Fort Greene, Brooklyn

Subway station in Fort Greene.

Sunset over the Monument in Fort Greene Park.

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. It is located in northwest Brooklyn, above Prospect Park.

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 and Brooklyn's first, is also derived from General Greene's name and the neighborhood. 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 train station and has access to most major subway lines.

Fort Greene is also home to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Music School, The Paul Robeson Theater, The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, BRIC Arts|Media|Bklyn, UrbanGlass, 651 Arts performing center for African-American presenters, The Irondale Center for Theater, Education, and Outreach, the Mark Morris Dance Center and Lafayette Church. It is home also to Brooklyn Technical High School, one of New York City's most competitive public schools. Pratt Institute, in neighboring Clinton Hill, is one of the leading art schools in the United States.

Fort Greene is bounded by Flushing Avenue to the north, Flatbush Avenue to the west, Vanderbilt Avenue to the east and Atlantic Avenue to the south. Its main arteries are Fulton Street above St. Felix Street and DeKalb Avenue. The neighborhood is served by the New York City Subway at DeKalb Avenue (B, ​D, ​N, ​Q, ​R, and ​W trains), Atlantic Avenue – Barclays Center (2, ​3, ​4, ​5​, B, ​D, N, ​Q​, R and ​W​ trains), Lafayette Avenue (A and ​C trains), and Fulton Street (G train). The LIRR's Atlantic Terminal station is also here, and the neighborhood is served by the NYPD's 88th Precinct.

History

Early history

1766 Map of Brooklyn.

In approximately 800 A.D. 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 (now Belgian) Joris Jansen Rapelje purchased 335 acres (1.36 km²) of Native American land from Dutch West India Company in the area of Brooklyn that became known as Wallabout Bay (from Waal Boght or "Bay of Walloons"). 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

In 1801 the US 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 blacks in Brooklyn lived in Fort Greene, most of them north of Fort Greene Park.

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 (Portland, Oxford, Cumberland, Carlton, and Adelphi) came from fine London 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 and Renaissance row houses of virtually original appearance.

As Manhattan became more crowded, the poor as well as the well-off made Fort Greene their home, and the unoccupied areas of Myrtle Avenue became a 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, "[as] 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.

Circa 1880s engraving of an earlier Monument in Washington Park.

Washington Park, renamed Fort Greene Park in 1897, was established as Brooklyn's first park in 1847 on a 30-acre (120,000 m²) 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 143 feet (44 m) 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.

Urban development in 1858

New York Times, 1858, "Homes of the Poor" "The poverty stricken condition of the inhabitants residing in the Fort Green (sic)/Clinton Hill district] of Brooklyn render it almost an unknown land,". 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 (identified as "renters or squatters") and its new neighbors—middle to upper income homeowners (identified as out-priced Manhattanites attracted to the spatial wealth of Brooklyn and able to afford the high price of its grand scale Neo-Gothic brownstones.) 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 "Perchance there are but few places about more desirable for residences, or more pleasant for our evening walks...(but) on every side filthy shanties are permitted to be erected from which issue all sorts of offensive smells...It is indeed a fact that many of the inmates of these hovels keep swine, cattle, etc. in their cellars and not an unusual circumstance to witness these animals enjoying side by side with their owners the cheering rays of the sun; whilst offal and filth of the assorted family is suffered to collect about their premises and endanger the lives of those in their neighborhood by its sickening and deadly effluvia."

20th century

Brooklyn Technical High School

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 (Caruso suffered a throat hemorrhage while singing at BAM in 1920 and died several days later). 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 has been converted into Long Island University's Brooklyn Campus; and the Brooklyn Fox Theatre on Flatbush Avenue at Fulton Street which was demolished in 1971. Built from 1927–1929, the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower, one of Brooklyn's tallest buildings, is considered one of the 10 greatest skyscrapers in New York. It 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—though not in Fort Greene. To see the Moore apartment you need to travel to Center City Philadelphia, to the Rosenbach Museum & Library. After her death, the furnishings and contents of Marianne Moore's apartment were purchased by the Rosenbach brothers, renowned collectors of literary ephemera. These pieces were then painstakingly reassembled in the top floor of their Philadelphia townhouse. Richard Wright wrote Native Son while living on Carlton Avenue in Fort Greene.

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 1957-1958 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 city-wide poverty, crime and drugs. 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. The Committee is now known as the Fort Greene Association. Spike Lee established his 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks company in Fort Greene in the mid 1980s, further strengthening the resurgence of the neighborhood. The Fort Greene Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983 and expanded in 1984.

