Gravesend Triangle

This text is part of Parks’ Historical Signs Project and can be found posted within the park.

What was here before?
This triangle is named for Gravesend, the first English settlement in New York. Founded in 1645 by Lady Deborah Moody (c.1583-1659), Gravesend was a self-sufficient community that lasted until 1894 when it was finally annexed by the City of Brooklyn.

Lady Deborah Moody, a wealthy Protestant widow, left England for America in 1639. She and fellow Anabaptists landed in New England but received a cold welcome from the Puritans who controlled the region. In 1643, she moved to New Amsterdam and on December 19, 1645 the Dutch governor granted Moody the first town charter written in English in the New World. With that charter, she founded the first English settlement in New York, at the southern end of Brooklyn.

An innovative city planner, Moody designed the town after Kent, England, founding its town hall government, starting its first school, and establishing the first church. Gravesend’s design was one of the earliest in the New World to employ a block grid system. The crossroads of the old foursquare town (16 acres) lies just a few blocks to the west, at Gravesend Neck Road and McDonald Avenue. Lady Moody died in 1659. Her grave is thought to be located on Gravesend Neck Road between Van Sicklen Street and McDonald Avenue.

For 200 years after Moody’s death, the town remained largely rural. Gravesend Avenue (renamed McDonald Avenue in 1933) ran north from the heart of town to the City of Brooklyn, providing residents of Gravesend with a route for trade and travel though Kings County. Towards the end of the 19th century, Dutch and German farmers joined the established English population, and in 1894 Gravesend was incorporated into the City of Brooklyn. The rail lines built at the end of the century spelled the end of the old English town’s bucolic years. By the turn of the century, this triangle was part of Gravesend Reformed Church (now Trinity Tabernacle) property.

How did this site become a park?
The City acquired this triangle in 1926, and a local law named it for the town of Gravesend in 1941. In 2000, Parks completed a renovation of this triangle. The project included repaving the walkways with new concrete and lining the center green with Belgian paving stones. Parks also enhanced the greenery by planting small shrubs, complimenting the triangle’s London planetrees.