Banneker Playground

What was here before?
This land was home to the Lenape before European settlement in the early 1600s. Much of Brooklyn remained rural farmland for the next century. By the 1800s this parcel was part of Tunis Johnson’s (1838-1912) estate. He was one of the largest landowners in Kings County and the grandson of the third Mayor of Brooklyn, General Jeremiah Johnson (1766-1852). 

Johnson’s former estate was developed into busy city blocks lined with rowhomes by the 1870s. The Board of Transportation acquired a portion of this property for transit purposes in 1931, and established a subsurface easement for the G subway line. 

How did this site become a playground?
In 1936, the Board of Transportation granted the Parks Department a permit to develop a playground on its property. The park was originally built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

The city acquired property in 1957 to build P.S. 256, or the Benjamin Banneker School, to replace two older schools in the area and to relieve crowding. While half of the land was already owned by the Board of Transportation, the other half housed “26 older-class frame dwellings mostly two stories in height and one older-class three story brick dwelling,” which were condemned to make way for the school. 

The same year, the property was transferred to NYC Parks. This playground, then known as P.S. 256 Playground, became a Jointly Operated Playground (JOP) serving the school and local community. Beginning in 1938, the Board of Education (now the Department of Education) agreed to provide land next to schools where NYC Parks could build and maintain playgrounds that could be used by the school during the day and by the public when school is not in session. 

In 1985, Parks renamed the playground in honor of Banneker and in 1997, the playground received new play equipment and safety surfacing, handball courts, fences, guide rails, sidewalks, and paths. Banneker Playground’s public restrooms were reconstructed in 2023.

Who is this playground named for?
Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806), a noted African American writer and mathematician, was born a free man in Maryland. He worked much of his life on the family farm. By the age of 22, Banneker occupied himself with mathematical puzzles and had already built an accurate clock entirely of carved wooden parts. When he was 28, Banneker took responsibility for the farm after his father’s death. Although he had always had an interest in mathematics and the mechanical workings of the natural environment, it was not until the end of his farming career at 59 that he took up serious studies, using borrowed books.

Banneker’s accomplishments spanned many disciplines. Based on his understanding of physics, he predicted solar eclipses, including the eclipse of 1789. From 1791 to 1802 he published an almanac, the first scientific journal produced by an African American. Banneker helped survey Washington D.C. with George Ellicott and Pierre L’Enfant, the French architect who designed the original plan for the nation’s capital. He also corresponded with then-Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson about racial equity, using his own academic work and experience establishing the borders of the capital to demonstrate that Black individuals were just as capable as whites if given their freedom.