Fort Greene Park

Across the street from its DeKalb Avenue entrance at Fort Greene Place is Brooklyn Technical High School.

Fort Greene Park includes part of the high ground where the Continental Army built fortifications prior to the Battle of Long Island, during the early days of the Revolutionary War.

After the fort's military use had waned, poet Walt Whitman, then the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, strongly advocated for reclaiming the space for use as a public park.

[2][4] In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, many parts of New York City were destroyed, including several trees in the park and the surrounding Fort Greene area.

[6] Public opposition gave rise to the advocacy group, Friends of Fort Greene Park.

[7][8] The Landmarks Preservation Commission took no vote, with one commissioner observing that the plan was "against every historic moment in the design of the park".

[9][10][11] The LPC later approved the plan after NYC Parks eliminated a proposed work by the late landscape architect Arthur Edwin Bye.

[18] "This decision should awaken the Department to reality," legal advisor Michael Gruen told the Brooklyn Patch.

The architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White won a design competition, and the monument was unveiled in 1908 by President-elect William Howard Taft.

[23] The park is host to the annual Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival,[24] an event featuring young writers aged 7–18 reading alongside established writers, such as Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, Gloria Naylor, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Jennifer Egan, the last two being residents of the neighborhood.