21st century

New residential buildings

The late 1990s and early 2000s saw the influx of many new residents and businesses to Fort Greene. While issues of gentrification are raised, Fort Greene stands to many as one of the best examples of a truly racially and economically diverse neighborhood with what The New York Times referred to as a "prevailing sense of racial amity that intrigues sociologists and attracts middle-class residents from other parts of the city." GQ describes it in this way: "one of the rare racial mucous membranes in the five boroughs — it's getting white-ified but isn't there yet, and so is temporarily integrated."

The controversial Atlantic Yards project to build a stadium for and relocate the New Jersey Nets (which will become the Brooklyn Nets in 2012) and a complex of large commercial and residential high-rises on the border of Fort Greene and Prospect Heights - the "Barclays Center" has garnered opposition from many neighborhood residents including Councilwoman Letitia James and author Jhumpa Lahiri.

Fort Greene/Clinton Hill has garnered attention for The Local, its experimental Hyperlocal blog produced by The New York Times in collaboration with CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. It relies much on community participation, as seen from contributions by locals, crowdsourcing opportunities and their Virtual Assignment Desk. Much of its content is written by CUNY students and members of the community. From around 2001 to 2011, it was home to a popular bar called Moe's, which was frequented by journalists, artists, cooks, and people in the entertainment industry. It closed and was replaced controversially by a new bar called Mo's.

New Fort Greene Playground

References in Popular Music

"Once upon a time Brooklyn was the scene, in the Projects that they call Fort Greene" - Dana Dane, "Cinderfella Dana Dane"
"To the Hook, to the East, to the Stuy, Bushwick and Canarsie, Farragut, Fort Greene, and Marcy" - Mos Def, "Brooklyn"
"This go out to Fort Greene and on out to Queens, Uptown to Boogie Down, yo, just look around" - Mos Def, "Love"
"I got a Fort Greene lean, Clinton Hill chill, Red Hook look, Ain't no shook hands in Brooklyn, Son, your life can be took, Man" - Fabolous & Jay-Z, "Brooklyn"
"We gon' hit you with the music (We in Fort Greene right now)" - Talib Kweli, "So Good"
"From the heart of Medina to the head of Fort Greene, N Y C Everything" - Rza, "NYC Everything"
"Where's Flatbush at, Brownsville, and Fort Greene?" - Talib Kweli & John Forte, "Homecoming"
"Next stop was mine, a familiar scene, I was meeting my friend, Killer Ben in Fort Greene" - Rakim, "What's On Your Mind"
"Where we rest is no joke, so let me break it down to sections for you slowpokes: Fort Greene, Bed Stuy, Flatbush, Brownsville, Crown Heights and East New York will be down till Medina takes respect for the styles we bring, Cause in Brooklyn, we be into our own thing" - Gangstarr, "The Place Where We Dwell"
"Jay-Z and Biggie Smalls, nigga shit ya drawers, (Where we from?) Brooklyn goin' out to all, (Bushwick...) You don't stop, (Fort Greene...) You won't stop, niggaz!" - Jay-Z & The Notorious B.I.G., "Brooklyn's Finest"
"Fort Greene, Brooklyn, you know thats it's cooking, next to the mall right across from central booking"- Fort Greene Assassins, "Fort Greene's Cookin'"
"In Fort Greene on diamond back is where I'm at"- Digable Planets, "Dog It'"
"From East New York back to Fort Greene, Brooklyn's classic mystical magic scene" - Digable Planets ft Guru, "Borough Check"
"Morphine chicks be burnin' like chlorine, Niggaz recognize from here to Baltimore to Fort Greene" - Raekwon, "Incarcerated Scarfaces"
"To get my haircut had to go to Fort Greene, on Myrtle Ave, to get a fade with the sides clean." - Gang Starr, "The Planet"
"Been around the world but I love New York a lot, especially up in Bed Stuy with those crazy cuffies, or in Fort Greene with those crazy cuffies" - RZA, "The Grunge"
"Fort Greene and Hemlock, the fifth been cocked" - Foxy Brown, "BK Anthem"
"Fort Greene Dean, drove us in the Cadillac, but now we look back The Candy Snatchers..." - The Jack'd Benny's Brian idle Diederich "Broke in Brooklyn"

Notable residents in Fort Greene/Clinton Hill (past and present)

Politicians

• Councilmember Letitia James
• State Senator Velmanette Montgomery
• Assemblymen Hakeem Jeffries and Joseph Lentol
• U.S. Congressman Edolphus Towns

All of Fort Greene's representatives are Democrats, although Letitia James was elected on the Working Families Party line.

