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Newtown Barge Playground

Commercial St., Dupont St.

Brooklyn

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

Newtown Barge Terminal Playground was named for the barge canal terminal that once occupied the site. The Keskachauge Indians inhabited the surrounding region for centuries, before this property became a park or a barge terminal. When European mariners arrived, they called the entire peninsula “Greenpoint” because of a grassy bluff on the bank of the East River. The Dutch bought Greenpoint, including what would become Williamsburg and Bushwick-Ridgewood, from the Keskachauge in 1638 and named it Boswijck Township. A Scandinavian ship’s carpenter, Dirck Volckertsen, acquired Greenpoint from the Dutch in 1645. The land then passed to a Dutch military captain, Pieter Praa, and then to an inventor and industrialist, Neziah Bliss. For almost two centuries, the area was used primarily for farming 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&rs…

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