page_title: Fort Greene, Brooklyn
section_title: Crowding
hierarchical_section_title: Fort Greene, Brooklyn / History / 19th century / Crowding
caption_attribution_description: English: Sunset over Ft. Greene Park in Brooklyn, NY.
context_page_description: 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" and Brooklyn's first, is also derived from General Greene's name and from 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.
context_section_description: 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 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, "[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.
  However, The New York Times soon found that the area was too expensive for some, and that many in the area were penurious:
  The poverty stricken condition of the inhabitants residing in the [Fort Greene/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."
  — Letter to the editor, The New York Times, c.1858
  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 bon
caption: Sunset over the currently standing Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument in Fort Greene Park
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