Solstice Greetings from Fort Greene

A weekend in the city, where my garden isn't.

Here is the Prison Ship Martyr's Monument, designed by McKim, Meade and White, and constructed in 1908 at the top of Fort Greene Park. The monument marks the remains of over 12,000 who died aboard British prison ships anchored below this hill, in Wallabout Bay, during the American Revolution.

At the time of the Revolution, General Nathaniel Greene took charge of the building Fort Putnam here to defend George Washington's retreat after the Battle of Long Island. The name was changed to Fort Greene at the time of the War of 1812.


As editor of The Brooklyn Eagle, Walt Whitman long supported the building of the park for the rapidly growing new city of Brooklyn. Washington Park was opened in 1847 as Brooklyn's first public park. Olmsted and Vaux were retained in 1864 to redesign the park as we see it today.