Writers

• Poet Walt Whitman, who was influential in the creation of Fort Greene Park in 1843
• Poet Marianne Moore
• Novelist Richard Wright wrote Native Son while living at 175 Carlton Ave.
• Novelist John Steinbeck's first apartment when he moved to New York in 1925 was on Fort Greene Place.
• Novelist Jhumpa Lahiri
• Novelist/Poet/Playwright/Recording Artist Carl Hancock Rux
• Novelist/TV host/Music Journalist Touré
• Music Journalist/Novelist Nelson George
• Playwright Michael Weller
• Novelist Colson Whitehead
• Novelist Colin Channer
• Novelist Jennifer Egan
• Harlem Renaissance writer/artist Gwendolyn Bennett
• Novelist Truman Capote (17 Clifton Pl., 1946)
• Novelist Karan Mahajan
• Novelist Amitav Ghosh
• Writer and music critic for The New Yorker Sasha Frere-Jones

Artists

• Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe
• Artist Chris Ofili
• Photographer Ken Schles
• Photographer Gertrude Kasebier
• Artist/Theater Director Robert Wilson

Musicians

• El-P (underground hip hop artist and founder of Definitive Jux Records). His critically acclaimed album "I'll Sleep When You're Dead" was recorded at his residence in Fort Greene
• Ol' Dirty Bastard, rapper (deceased)
• Digable Planets, hip-hop group
• Free Murda, rapper, cousin of ODB and RZA
• Popa Wu, Patriarch of the Wu-Tang Clan
• Just-Ice, rapper
• Erykah Badu
• Betty Carter
• Cecil Taylor
• Branford Marsalis
• Gary Bartz
• Patti Smith
• Rev. Hezekiah Walker(Walt Whitman Houses on Myrtle Ave)
• Lester Bowie
• Steve Coleman
• Bill Stephney of The Bomb Squad
• Vernon Reid of Living Colour
• Citizen Cope
• Lisa Fischer
• Dana Dane
• Bill Lee
• Slide Hampton lived at 245 Carlton Avenue where he rented rooms to Eric Dolphy, Freddie Hubbard, Wes Montgomery, and Wayne Shorter. John Coltrane was also a frequent visitor.
• Carla Cook
• Toshi Reagon
• John Wesley Harding
• Rapper Talib Kweli
• Actor/Rapper Mos Def
• John Flansburgh and John Linnell of the band They Might Be Giants
• Rapper Chubb Rock

Actors, directors, and producers

• Academy Award nominated actor Rosie Perez
• Film director and cinematographer Ernest Dickerson
• Saul Williams
• Academy award nominated actor Terrence Howard
• Roger Guenveur Smith
• Adrian Grenier
• Keri Russell
• Jeffrey Wright
• Screenwriter and producer Alan Ball, creator and writer of Six Feet Under and True Blood
• Spike Lee maintains his movie studio 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks there. Several of his films, including She's Gotta Have It, and She Hate Me were partially shot in Fort Greene.
• Chris Rock

Soldiers

• Brigadier General(Brevet) Edward Brush Fowler, American Civil War. Commander, 14th Regiment (New York State Militia), also known as the 14th Brooklyn, nicknamed the "Red Legged Devils" at the First Battle of Bull Run.

Non arts-related fields

• Dr. Susan McKinney Stewart 1847-1918: the first African American woman to receive a medical degree in New York State and the third in the U.S.

• Nicky Cruz (December 6, 1938 in San Juan, Puerto Rico) Former leader of a notorious New York City gang, The Mau-Maus; he later became a world renowned religious minister.

• Kelvin Martin an infamous robbery expert (stick up kid) and criminal. Also known as the original 50 Cent.

• Ed "Booga" Smith, street ball legend, former Sports Illustrated cover star.

• Bernard King former NBA player.

• Albert King former NBA player, younger brother of Bernard King

See also

• List of Brooklyn neighborhoods
• Junior's
• Atlantic Terminal Urban Renewal Area
• Atlantic Yards
• Atlantic Terminal Mall

References

General references:

• McCullough, D. 1776, Simon & Schuster, 2005. ISBN 0-7432-2671-2
• Lockwood, Charles, Bricks and Brownstone, The New York Townhouse 1783-1928, Abbeville Press, 1988. ISBN 0-8478-2522-1
• Morrone, Francis, An Architectural Guidebook to Brooklyn, Gibbs Smith, Publisher, 2001. ISBN 1-58685-047-4
• History of Fort Greene. Retrieved May 9, 2006.

Specific citations:

External links

• Fort Greene Association
• Fort Greene Park Conservancy
• Downtown Brooklyn Partnership
• Fort Greene Brooklyn