“143-145 Vanderbilt Ave., east side, north of and near Myrtle Ave. July 22, 1934." Semi-attached wooden frame houses built in 1850 as rental properties for the Brooklyn merchant Henry Rider. Today, these houses are part of the Wallabout Historic District.

Arbor Day One boy with shovel and other African American children gathered around newly planted tree. Caption on verso: "Arbor Day: Frederick Ross, 6, of 101 N. Portland Ave., completing the task of tree planting which concluded Arbor Day exercises by veterans organizations and neighborhood, church, school and civic organizations in Fort Greene Housing yesterday."

Simpson Methodist Episcopal Church, 1934. The Romanesque Revival church was designed by William A. Mundell in 1869. Mundell was a prolific New York architect, responsible for the design of Brooklyn landmarks including the Long Island Safe Deposit Building near Fulton Ferry and armories in Williamsburg, Park Slope, and on Clermont Avenue. Today, his red-brick church is home to the Eglise Baptiste D’Expression Française, a Francophone Baptist congregation.

In this excerpt from the Brooklyn Historical Society's audio tour, host Nelson George and historian Francis Morrone discuss the communities and architecture of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, Brooklyn — including interviews with longtime neighborhood residents.

“Myrtle Ave. 'L' from Fort Greene Park.” Originally the site of a fort built for the Revolutionary War and reoccupied during the War of 1812, the community surrounding the land started using it as public space shortly after the threat of the War of 1812 passed. By 1847, it was designated Washington Park, and twenty years later, famed landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux began designing its new layout. In 1897, the new Olmsted and Vaux’s landscape was renamed Fort Greene Park.

“Ashland Place, south from and across DeKalb Avenue. On the left is a corner of Fort Greene Park and in the background is the Fulton Street elevated structure. The buildings in the center of the photograph are on the south side of DeKalb Avenue, extending to St. Felix Place, 1927."

The two-story light-colored stone building is 183 Vanderbilt Avenue, a stable built between 1886-1908 and marked by the stone bust of a horse’s head above its entrance. Vanderbilt Avenue was home to several turn-of-the-century service buildings, including the row of three carriage houses to the right of the stable. To the left, the shop at 177 Vanderbilt is advertised as Paul F. Bird Machines and Hauling.

In 1844, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle printed the following prediction “THE CITY OF CHURCHES — such, in time, will be the distinctive appellation of Brooklyn.” In the ensuing decades, the incorporation of new houses of worship matched the pace of residential development and reflected the diverse ancestry of the immigrant communities who settled there. The buildings of the 19th and 20th centuries express the evolution of American church architecture, as dictated by the pride and prosperity of worshippers from Bushwick to Bay Ridge.

“133 to 139 Park Avenue, at the N. E. corner of Cumberland Street. October 10, 1940.” Today numbered 131 and 135 Park Avenue, the two buildings adjoining the northeast corner of Cumberland Street are among the few to survive the construction of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway along Park Avenue.

“145 Ashland Place, between De Kalb Ave., and Willoughby Street, showing the City Prison, as seen from Lafayette Street. July 10, 1932.” The Raymond Street Jail, later the Brooklyn City Prison, was built in 1836 to hold the city’s male prisoners (an annex for female prisoners was added in 1839). In an oversight emblematic of the building’s purpose, the prison was constructed without a front door (an entranceway was later carved out of the completed facade). The facility was closed in 1963 and razed ahead of the construction of the Brooklyn Hospital Center.

Brooklyn Hospital, founded in 1845. The Brooklyn Hospital was founded as the "Brooklyn City Hospital" in May of 1845, supposedly following an incident in which a man from Buffalo, New York broke his leg at Fulton Street, in proximity to nearby Brooklyn City Hall. The hospital played a major part in providing treatment and aid for soldiers of the Union Army during the Civil War. It continued to play the role of carrying for sick and wounded soldiers in the Spanish-American War and both World Wars. In 1880, the hospital established the first nursing school in Brooklyn and the first in the State of New York. This was made possible by a generous donation by the women of the Fruit and Flower Mission. The hospital also installed the second Electrocardiograph in Brooklyn in the year 1926.

