Fort Greene
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About the Author
Russell Granger is the founder and CEO of Arch Digitals, a branding and marketing agency specializing in strategy and design for engaging customers online. He began focusing his research and archiving efforts on antebellum Brooklyn when family history pursuits led to the discovery of an association with Walt Whitman. Russell currently lives in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn, just a few streets from several ancestral addresses from the 1830s.
The Fleet Mansion
The Fleet Mansion, north side of Fulton between Duffield and Gold, abt. 1850. Brooklyn Museum.
The Fleet name, still seen to mark various locations around the downtown and Fort Greene areas, is not maritime or waterfront related but an old Long Island family (thought to have been shortened from Fleetwood), a wealthy scion of which was one Samuel Fleet, who made a large fortune in the War of 1812 selling grain from his Huntington farm. He multiplied his capital in early Brooklyn real estate, and in 1819 built a stately homestead on Fulton between Duffield and Gold.
City Hospital
View northeast of Brooklyn City Hospital, c. 1852. Modern tinting.
Today’s Brooklyn Hospital Center on the western edge of Fort Greene Park started life as the Brooklyn City Hospital in 1845. Chartered by the state legislature as a private, charitable institution, and has never been supported by the City or State. The institution arose from community interest in a quality, local hospital for young Brooklyn. Raising funds proved to be a challenge, but by 1852, the first edifice was built to accommodate 160 patients in the lot bounded by Raymond Street (now Ashland Place), Canton Street (now Brooklyn Tech Place), and DeKalb Avenue.
posted in All, Fort Greene June 29th, 2008
Wallabout from Fort Greene
Navy Yard at left with Manhattan beyond; Whitman’s working-class neighborhood at right.
A rare and fine engraving from 1847 depicting the spectacular view northeast from what was then called Washington Park. The image may indeed have been made to commemorate the establishment of the park, which occurred in that year, as it appears to depict landscape work in the foreground. Whitman was in the second and final year of his editorship of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle at this time, and had been instrumental in generating public support and legislative momentum for the park.