Bonus: The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument
During the Revolutionary War, 11,500 American prisoners of war died in captivity aboard sixteen British prison ships in New York Harbor. The bodies were originally buried by Brooklyn residents in shallow graves in what is now the Brooklyn Navy Yard. But through erosion, bones began to emerge on the shoreline by 1808. The Tammany Society made the first motion that year to find a formal burial ground for the prison ship martyrs, a quest joined by Brooklyn citizens over the next few decades. The remains were re-interred in Fort Greene Park under a small monument that was replaced in 1908 by a 149-foot column designed by Stanford White. The single Doric column, known now as the Prison ship Martyrs Monument, is topped with an eight-ton bronze funeral urn by sculptor Adolf Weinman.
Next, check out 6 Lost Mansions of the Upper West Side and Upper Manhattan