Fort Greene Brooklyn

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 the 13 tribes of the Algonquin Nation. In 1637, Walloon reformed Joris Jansen Rapelje purchased 335 acres (1.36 km2) of Native American land from the 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

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.

Crowding

In the 1850s, Fort Greene’s growth expanded 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 (such as Portland, Oxford, Cumberland, Carlton, and Adelphi) were inspired by 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 in 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 terrible 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.

Focusing on a specific 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 article highlighted the real estate boom that has resulted in class conflict among the area’s longtime residents (referred to 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, perhaps evidenced by a letter to the editor of a local Brooklyn paper published prior to the Times profile.

20th century

In the early twentieth century, Fort Greene developed into a prominent cultural attraction. After the previous Brooklyn Academy of Music in Brooklyn Heights burned down in 1903, the new one was constructed in Fort Greene and opened in 1908 with a production of Charles Gounod’s Faust starring Enrico Caruso and Geraldine Farrar. At the time, BAM was the most intricately designed cultural center in Greater New York since Madison Square Garden was built 15 years before. Fort Greene also featured two spectacular movie theaters built in the 1920s: the Paramount Theater, which was eventually incorporated into Long Island University’s Brooklyn campus, and the Brooklyn Fox Theatre near the intersection of Flatbush Avenue and Fulton Street, which was demolished in 1971. Built between 1927 and 1929,

Marianne Moore, a poet, spent many years living and working in an apartment on Cumberland Street. The Rosenbach brothers, noted collectors of literary memorabilia, have kept Moore’s apartment precisely as it appeared during her lifetime at the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia, as affectionately described in Elizabeth Bishop’s essay, “Efforts of Affection”. Richard Wright composed Native Son while residing on Carlton Avenue in Fort Greene.

21st century

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Fort Greene saw an inflow of new people and businesses. While concerns about gentrification are raised, with the Black population dropping from 41.8% in 2000 to 25.8% in 2017 (according to the Furman Center at New York University), Fort Greene stands out as one of the best examples of a racially and economically diverse area. According to The New York Times, the neighborhood has a “prevailing sense of racial amity that intrigues sociologists and attracts middle-class residents from other parts of the city”.According to GQ, it’s “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” .Fort Greene and Clinton Hill were the topic of The Local, a blog created by The New York Times in partnership with the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. It was built on community engagement, with content generated by CUNY students and people of the community.