Fort Greene Park

40°41′31″N 73°58′32″W / 40.691897°N 73.975474°W / 40.691897; -73.975474

The park c. 1904
The Prison Ship Martyr's Monument
The park's information center

Fort Greene Park is a city-owned and -operated park in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. The 30.2-acre (12.2 ha) park was originally named after the fort formerly located there, Fort Putnam, itself was named for Rufus Putnam, George Washington's chief of engineers in the Revolutionary War.[1]

Renamed in 1812 for Nathanael Greene, an American Revolutionary War hero,[2] it was redesigned by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, architects of Central Park and Prospect Park, in 1867. Fort Greene Park contains the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument, which includes a crypt designed by Olmsted and Vaux, holding the remains of Patriot prisoners of war who died while being held on British prison ships in Wallabout Bay during the American Revolutionary War.

Across the street from its DeKalb Avenue entrance at Fort Greene Place is Brooklyn Technical High School. To its west is the oldest hospital in Brooklyn, now called the Brooklyn Hospital Center. North are the Walt Whitman Houses, one of the largest housing projects in New York City.

  1. ^ Hubbard, Robert Ernest. General Rufus Putnam: George Washington's Chief Military Engineer and the "Father of Ohio," pp. 53, 199, McFarland & Company, Inc., Jefferson, North Carolina. ISBN 978-1-4766-7862-7.
  2. ^ Manbeck, John B. (2008), Brooklyn: Historically Speaking, Charleston, South Carolina: The History Press, ISBN 978-1-59629-500-1, pp.29-32