The neighborhood is named after an American Revolutionary War era fort that was built in 1776 under the supervision of General Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island.

[4] The neighborhood is close to the Atlantic Terminal station of the Long Island Rail Road and has access to many New York City Subway services.

An Italian immigrant named Peter Caesar Alberti started a tobacco plantation near the bay in Fort Greene in 1649 but was killed six years later by Native Americans.

In 1776, under the supervision of General Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island the American Revolutionary War era Fort Putnam was constructed.

In 1801, the U.S. government purchased land on Wallabout Bay for the construction of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, stimulating some growth in the area.

Abolitionists formed the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in 1857, and hosted speakers such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman and also aided in the work of the Underground Railroad.

Skilled African-American workers fought for their rights at the Navy Yard during the tumultuous Draft Riots of 1863 against armed hooligan bands.

The unoccupied areas of Myrtle Avenue became an Irish shanty town known as "Young Dublin", In response to the horrible conditions found there, Walt Whitman called for a park to be constructed and stated in a column in the Eagle, "[as] the inhabitants there are not so wealthy nor so well situated as those on the heights...we have a desire that these, and the generations after them, should have such a place of recreation..." The park idea was soon co-opted by longtime residents to protect the last open space in the area from development.

[9]Focusing on a certain section of the east Brooklyn area defined as "between Flushing and DeKalb Avenues, as far east as Classon Avenue and as far west as Ryerson, extending across Fulton Avenue," the Times item said the real estate boom has resulted in class conflict among a majority of the area's longtime residents (identified as "renters or squatters") and its new neighbors—middle to upper income homeowners (identified as out-priced Manhattanites attracted to the spatial wealth of Brooklyn and able to afford the high price of its grand scale Neo-Gothic brownstones.)

The author, a new homeowner, wrote: Perchance there are but few places about more desirable for residences, or more pleasant for our evening walks...(but) on every side filthy shanties are permitted to be erected from which issue all sorts of offensive smells...It is indeed a fact that many of the inmates of these hovels keep swine, cattle, etc.

Olmsted and Vaux's elegant design featured flowering chestnut trees along the periphery, open grassy spaces, walking paths, a vine-covered arbor facing a military salute ground, a permanent rostrum for speeches, and two lawns used for croquet and tennis.

The monument, designed by the firm of McKim, Mead, and White, was the world's largest Doric column at 143 feet (44 m) tall, and housed a bronze urn at its apex.

At the time, BAM was the most complexly designed cultural center in Greater New York since the construction of Madison Square Garden 15 years earlier.

The article painted a picture of broken windows, cracked walls, flickering or inoperative lighting, and elevators being used as toilets.

While some houses were abandoned, artists, preservationists and Black professionals began to claim and restore the neighborhood in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Herbert Scott Gibson, a resident of the street called Washington Park, organized the Fort Greene Landmarks Preservation Committee which successfully lobbied for the establishment of Historic District status.

Spike Lee established his 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks company in Fort Greene in the mid 1980s, further strengthening the resurgence of the neighborhood.

While issues of gentrification are raised with the Black population steeply declining from 41.8% in 2000 to 25.8% in 2017 (according to the Furman Center at New York University),[7] Fort Greene stands to others as one of the best examples of a racially and economically diverse neighborhood.

Commentary in The New York Times referred to the neighborhood as having a "prevailing sense of racial amity that intrigues sociologists and attracts middle-class residents from other parts of the city".

In 1994 Forest City Ratner promised that the project, which would be funded by taxpayers, would bring 2,250 units of affordable housing, 10,000 jobs, publicly accessible open space, and would stimulate development within ten years.

[16] Fort Greene and Clinton Hill was the focus of The Local, a blog produced by The New York Times in collaboration with CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

[18][19] In 2015, a group of anonymous artists illicitly installed a 100-pound bust of Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency leaker, atop one of the four columns at the edge of the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument in Fort Greene Park, using a permanent adhesive.

Based on this calculation, as of 2018[update], Fort Greene and Brooklyn Heights are considered to be high-income relative to the rest of the city and not gentrifying.

This was attributed to a high rate of crimes relative to its low population, especially in the public housing developments in Fort Greene.

[23]: 11  Fort Greene and Brooklyn Heights have a relatively low population of residents who are uninsured, or who receive healthcare through Medicaid.

[23]: 14 The concentration of fine particulate matter, the deadliest type of air pollutant, in Fort Greene and Brooklyn Heights is 0.0088 milligrams per cubic metre (8.8×10−9 oz/cu ft), lower than the citywide and boroughwide averages.

[50] Fort Greene and Brooklyn Heights generally have a higher ratio of college-educated residents than the rest of the city as of 2018[update].

[51] Fort Greene and Brooklyn Heights' rate of elementary school student absenteeism is about equal to the rest of New York City.

[24]: 24 (PDF p. 55) [23]: 6  Additionally, 75% of high school students in Fort Greene and Brooklyn Heights graduate on time, equal to the citywide average.

[58][59] There are plans to build the Brooklyn–Queens Connector (BQX), a light rail system that would run along the waterfront from Red Hook through Fort Greene to Astoria in Queens.