“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."

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.

Clinton Avenue contains some of Brooklyn’s finest 19th century architecture, including the Gilded Age mansions that made it the borough’s most fashionable address. A walk down the length of the avenue tells the story of this transformation: from the provincial farming community shaped by a handful of prominent landowners to a “Gold Coast” boulevard of grand Renaissance Revival buildings, and later to the tension between wartime housing needs, development, and the nascent historic preservation movement.

“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.

128 Clinton Avenue ARCHITECT: Unknown DATE: 1853-54 STYLE: Greek Revival This unusually well-preserved and rare free-standing Italianate style frame house with Greek Revival style elements was erected for Henry and Susan McDonald in 1853-54. The house’s cubic form, low-hipped roof, strongly projected bracketed eaves, molded window surrounds, wood-and-glass double doors with segmental-arched transom and wood reveal, and columned portico enriched with dentils and paired brackets are characteristic of the Italianate style. Greek Revival style elements include the fluted porch columns with Tower of the Winds Corinthian capitals and first-story windows with eared surrounds.

“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.

“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.

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.

275 Park Avenue, ca. 1918. This building was erected in 1890 as home to The Van Glahn Brothers, one of several large wholesale grocery supply businesses located in Brooklyn that developed at the end of the 19th century. In 1907, the brothers sold the property to their growing neighbor, Rockwood & Co. Chocolate Company, whose factories were located just behind this building on Waverly and Park. The company produced Tootsie Rolls, among other candies, in this plant until 1967. Like many properties located along Brookyn's waterfront between 1960 and 2000, this building sat empty for more than 20 years before converted into a rental property in 2002.

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).

The wood-frame home seen on the far side of the intersection is 69 Vanderbilt Avenue, ca.1945. No. 69 was an 1850-built wood-frame home that matched its immediate neighbor at no. 71. Master carpenter, Richard P. Pease, built both homes in 1850. This photograph was captured before the construction of the BQE which runs over the middle of Park Avenue at this location. During the construction of that highway in the late 1950s, the main beam in the basement cracked, compromising the foundation of the house. Over the next decades, the home sank and warped and was largely neglected, despite being occupied. The final resident of the house lived there from childhood in the 1930s until he was evicted from the dangerously unstable house (which was also filled junk) in 2009. Despite the homes' landmark status, the safety issues trumped the designation, and the city demolished the house in 2015. Given the proximity of the neighboring house and to control asbestos, workers took the house down with hand tools like hammers rather than wrecking balls.

“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.

Lefferts-Laidlaw House, July 22, 1934. The temple-fronted Greek Revival house was built in stages, with the main portion completed between 1836-1840, and remained in the Lefferts family until 1854.The Leffertses were prominent Brooklyn landowners whose holdings included much of present day Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights, to the east. In late December 1878 the residents of this Brooklyn home began experiencing mysterious happenings: door bells ringing, violently rattling doors and a broken window. According to NY Times reporting the police even got involved and droves of gawkers and spiritualists showed up. After two weeks of the strangeness, the Times notes that the resident, Edward Smith, banished the spirits with "a long and honest prayer." The house was subject to a number of unfortunate “updates” — faux-brick siding, asphalt shingles — during the early 1940s and 1950s, but was later restored to its original appearance. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

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.

In 1884, a market grew out of the bustling up-and-coming neighborhood adjacent to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The wholesale market sold produce, meat, fish, and provisions until the 1940s when it was shut down. This was in part to make room for factories to produce weaponry and war materials for World War II, but also due to fear that spies could infiltrate the yard next door.

Wallabout Market was a wholesale produce, meat, fish, and provisions market that operated from 1884 until the 1940's. The market, designed by William B. Tubby, was the second-largest wholesale market in the world during its lifespan. Its Flemish stepped roofs and decorative spires reference the neighborhood's Walloon and Dutch past.

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.

Admiral's Row was a series of Second Empire-style homes formerly used by naval officers at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Though the Navy Yard was decommissioned in 1966, some Admiral’s Row buildings were occupied into the 1970s. After decades of neglect, in the late summer of 2016, all of the buildings, save one (Building B) were demolished. Pictured here: Quarters E-F-G (center) and Quarters I (right).

“Flushing Avenue, south side, west from N. Elliott Place. At the left foreground between N. Elliott Place and St. Edwards Street are some old buildings soon to be demolished. Beyond St. Edwards Street is a city park. August 25, 1938.” The “city park,” now called Commodore Barry Park, was acquired by the Village of Brooklyn in 1836 and is the borough’s oldest park. Today, the Commodore Barry Park Pool sits just west of North Elliott Place.

“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.

Drake's Cake Building, ca. 1915. Constructed in 1913 for the Drake Bakeries, this factory structure with an Arts and Craft style facade was designed by the firm of Dodge & Morrison. One of the largest commercial cake bakeries in the region, Drake was producing 15 tons of pound cake a day by 1914 and was becoming well known for their ring dings, yodels, devil-dogs and coffee cakes. The business was so successful that they expanded this factory building all the way to Waverly Avenue in 1925. In 1960 the company was sold to a large food conglomerate. Today it is part of Hostess, who still make some of the Drake favorites and the building on Clinton Avenue is a charter school.

Richard Wright Photograph by Carl Van Vechten

“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.”