“Flatbush Avenue Extension, at the northeast corner of DeKalb Avenue, showing the Paramount Theatre Building, the view being south toward the latter avenue, 1932.” Opened in 1928, the Paramount Theatre building has been owned by Long Island University since 1962. In addition to film screenings, the theater hosted jazz, rock and roll, and Yiddish music performances. Despite its conversion for use as classroom space and a gymnasium, the building retains much of the theatre's original decorative detail.

“The Sacred Heart Church, near the northeast corner of Park Avenue. October 10, 1940.” This tower marks the entrance to what was then the Sacred Heart Institute, the school of the Roman Catholic Sacred Heart Church, completed 1877, located one block over on Clermont Avenue. To the right at 41 Adelphi Street is the church rectory.

For this story, we'd like to share our personal picks from our combined collections, that represent what this time of year means to us, and to introduce the team of Librarians, Archivists, Collection Managers, Educators and Administrators, who make up the fantastic staff at the Center for Brooklyn History.

Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument, undated postcard. During the Revolutionary War, more than 11,500 prisoners of war died aboard British ships anchored in nearby Wallabout Bay. The prisoners died of overcrowding, contaminated water, starvation, and disease, and either had their bodies thrown overboard or were hastily (and poorly) buried at the shoreline. Because of this callousness, thousands of body parts and bones washed up on Brooklyn’s waterfront for years to come. In 1808 the remains were first entombed in a crypt on Jackson Street (now Hudson Avenue), near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. In 1873 the prison ship martyrs remains were moved from their location to a vault in the park that was created at the site of a former Revolutionary War fort (then Washington Park, today Fort Greene Park). In the late 19th century various constituencies advocated for a permanent memorial. In 1905 McKim, Mead and White created the design for a new entrance to the crypt, including a wide staircase leading to a plaza from which a massive Doric column rose. The Stanford White-designed monument was 149-foot-tall and crowned with a bronze lantern, created by sculptor Alexander Weinmann (who also designed four bronze eagles for the base). It was dedicated in 1908 with the President-elect William Howard Taft in attendance. Between 1937 and 1948 an elevator allowed visitors to ascend the column. Over the last century, the monument has undergone a series of vandalization and restorations. The eagles were removed in the 1960s due to continual defacement. After smaller restoration efforts in the 1940s and 1970s, a major effort was undertaken to repair, clean and conserve the monument, the crypt, and the surrounding plaza. The newly restored plaza (with modern lighting and two original and two replica eagles) was unveiled in 2008, a century after its original dedication.

In 1902, the first Farm Garden was opened to provide city children the invaluable experience of cultivating and caring for the land. Its founder said of her creation: "I assure you that all the virtues can be taught from a little patch of ground, not eight feet square." Read on to learn of this history and legacy of New York's Farm Gardens.

Clermont Avenue, east side, between Myrtle and Willoughby Avenues, viewing south from the former and showing the 52nd Field Artillery Armory, also known as the 105th Regiment Field Armory, 1925. Built in 1873, the William Mundell-designed Clermont Armory was, at the time, the largest hall without pillars or obstructions in the United States. Mundell’s ornate Second Empire facade was rebuilt in comparatively bland "Neo-Medieval" style in 1911, the 23rd regiment having relocated to a new and larger armory at Bedford and Atlantic Avenues in 1895. When the National Guard left in 1964, the Clermont Armory became a storage facility for the Department of Sanitation, falling out of use after 1989. The building has since been redeveloped for residential use.

The intersection of Tillary Street and Park Avenue, 1941. The surrounding land had been cleared for the construction of the Fort Greene Houses (today the NYCHA Ingersoll Houses), completed in 1944. Soon after, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway would be routed along Park Avenue to connect Downtown Brooklyn’s East River Bridge Crossings with Williamsburg and points north. The church visible in the background is the Church of St. Michael and St. Edward at 108 St. Edwards Street, near Myrtle Avenue.

