![\"walking](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Walking-Tour-Map-edited-\u2014-BP.jpg\")
Step into Brooklyn\u2019s history with Brooklyn Paper\u2019s walking tour! Image by Olivia Seaman<\/p>\nIn commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the United State, we\u2019re launching Step into Brooklyn, an immersive tour and 10-video series exploring how the borough still doubles as a living archive of American history.<\/p>\n
Before Brooklyn was brownstones, baristas and selfie-worthy bridge views, it was battlegrounds, shorelines, and hills that shaped the history of Kings County and beyond \u2014 especially as the home of the Battle of Brooklyn, the first clash between American and British soldiers after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Soldiers arrived in southern Brooklyn on Aug. 22, 1776, and surged across the borough over the course of several days, forcing American troops to retreat further and further north. Though the battle left the American forces in shambles and allowed the British to capture New York City, there was still a victory: General George Washington and thousands of troops successfully fled to Manhattan and lived to see and fight another day.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Step into Brooklyn\u2019s history with Brooklyn Paper\u2019s walking tour! Image by Olivia Seaman<\/p>\n
The British started in southern Brooklyn, but this tour starts at the north end of the borough, in Fort Greene Park. You\u2019ll work your way south, on streets and sidewalks that used to be treacherous wetlands and marshes, and end at the Gravesend Bay, where thousands of British troops landed 250 years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We\u2019re calling this a walking tour, but you\u2019ll still be mixing in some public transit between stretches. Set aside a full day or break it in two, stay hydrated, take detours when something catches your eye and move at your own pace (and at the will of the MTA, of course), starting at \u2026<\/p>\n
Stop 1: Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, Fort Greene Park<\/p>\n
Getting there:\n<\/p>\n
Subway: Take the 2\/3, 4\/5, N\/Q\/R\/W, or B\/D\/N\/Q\/R to Atlantic Avenue\u2013Barclays Center
\nWalk ~10-15 minutes up Flatbush Avenue\/Fulton Street to Fort Greene Park<\/p>\n
Before it was Fort Greene Park<\/a>, it was high ground for war. So we begin on the hill.<\/p>\n Towering above the park, the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument stands as one of Brooklyn\u2019s most significant Revolutionary War memorials. Designed by famed architect Stanford White and dedicated in 1908, the monument honors more than 11,500 American prisoners who died aboard British prison ships anchored in Wallabout Bay during the Revolutionary War.<\/p>\n In 1776, Major General Nathanael Greene built Fort Putnam here as part of Brooklyn\u2019s defensive line during the battle. The position fell as the Continental Army retreated, and the fight shifted to the waters below.<\/p>\n Just offshore, British prison ships held thousands of American captives in brutal conditions. Overcrowding, disease, and starvation claimed more than 11,500 lives, and the dead were hastily buried along the shoreline.<\/p>\n In 1808, those remains were moved inland, setting in motion decades of civic effort to honor them. Walt Whitman later championed the site as public space, followed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, who helped reshape it into a park.<\/p>\n The remains of the prison ship martyrs were eventually reinterred here, placed in a crypt beneath the monument plaza that still serves as their final resting place. The current monument \u2014 designed by McKim, Mead & White in the early 1900s \u2014 is a granite staircase rising to a 149-foot Doric column overlooking the site. Following a major restoration completed in 2008, it continues to stand as a lasting tribute to the prisoners who died in British captivity.<\/p>\n Stop 2: Old Stone House<\/p>\n Getting there:\n<\/p>\n Walk ~25-30 minutes through Park Slope or In Park Slope, a small building carries a much larger history.<\/p>\n Built in 1699, the Old Stone House<\/a> sits at Fifth Avenue and Third Street. Kim Maier, its executive director, calls it \u201can adorable little country Dutch home,\u201d but it also marks one of the central sites of the Battle of Brooklyn (also referred to as the Battle of Long Island, and a recurring character on this tour).<\/p>\n On August 27, 1776, Maryland troops made a last stand here during the largest battle of the Revolutionary War. Their defense allowed Washington\u2019s army to retreat across the marshes toward Brooklyn Heights.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is where the Marylanders held the line to allow the rest of the American army to escape,\u201d Maier told Brooklyn Paper. The action helped cement Maryland\u2019s \u201cOld Line State\u201d nickname.