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The West Harlem Waterfront Park is a landscaped transformation of the historic Manhattanville shoreline. For thousands of years, the natural topography of this site formed a valley and small sheltered cove off the Hudson River, also known as the North River. This solitary break between the bluffs of today’s Morningside Heights and Washington Heights provided the only direct river access Read more...
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This playground is named for Crispus Attucks (c. 1723-1770), an African American killed in the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. Unfortunately, historians know little about Attucks’s early life. They believe that he was a runaway slave of mixed African and Native American descent from Framingham, Massachusetts, who spent more than 20 years working on ships sailing from Boston. In Read more...
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Philanthropist, industrialist and inventor–Peter Cooper (1791-1883) was a native New Yorker and workingman’s son with less than a year of formal schooling, who became one of the most successful American businessmen of his day. He made his fortune in iron, glue, railroads, real estate and communications. His inventions include the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable and Tom Thumb, America’s first functioning Read more...
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Coffey Park, like nearby Coffey Street, is named for Michael J. Coffey (1839-1907), the former state senator, alderman, and district leader representing Red Hook. Coffey was born in 1839 in County Cork, Ireland, and then immigrated to the United States with his parents at the age of five. He went to school in Red Hook and soon began working in Read more...
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Chester Playground is located in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, a neighborhood bounded to the north by Eastern Parkway, to the east by Van Sinderen Avenue, to the south by Linden Boulevard and to the west by Rockaway Parkway. In 1865, Charles S. Brown purchased a section of farm and meadowland in this area and built 250 frame houses. He Read more...
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Carver Playground was named in honor of George Washington Carver (1864-1943), famed African-American educator and agricultural researcher. Born in the Missouri town of Diamond, he, his mother, and his older brother were the only slaves of the Carver family. As an infant, Carver’s mother disappeared, likely at the hands of slave raiders, and he and his brother were raised free Read more...
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Canarsie Park and neighborhood take their name from the Canarsie (or Canarsee) Indians, who lived in western Long Island and were related to the Delawares. They called this area Keskachauge or Kestateuw, but the Dutch renamed it New Amersfoort soon after they settled here in the 1630s. The Canarsie Indians probably had a burial ground on the current parkland. In Read more...
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This park honors Reverend Dr. Samuel Parkes Cadman (1864-1936), a Brooklyn Congregational minister and radio preacher famed for his oratory. He was pastor of the Central Congregational Church in Brooklyn for 36 years and helped to found the Federated Council of Churches in America, which he headed from 1924-1928. Reverend Cadman was considered to be the Congregational faith’s leading minister Read more...
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Located in the heart of Crown Heights, Brower Park has been an outstanding educational and recreational resource for children for over a century. The City of Brooklyn purchased what is now the southern portion of the park in 1892 and improved the property within two years. The 1894 Annual Report of the Brooklyn Department of Parks boasted that “Its [the Read more...
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Spanning over 1.3 miles of Brooklyn’s waterfront, from the Columbia Heights waterfront district to the Manhattan Bridge in DUMBO, this treasure of a park offers breathtaking views of Lower Manhattan’s panoramic skyline and the New York Harbor. Tourists and New Yorkers alike can be seen admiring the iconic cityscape across the East River while strolling along a continuous promenade of Read more...