Cumberland Street, east side, south from Park and Myrtle Avenue, showing part of the large area where Fort Greene Houses will be erected. On the left are buildings on Carlton Avenue, April 11, 1941. The Fort Greene Houses, a 15-building development, were built on this site in 1944. At right, buildings on the south side of Myrtle Avenue are visible behind the tracks of the Myrtle Avenue El.

The Vanderbilt Avenue Station on the Myrtle Avenue El, 1942. The Vanderbilt Paint Co. is at the northwest corner of Myrtle avenue.

Myrtle Ave. ‘L’ at Cumberland Street, ca. 1955. Interrupted by the Whitman Houses between Park and Myrtle Avenues, Cumberland Street continues as Washington Park on the eastern edge of Fort Greene Park (right).

“North on St. Edwards Street, across Myrtle Avenue, from Fort Greene Park, 1940.”

“The rear of the \[Clermont Avenue] armory on the west side of Vanderbilt Avenue, looking toward Myrtle Avenue, 1925.”

"Myrtle Ave. ‘L’ West from Vanderbilt Ave. Station, ca. 1955." Opened in 1888, the Vanderbilt Avenue Station was a stop on the Myrtle Avenue El, serving trains on the Myrtle and Lexington Avenue lines. This photo was taken from the western edge of the station’s island platform, above Clermont Avenue. 374 Myrtle Avenue is the building at farthest left.

The 19th century saw Fort Greene develop from farmland held by a few families to a residential neighborhood, populated by a mix of Brooklyn’s working, merchant, and upper classes. Today, much of the neighborhood has been well preserved, including several blocks of brownstone and rowhouse architecture, churches, parkland, and civic institutions dating to the 19th century. Even in areas transformed by postwar urban renewal and commercial development traces of an earlier era remain.

Myrtle Avenue and the Myrtle Ave El, looking east from Navy Street, 1941. Opened in 1888, El service operated along Myrtle Avenue until 1969. Out of frame is the entrance to the Navy Street Station. At left, lots have been cleared for the construction of the Fort Greene Houses, later renamed the Ingersoll Houses after Brooklyn Borough President Raymond Ingersoll.

Richard Wright, author of "Native Son."

“Cumberland Street, east side, north from No. 37, seen in the foreground, is just south of Flushing Avenue. Upon the vacant lot once stood the Boughton farmhouse. April, 1925.”

“Park Avenue, north side, east from north Oxford to Cumberland Streets.” Buildings on the south side of Park Avenue (right) would be razed in 1941 for the development of the Fort Greene Houses, now the NYCHA Walt Whitman Houses. Buildings on the north side would also be demolished, to make way for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, first proposed in 1936 and completed in 1964.

The southeast corner of Fort Greene Park, DeKalb Avenue and homes on the east side of Washington Park.

“St. Edwards Street, north from Auburn Place toward the Brooklyn Navy Yard. On the left, where Leo Place meets St. Edwards Street, is the Lattemen shoe factory. On the right is Public School No. 67. The dwellings preceding the school were later razed and an annex added to the school.” Out of frame to the left is the Church of St. Michael and St. Edward, 1927.

A building of the Fort Greene Houses (later renamed the Walt Whitman Houses) under construction at 15 St. Edwards Street, July 1942.

The Church of St. Michael and St. Edward was built between 1891-1906 at what was then the intersection of Canton and Division Streets (later St. Edwards Street and Leo Place). The Catholic church served a predominantly Irish and working-class congregation of local residents employed at the neighborhood’s factories, waterfront, and, during wartime, Navy Yard. In 2010, the diocese of Brooklyn closed the church, following years of declining attendance.

Bandstand in Washington Park, now Fort Greene Park, at the future site of the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument, ca. 1895.

The Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument is a memorial to the more than 11,500 American prisoners of war who died while detained aboard sixteen British prison ships during the American Revolutionary War. The remains of a small portion of those who died on the ships are interred in a crypt beneath its base. The monument, designed by architect Stanford White, is topped with an eight-ton brazier (funeral urn) by sculptor Adolph Weinman. This photo is undated, but may depict the November 1908 dedication ceremony, when a crowd of 15,000 gathered for President William Howard Taft’s address.

