Kings Highway (Brooklyn)

Kings Highway is a broad avenue that curves about the southern part of the Borough of Brooklyn in New York City.

It led into Yellow Hook (Bay Ridge), ending at Denyse's Ferry, operated by a colonial-era landowner, about where Shore Road and 86th Street meet today.

According to the Dyker Heights Historical Society, the Highway ended at the ferry landing in what is now Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn.

In 1740 Denyse, a local New Utrecht resident, took over ferry operations in The Narrows, serving Brooklyn and Staten Island.

At the corner of Kings Highway and 86th Street stood New Utrecht Town Hall, built in 1878 (demolished in 1912).

At the intersection of the current-day 81st Street and Eleventh Avenue, Denyse’s Lane branched off in a northwardly direction.

St. Phillips Church in Dyker Heights now occupies part of the former lane, which meandered down to Van Brunt’s Dock in Bay Ridge.

The highest natural point in southwestern Brooklyn is at Eleventh Avenue and 82nd Street, at Dyker Heights.

According to the Brooklyn Eagle, it gave “the soldiers of revolutionary time an outlook from which they could note the movements of their opponents, not only as they approached from the sea, but maneuvered on Staten Island.”[citation needed] At 81st Street and Twelfth Avenue was Flax Pond.

When President George Washington came to survey the agricultural abilities of Kings, Queens, and Suffolk counties after the war in 1792, he traveled down this rural road.