Places / Park / Fort Greene
On the MUSEENYC M ListThe M List — one we'd cross the city for, and keep going back to. See the list →
Fort Greene Park
Olmsted and Vaux on a hill, with a 149-foot column on top of a crypt.
- Where
- Washington Park, Brooklyn, Fort Greene Open in Google Maps ↗
- Cost
- Free
- Good with
- Family
- Go when
- Saturday morning, for the greenmarket and the light
Thirty acres on a rise, laid out by Olmsted and Vaux in the 1860s on the site of a Revolutionary War fort. The grand staircase up to the summit is magnificent, and the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument at the top is a single Doric column marking the crypt of more than eleven thousand people who died on British prison ships in Wallabout Bay — more than died in every battle of the war combined.
What to know
Free. The climb is the point: the top gives you a long view over the rooftops toward Manhattan. There’s a greenmarket on Saturdays, and the slope below the column is where the neighborhood spends its weekends.