This 30-acre park sits on land that housed military forts during the Revolutionary War. In 1847, the area was designated Brooklyn’s first park (a measure supported by newspaper editor Walt Whitman), and by 1867, Calvert Vaux and Frederick Olmsted were redesigning the place into the attractive hilltop landscape it is today. There are walkways, ball fields and a playground.
At the center of the park stands the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument, supposedly the world’s largest Doric column (it’s 149ft high). Designed by Stanford White, it was built in 1905 to memorialize the 11,500 American prisoners of war who died in British prison ships during the Revolution.
