When I was a kid this was a dumping ground for abandoned cars and boats…..some parts of New York City do get better.

2012

more pix and history to follow……

The Korean War Veterans Memorial designed by Mac Adams was installed in 1991. The piece also functions as a sundial, every July 27 at 10 a.m., the anniversary of the exact moment in New York when hostilities ceased in Korea, the sun shines through the soldier’s head and illuminates the commemorative plaque installed in the ground.

The Merchant Mariners’ Memorial by sculptor Marisol was also installed in 1991. The design is based on photographs of an actual historical event; during World War II a Nazi U-boat attacked a merchant marine vessel, while the mariners clung to their sinking ship the Germans photographed their victims. It includes one seamen in the water, submerged with each high tide.

Pier A was built in 1884, the clock tower was installed in 1919 is a memorial to US servicemen who died during WWI. The pier was originally built for the Dept. of Docks and Harbor Police and wasused for many years as the main station for the Fire Dept’s. Marine Division.

The Sphere, by sculptor Fritz Koenig, once stood in the plaza between the World Trade Center towers.  Six months after the attacks it was relocated to Battery Park, without any repairs, and formally rededicated with an eternal flame as a memorial t the victims of 9/11.

the Verrazano Bridge from Ft.Wadsworth

Battery Weed on the waterfront

                                 a hidden passage through the thickets

Cedar Grove Beach on the south shore wasn’t any brighter

Ft.Greene Park was established as Brooklyn’s first park in 1847 and is named after a Revolutionary War era fort that was built in 1776 under the supervision of General Nathanael Greene.

After the war locals enjoyed visiting the grounds of the old fort for recreation. Brooklyn resident, and at the time editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Walt Whitman rallied popular support for a park.  He appealed for a pleasant retreat for city dwellers, “a place of recreation. . .where, on hot summer evenings, and Sundays, they can spend a few grateful hours in the enjoyment of wholesome rest and fresh air.”

In 1867 landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, designers of Central Park, were hired to prepare a new design for the park and a crypt for the remains of the Revolutionary War prison ship martyrs.

1880 monument

During the war thousands of American “rebels” were held in deplorable conditions on British prison ships anchored in nearby Wallabout Bay. Over 11,000 prisoners died on the ships, their bodies thrown overboard or buried in shallow graves along the shore.

The renowned architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White was hired in 1905 to design a new entrance to the crypt with a wide granite stairway leading to a plaza on top of the hill and at the center, a freestanding Doric column crowned by a bronze lantern; President-elect William Howard Taft attended the monument’s dedication in 1908.

photo taken from the old elevated train platform

They also built the neoclassical comfort station (now the visitor center)

view from the plaza

from the top of the steps

and from street level

The playground was redesigned in 1995 and includes stone pillars featuring bronze plaques that identify the state trees and animals of the original thirteen colonies.

etchings courtesy of  Fort Greene Park Conservancy

car Gerritsen Creek

art installation? Gerritsen Creek

barge Luyster’s Creek

table legs Bushwick

heart-shaped tree Forest Park

No more ice now, instead the first signs of Spring

Golfers hitting the green….

well almost green….

The carousel will be open soon

wonder what they’re going to do with all the left-over salt?

“Forest Park is one of New York City’s natural treasures, one of the last natural densely forested parks in New York City. The Wisconsin glacier molded the land 20,000 years ago and left the Harbor Hill Moraine, creating a series of small hills, known as “knob and kettle” terrain. In 1895, the first parcel of land in what would later become Forest Park was purchased. Because of the numerous landowners involved, the park had to be procured in 124 parcels. When the last of the 538 acres of land was obtained in 1898, Brooklyn and Queens were part of New York City. Thus, the original name of the planned park, Brooklyn Forest Park, was shortened to its present title. Conceived by Frederick Law Olmsted, the wandering design of the park’s main drive offers the pastoral quality evident in other New York City flagship parks planned by the renowned architect.        

Opened in 1905 as a nine-hole course, the 110-acre Forest Park Golf Links at the park’s western edge now boasts 18 holes.           

The Forest Park Carousel holds some of the last surviving creations of master wood-carver Daniel Carl Muller. The carousel was first operated in 1903 in Dracut, Massachusetts, then taken apart and stored for later use.  It received another renovation in 1988 and began operating again in the summer of 1989.” Parks Dept.