<\/p>\n The retreat worked, but barely. And the scale of the battle still shapes how Brooklyn remembers the Revolution. Maier also resists treating the site as finished history.\n<\/p>\n \u201cWe have been having many of the same arguments for 250 years,\u201d she said. The Revolution\u2019s debates over democracy and equality, she added, are still ongoing.\n<\/p>\n After the war, the battlefield became farmland, then city blocks. Even early baseball games tied into the area\u2019s layered past, including connections to what would become the Brooklyn Dodgers.\n<\/p>\n Today, the reconstructed house functions as a community space, hosting programs, gardens, and school visits \u2014 a place where Maier says \u201clife, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is happening on a daily basis.\u201d A battlefield turned classroom, still asking the same questions it did in 1776.<\/p>\n Stop 3: Prospect Park<\/p>\n Getting there:\n<\/p>\n Walk ~10-15 minutes south from Old Stone House<\/p>\n Prospect Park\u2019s landscape still carries the shape of the 1776 battle.\n<\/p>\n Lookout Hill and Battle Pass were key defensive points during the British advance. American troops tried to hold the narrow corridors leading into Brooklyn, but the lines collapsed quickly.\n<\/p>\n Dylan Yeats, Director of Museum Programs and Operations at Prospect Park, said the terrain dictated everything. At Flatbush Pass \u2014 also known as Battle Pass \u2014 American forces under General John Sullivan attempted to block British movement along a key road connecting Flatbush and Brooklyn. They chopped down the massive Dongan Oak tree to block the path, and even burned nearby homes to slow British forces.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea being they would prevent the British from going through the hills from Flatbush into Brooklyn,\u201d he told Brooklyn Paper.<\/p>\n But the defenses didn\u2019t hold. By the morning of Aug. 27, American forces realized they were being surrounded. As Yeats recounts, \u201conce they realized they\u2019re surrounded, they all flee across the park \u2026 down to what is basically Third Street \u2026 and to the Old Stone House.\u201d<\/p>\n That retreat cut through what is now Long Meadow and nearby paths.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n At Lookout Hill, a monument now marks where the Maryland 400<\/a> made their famous last stand, buying crucial time for Washington\u2019s army to escape. But the entire park tells the story, according to Yeats.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have two-pound cannon here\u2026 aimed down at the Flatbush Road to stop the British from coming,\u201d he said. He also pointed to the deeper memory embedded in the ground. Local accounts, he said, long held that \u201ca lot of Flatbush residents wouldn\u2019t come to this area for decades because they thought it was haunted.\u201d The British had left American soldiers unburied in the woods as a warning against rebellion.<\/p>\n Today, these are walking paths and shaded clearings. In 1776, they were escape routes under fire.\n<\/p>\n Stop 4: Maryland 400 Plaque, Gowanus<\/p>\n Getting there:\n<\/p>\n Walk ~20 minutes north or Outside the park, the story becomes harder to pin down.<\/p>\n The Maryland 400 plaque outside American Legion Post 1636 in Gowanus has long drawn onlookers. At first glance, the site reads as a quiet neighborhood gathering place for veterans \u2014 and it is \u2014 but it also anchors one of the Revolution\u2019s lingering, unsolved mysteries.<\/p>\n The plaque at 193 9th Street commemorates the First Maryland Regiment \u2014 the same Maryland 400 who fought in Prospect Park \u2014 who, outnumbered and overwhelmed, made a last stand that helped cover Washington\u2019s retreat.<\/p>\n The cost was staggering. Roughly 400 soldiers went into the fight; fewer than a dozen returned. The rest were killed, captured, or lost in the chaos that followed the collapse of American lines. Washington himself watched the fighting from Cobble Hill Fort in what\u2019s now Cobble Hill, where he realized how grave the situation had become and lamented<\/a>, \u201cGood God, what brave fellows I must this day lose.\u201d<\/p>\n In the years after, local lore placed their burial ground nearby along the marshy edges of Gowanus Canal \u2014 generally around present-day Third Avenue between 7th and 9th Streets, where the American Legion now stands. But no graves have ever been confirmed. Archaeological and forensic investigations in the area have not uncovered human remains.<\/p>\n That absence is often explained in two overlapping ways: the improvised nature of Revolutionary War burials, likely unmarked mass graves in wetlands that were never formally documented, and the drastic reshaping of the landscape in the 19th century, when industrial development buried much of old Gowanus under factories, housing and infrastructure.