Community History
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The land on which Brooklyn’s Fort Greene and Clinton Hill neighborhoods sit was created more than 12,000 years ago by dirt and rock washed south by icebergs during the last ice age. Since that time, the area has withstood war, disease, and racial tension; all the while leading the way in diversifying New York City’s neighborhoods, urban park development, and the arts.
Vanderbilt Avenue is the dividing line between Fort Greene and Clinton Hill (east and west, respectively). The neighborhoods fall south of Wallabout Bay, north of Prospect Heights; west of Bedford-Stuyvesant, and east of Brooklyn Heights. Walt Whitman, Mos Def, The Notorious B.I.G., and Rosie Perez—among others!—have called Fort Greene and Clinton Hill home.
Native Americans worked this Brooklyn land until the Dutch in 1636 began buying up parcels. The Belgian Joris JJjanssen de Rapelje in 1637 bought 335 acres situated on Wallabout Bay—property that would become the Navy Yard stretching along the northern end of both neighborhoods.
In 1776, as British forces anchored in the Narrows during the American Revolutionary War, Americans sought refuge at Fort Putnam—later renamed Fort Greene Park after Gen. Nathaniel Greene, one of George Washington’s top aides. When the British imprisoned American patriots who refused to swear allegiance to the throne of England, bodies of 11,500 Americans who died of starvation or disease aboard prison ships in the bay were thrown overboard. Fort Greene’s residents in 1806 began collecting the remains, which were interned in a crypt at the Navy Yard’s western edge
Ferries in the early 1800s made commuting from Brooklyn to Manhattan simplistic, which in turn led to a boom in housing development in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill. Walt Whitman’s push in 1846 for a public park on the grounds of where Fort Putnam had been yielded Washington Park (now Fort Greene Park). A crypt was built on the park’s northern edge to house the human remains collected from the bay decades earlier. Of the 20 coffins inside, several were left empty should more remnants of those victims ever be found. A 149-foot column titled Martyrs Monument was built in 1908 over the crypt.
Residences in Fort Greene were limited to farmhouses until the 1850s, when a real estate boom struck the area. Borrowing from elite parts of London, Fort Greene streets with names such as Portland, Oxford, and Cumberland sprang up. This period of prosperity brought with it gas lighting, flush toilets, water lines, and sewers. Italianate row houses were built along South Portland Avenue; followed by “stylized geometric order” houses in the style of English architect Charles Eastlake. This style is most pronounced on South Oxford Street. Most construction in Fort Greene was finished by the start of the 20th Century. Clinton Hill, meanwhile, became a destination for the rich; with Charles Pratt building four mansions on Clinton Avenue between DeKalb and Willoughby by the time his art institute was founded in 1887. At that point, Clinton Avenue was virtually lined with mansions of millionaires who enjoyed easy commutes by stagecoach to the Fulton Ferry in Brooklyn Heights, just blocks away.
Coloured School No. 1, Brooklyn’s first school for African Americans, opened in Fort Greene in 1847; 20 years after New York State outlawed slavery. The school was built on the grounds of what is today the Walt Whitman Houses. During the Civil War, about half of Brooklyn’s African Americans were living in “the Fort Greene-to-City-Hall” section; and competition for jobs at the Navy Yard led to riots. Fort Greene boasted an African American principal at P.S. 67 in 1863; and Dr. Phillip A. White became Brooklyn’s first black board of education member. Even today, Fort Greene and Clinton Hill are beacons of racial diversity; with the Department of City Planning estimating that of Clinton Hill’s 20,000 residents, 60 percent are black, 15 percent are Hispanic, and 5 percent are Asian.
During the Civil War, Fort Greene’s 14th Infantry distinguished itself heroically under the leadership of Gen. Edward B. Fowler, a Fulton Street office manager who led the regimen at Gettysburg to turn the tide of the Civil War to the Union’s favor. Gen. Fowler’s statue was constructed at the intersection of Fulton Street and Lafayette Avenue.
A construction boom concentrated in Clinton Hill and Fort Greene led the former to have one of the largest concentrations of row houses from the post-Civil War period. The Williamsburgh Bank, Hanson Place Central Methodist Church, Queen of All Saints RC Church, the Masonic Temple, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) were all built in the first one-third of the 20th century.
Fort Greene was home to various movie theaters from the 1920s to 1940s; most notably the Paramount, whose Wurlitzer organ is still in place.
Fort Greene and Clinton Hill fell into disrepair by the 1950s, after elite homes subdivided for Navy Yard workers during World War II were abandoned. Transplants to the neighborhood in the 1960s sparked an interest in allocating parts of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill as historic.
Today, Fort Greene and Clinton Hill enjoy a new wave of young artists flocking to the area for its proximity to Pratt and plethora of diverse and independently owned shops, restaurants, and nightlife. The Mark Morris Dance Group, the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York, and a new high school that offers courses in preservation all add to the draw of these neighborhoods. Other secondary education facilities, including St. Joseph’s College in Clinton Hill and Long Island University in Fort Greene, deepen the student presence. And with access from the C and G trains and the nearby DeKalb Avenue subway station at Flatbush Avenue, access to lower Manhattan is easier than from most neighborhoods uptown.