Billed as the first movie theater built for talkies, the Paramount on Flatbush and Dekalb Avenues opened in 1928 with the movie Manhattan Cocktail. Alan Freed, who coined the term "rock and roll" in 1951, staged revues here while working for radio station WINS. Following its purchase by Long Island University, the movie house showed its last feature, Hatari, with John Wayne, in August 1962. The next year it was converted to a gym, though its famous Wurlitzer organ still played on.

“North from a point just above Myrtle Avenue, running across Auburn Place and showing the New Cumberland Hospital on the left, 1940.” Founded as the Brooklyn Homeopathic Dispensary in 1852, the New Cumberland Hospital moved from Cumberland Street to its new nine-story building at the corner of North Portland Avenue and Auburn Place in 1918. Despite the change of address, the new hospital was officially named Cumberland Hospital in 1922. In the early 1940s, Cumberland Hospital was one of few structures spared from demolition as the surrounding blocks were razed for the construction of the Fort Greene Houses. The hospital was closed in 1983, as part of the City Health and Hospitals Corporation reorganization ahead of the opening of Woodhull Hospital. Today the 1918 building serves a homeless shelter while the 1950s hospital addition is the Cumberland Diagnostic & Treatment Center.

“St. Edwards Street, at the northeast corner of Auburn Place, showing the City Park branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. In the background is Cumberland Hospital; on the left Public School No. 67, 1940.” The predecessor to Walt Whitman Library (called the City Park Branch before 1943) opened in a storefront on Nassau and Bridge Streets in 1900. Eight years later, a beautiful new library, funded by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, built in the Classical Revival style, and designed by Rudolph L. Daus, opened on St. Edwards Street in Fort Greene. The library was named for Whitman on the125th anniversary of his birth in 1943.

Brooklyn Technical High School, ca. 1933. The Brooklyn Technical High School building at Fort Greene Place and DeKalb Avenue was built between 1930-33, and is today home to over 5,000 enrolled students. Brooklyn Tech was founded in 1922, after the educator Dr. Albert L. Colston designed a specialized math and science-oriented curriculum to prepare for students for modern, technical professions or collegiate instruction. The school first operated from a converted warehouse at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge, before moving to the purpose-built Fort Greene campus. The twelve-story Collegiate Gothic school building by Walter C. Martin, the Superintendent of School Buildings who succeeded William H. Gompert, incorporates elements of skyscraper construction, including its steel and reinforced concrete structure. While Martin’s building materials of choice were becoming more common, the Brooklyn Tech’s amenities were far from ordinary: the vertical campus included two gymnasia, a radio production studio, an aeronautical lab, and an operational metal foundry (which has since ceased operation). A 456-foot tall rooftop broadcast antenna makes Brooklyn Tech the tallest structure in the borough. Brooklyn Tech has produced numerous distinguished graduates who went on to careers in the sciences, including Arno Allan Penzias (‘51), the 1978 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics for research instrumental in the development of the Big Bang Theory. In more local matters, Tech has also produced prominent political figures, including US Representatives Matthew McHugh (‘56), Gary Ackerman (‘60), and Anthony Weiner (‘81).

Richard Wright Photograph by Carl Van Vechten

The east side of South Portland Avenue, just south of Fort Greene Park, 1958. The buildings on this block provide a fascinating snapshot of the architectural elements that came in and out of fashion during the latter half of the 19th century. At left is no. 29A, one of a pair of 1878 Neo-Grec brownstones by architect Charles Mushlet. At right are a row of Italianate brownstones built around 1867. In between, a 20th century apartment building with mixed brownstone, brick, and terra cotta facade and a distinctive curved, full-height swell-bay window common to more recent tenement construction.

“Myrtle Avenue (El, thereon), west from North Portland Avenue to Leo Place, showing extensive demolition for the erection of Fort Greene Houses. The view is from Fort Greene Park. In the background is St. Edwards \[sic] Roman Catholic Church.”