Fort Greene Historic District

Fort Greene is a Brooklyn neighborhood of about 105 acres, made up of nineteen blocks and a 33-acre park. Its character comes from continuous rows of three- and four-story sandstone townhouses built mostly between 1840 and 1890, largely as speculative development. Facades show the Greek Revival, Italianate, Second Empire and Neo-Grec styles in succession. Churches, commercial buildings and a few later apartment and institutional buildings, including a 1906 Masonic Temple, add variety. Fort Greene Park rises on a rocky prominence where Fort Putnam was begun in 1776 and Fort Greene was built in 1814. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux redesigned it in 1868. At its summit, a 200-foot Doric column designed by McKim, Mead and White and completed in 1908 honors Revolutionary War prisoners who died on British prison ships. Little new construction followed the neighborhood's decline after 1930, so the historic streetscapes and their relationships remain largely intact.