Greenpoint Playground

What was here before?

This was once the territory of the Keskachauge, a subtribe of the Canarsie who were part of the Lenape. They farmed and fished the area until the arrival of the Dutch.

When European mariners arrived here in the 17th century, they called the entire peninsula “Greenpoint” because of a grassy bluff on the bank of the East River.

The Dutch acquired Greenpoint, including what would become Williamsburg and Bushwick-Ridgewood, from the Keskachauge in 1638 and named it Boswijck (Bushwick) Township. A Scandinavian ship’s carpenter, Dirck Volckertsen, obtained Greenpoint from the Dutch in 1645. The land then passed to a Dutch military captain, Pieter Praa, and afterward to an inventor and industrialist, Neziah Bliss.

For almost two centuries, the area thrived agriculturally and remained isolated from the rest of the region. At the time of the Revolutionary War, only five families lived in the Greenpoint area. Annetti Bennett, Pieter Praa’s daughter, and her husband Jacob built the first house near the playground site. This house was close to present-day Clay Street, between Manhattan Avenue and Franklin Street. The first road was built in Greenpoint in 1838, and a regular ferry service followed soon after.

Industrialization and an influx of residents soon followed, flooding the newly laid streets. The area became known for shipbuilding, as well as for what were known as the “five black arts”: printing, oil refining, cast iron manufacturing, and glass and pottery making. By 1875, more than 50 oil refineries were in Greenpoint, Williamsburg, and Bushwick.

Immigrants from Ireland, England, Russia, Italy, and Poland settled into Greenpoint during the late 1800s to work in the factories. By the 1990s, more than a third of Greenpoint’s residents were Polish immigrants or of Polish descent, giving the neighborhood the distinction of having the largest concentration of this ethnic group in the United States.

How did this site become a playground?

The City of New York acquired this property in 1925 and opened as Greenpoint Playground with a playset with safety surfacing, toddler and child swings, and a spray shower to give children ample outlets for activity. The playground was renamed briefly in 2000 for two years as Right Triangle Playground for the shape of the park.

In 2011, a prefabricated public restroom that was built in the Brooklyn Navy Yard was shipped to the playground and craned into place.