Category Archives: History of Fort Greene
Top Stories in and around Fort Greene
Week Ending January 14, 2012 Fort Greene Association’s Facebook & Twitter Top Stories Sponsored by The Communications and Community Engagement Committee of the Fort Greene Association (FGA) sources daily news about Fort Greene and the surrounding neighborhoods to keep you up to speed on what’s going on and to highlight what makes our community unique. [...]
Read the Spring 2009 FGA Newsletter
The Spring 2009 FGA Newsletter is available online. Click to download file
January 2006 Fort Greene a Real Melting Pot
NYpress.com Fort Greene A Real Melting Pot January 18, 2006 Nicole Davis Brooklyn There is a house that grows in Brooklyn. Called Broken Angel, the geometry-defying urban castle, decorated with found flourishes like shards of glass and cement blocks, rises from a cul-de-sac on the edge of Clinton Hill. “Everyone who sees Broken Angel thinks [...]
A Bright Future
At the turn into the 21st Century Fort Greene embraces high hope as a vital part of downtown Brooklyn. A rising crest of talented young artists and professionals has taken residence here. Creative shops and restaurants now line the avenues. Better still, innovation and culture is more assured with the arrival of the Mark Morris [...]
Fort Greene Park and Fowler Square
The highest point in Fort Greene is a 30-acre park from which the area takes its name. Fort Greene Park was built on the site of the early Fort Putnam in the War of Independence. It was later called Fort Washington, as well as ultimately being renamed after Gen. Nathaniel Greene, one of George Washington’s [...]
Fort Greene Today
Fort Greene includes two New York City landmarked districts: the Fort Greene Historic District and the Brooklyn Academy of Music Historic District. These two adjacent districts are also listed on the National and New York State Registers of Historic Places. Fort Greene showcases 19th Century building arts in a progression from early frame houses of [...]
The 20th Century
Most construction in Fort Greene was completed by the end of the 1890s. Only five superb buildings from the first third of the 20th Century were added: the HSBC (Williamsburgh) Bank, Hanson Place Central Methodist Church, Queen of All Saints RC Church, the Masonic Temple and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Enrico Caruso and Geraldine [...]
The Civil War
Lincoln’s election in 1860 was soon followed by South Carolina’s secession from the Union, and the Civil War began. Although they had not given their full vote to Lincoln, the people of Fort Greene were strongly pro-Union and in favor of abolition. New York State had outlawed slavery in 1827. Brooklyn’s first “Coloured” school, where [...]
Fort Greene Grows Up
Only a few farm houses had been built in the area in the 1840s, but the 1850s saw a real estate boom that required new streets to be laid out. Developers seized on the idea of spiffy London names to add cachet, with Fort Greene streets dubbed as Portland, Oxford, Cumberland. Gas lighting lit homes, [...]
