company in Fort Greene in the mid-1980s, further strengthening the resurgence of the neighborhood. From 1981 to 1997, this resurgence included the South Oxford Tennis Club, which became an important cultural hub. The Fort Greene Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983 and expanded in 1984. As a historically African-American neighborhood, the cultural revival in the 1980s and 1990s has often been compared to that of the Harlem Renaissance.