Peter Detmold Park

E. 49 St. To E. 51 St., W/s FDR Dr.

Manhattan

Directions via Google Maps

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

What was here before?
This property was the eastern most edge of the Beekman Farm, built by merchant James Beekman (1732-1807) in the 1760s. His mansion, “Mount Pleasant,” was located near what is now East 51st Street and First Avenue and was notoriously used as British headquarters during the Revolutionary War. Patriot spy Nathan Hale was purportedly tried and sentenced to death in the property’s greenhouse. The Beekman family ultimately sold the property during the 1850s cholera epidemic, and the mansion was later destroyed to make way for the city street grid.

Industry and public transportation lines moved in, and what was farmland owned by a few wealthy families became a working-class neighborhood lined with brownstones and tenements.

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