9. Fort Greene Park

Fort Greene Park is named for one of the line of fortifications built west of Brooklyn Heights in preparation for the Revolutionary War. The fort, lone gone and replaced by the park, was star-shaped and originally known as Fort Putnam. According to the New York State Military Museum, each fort “was a complete entity surrounded with a wide ditch, sides lined with pointed stakes, and each had sally-ports. Most of the line also had abatises, field fortifications made of trees with sharpened tree tops facing the enemy.

In the center of Fort Greene Park sits the the Prison Ship Martyr’s Monument, a memorial and burial site designed by Stanford White to commemorate the Americans who died aboard British prison ships in New York harbor. The monument is rarely opened to the public, but we had the chance to document the inside in 2018.