Fort Greene Park
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Fort Greene Park is a municipal park in Brooklyn, New York, comprising 30.2 acres (122,000 m²).
The park includes the high ground where the Continental Army built Fort Putnam during the American Revolutionary War. The site was chosen and the construction supervised by General Nathanael Greene. During the War of 1812, when the possibility of a British 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, under the name of Washington Park. In the 1860s, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, best known for their design of Central Park, 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 Ships Martyrs' Monument. During the Revolutionary War, the British had kept American prisoners on ships in Wallabout Bay under terrible conditions. Thousands of the prisoners died from disease and malnutrition. Olmsted and Vaux envisioned a crypt 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 won a design competition, and the monument was unveiled in 1908. It is a 145 foot (44 m) high granite Doric column over the crypt. At the top is an urn.
The neighborhood around the park is also known as Fort Greene.
External links
- Fort Greene Park Conservancy website (http://www.fortgreenepark.org/)
- Photo gallery of monument and park (http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~promaine/martyrs/martyrs-all.html)