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.

Cuyler and the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church In 1860, Brooklyn's Park Presbyterian Church, then building a new church on Lafayette Avenue in Fort Greene invited the celebrated Pastor Theodore Richard Cuyler to be its pastor. When the church was completed in 1862, the congregation changed its name to the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church. There Cuyler spent the next 30 years. In 1860, when he became pastor the congregation numbered 140 people; when he left, in 1890, it had grown to 2,330 and was the third-largest Presbyterian congregation in America. He wrote 22 books and more than 4,0000 articles. Cuyler and Henry Ward Beecher were wary friends and sometimes shared a podium. In 1872, Cuyler invited the Quaker leader Sarah Smiley to address his congregation. He was criticized by the Presbytery of Brooklyn for inviting a woman to address a mixed-sex assembly. Cuyler's vociferous opposition to slavery is a large part of what commended him to Park Presbyterian Church, which was founded by abolitionists. "On the Sunday when fire was opened on Fort Sumter," said the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, "the American flag was raised on the steeple of the Lafayette Avenue Church and it stayed there until Lee surrendered and the confederacy collapsed." "During the Civil War riots in this city," wrote the New York Tribune, "his church, with that of Henry Ward Beecher's, was closely guarded by the authorities" Two thousand people crammed into Lafayette Presbyterian Church for Cuyler's Funeral on March 1, 1909.

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.

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.

There's so much more to Brooklyn's LGBTQ+ history than Walt Whitman. In honor of Pride Month, we're taking a tour through some of Brooklyn's many landmarks of 20th century queer history. From activism to art, to the quiet everyday lives of queer folks, LGBTQ+ history is all around us. To discover more about LGBTQ+ history in Brooklyn, consult our research guide and dive into the many queer stories in our archives and across the borough.

A collection of churches across New York City from the New York Public Library.

The architecture of the church, which opened on March 12, 1862, is noteworthy. It is one of the finest examples of early Romanesque Revival church architecture in New York (the mode had been inaugurated in the 1840s by the architect Richard Upjohn at the Congregation Church of the Pilgrims on Remsen and Henry streets in Brooklyn Heights.) The simplicity and, some would say, primitivism of the Romanesque style commended itself to dissenting Protestant sects that objected to the Gothic style embraced by high Episcopalian and Roman Catholic congregations for whom sacramental ritual rather than preaching was the main point of the worship service. Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Chruch adopted a semi-circular, "theatrical" seating plan, influenced by that of Henry Ward Beecher's Plymouth Church (1849), which was felt better to serve congregants of a gifted preacher. In 1976, under the Reverend George Litch Knight, who was Lafayette's pastor for 33 years, the church interior was significantly altered by the incorporation of murals, "Mighty Cloud of Witnesses," painted by Hank Prussing, who was then 27 years old and a graduate of nearby Pratt Institute. For the Lafayette Avenue commission, he took 500 photographs of neighborhood scenes and residents as preparation for a mural sequence that depicts vividly observed vignettes of neighborhood life and characters. Its a startling thing to see when you enter the church, but the murals proved popular with many congregants, who even recognized local faces among Prussing's subjects.

“Lafayette Ave., south side, east from South Portland Ave. At the left, is the Lafayette Presbyterian Church, undergoing repairs. April 4, 1932.” Built in 1862, Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church was known for its abolitionist pastor, Theodore L. Cuyler, and its distinguished congregation of prominent Reconstruction-era political figures, including President Benjamin Harrison and British Prime Minister William E. Gladstone.