<\/p>\n Whether or not it\u2019s truly where the bodies are buried, the plaque has become a focal point for remembrance.\n<\/p>\n Stop 5: Green-Wood Cemetery<\/p>\n Getting there:\n<\/p>\n Walk ~20-25 minutes west or At Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn\u2019s past is never far from the surface.<\/p>\n That\u2019s especially true at Battle Hill, the highest natural point in the borough. The cemetery itself was designed in 1838 as part of the rural cemetery movement, blending burial ground, public green space, and an open-air archive.<\/p>\n Long before that time, during the Battle of Brooklyn, American soldiers rushed to secure the high ground<\/a> but realized the British had already beaten them to it. Undeterred, they re-claimed the hill and held their position against multiple British-counter attacks, inflicting some of the highest British casualties of the battle before most were ultimately captured<\/a> by the invading forces.\u00a0<\/p>\n Today, Battle Hill is a quiet overlook with a loud past, holding one of the key moments<\/a> of Brooklyn\u2019s Revolutionary War history. It sits within Green-Wood Cemetery\u2019s broader landscape \u2014 and some of its most famous permanent residents, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Leonard Bernstein, Boss Tweed and Louis Comfort Tiffany.<\/p>\n Stop 6: Old New Utrecht Cemetery<\/p>\n Getting there:\n<\/p>\n Subway: D train to 18th Ave or 20th Ave, then walk ~5-10 minutes<\/p>\n This cemetery reaches even further back than the Revolution itself.\n<\/p>\n The New Utrecht Reformed Dutch Church Cemetery, established around 1653-1654, predates the church that would eventually stand next to it. That first church came later, in 1700, but the burial ground was already in use \u2014 making it one of the oldest continuous colonial sites in Brooklyn. It sits in what was once the town of New Utrecht, an early Dutch settlement that later became part of modern-day Bensonhurst.<\/p>\n What you see today is essentially a layered record of that entire history. A lot of the earliest families from the area are buried here \u2014 names like the Van Brunts, Cortelyous, Cowenhovens, Cropseys and Bennetts. These were some of the people who helped put the original settlement together.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not just old family plots. There\u2019s also a shared, unmarked grave for Revolutionary War soldiers who were buried after fighting came through the area. And there are sections where members of the local community of African descent \u2014 both enslaved and free \u2014 were laid to rest, often without names or markers.<\/p>\n Altogether, roughly 1,300 people have been interred here over the past three centuries. While the cemetery isn\u2019t open for daily walk-ins, it does open to the public during special events and guided tours hosted by the Friends of Historic New Utrecht, including the group\u2019s annual Liberty Weekend in early summer.<\/p>\n Stop 7: Fort Hamilton<\/p>\n Getting there:\n<\/p>\n Subway: R train to Bay Ridge-95th Street, then walk ~10-15 minutes<\/p>\n At the Narrows, the story shifts from memory to continuity.\n<\/p>\n Fort Hamilton sits beside a strategic choke point of the New York Harbor. The current fort, named for Alexander Hamilton, dates to the early 1800s. Its cornerstone was laid in 1825, and it was completed in 1831 as part of a larger system of coastal defenses built to protect New York from naval attack. Today it\u2019s the fourth oldest active U.S. Army installation in the country.<\/p>\n But the site\u2019s military importance goes back even further than the fort itself. In the summer of 1776, hundreds of British ships gathered in the New York Harbor, and some settled in on Staten Island, right across the Narrows from Bay Ridge and what\u2019s now Fort Hamilton.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the largest naval advance in the history of the world until World War II. It\u2019s just huge,\u201d said Brooklyn borough historian Asad Dandia. \u201cOne patriot wrote that he thought that all of London was afloat on the water.\u201d<\/p>\n At the time, the site was home to the much-smaller Narrows Fort, where Americans fired at a British ship \u2014 the HMS Asia<\/a> \u2014 but couldn\u2019t do much damage. Ultimately, the unprotected southern coast of Brooklyn couldn\u2019t defend the borough against British forces.\u00a0<\/p>\n After the war, Americans shored up their defenses. Coastal protections during the War of 1812 \u2014 including Fort Diamond<\/a>, which sat a few hundred yards from Fort Hamilton \u2014 helped protect the city, and construction on the much-larger Fort Hamilton began in 1825.<\/p>\n Over time, Fort Hamilton expanded and adapted with every major conflict. During the Civil War, it served as a training and recruitment center, including headquarters activity for the 3rd U.S. Infantry. In both World Wars, it became a major staging point for troops shipping out through the Port of Embarkation in New York.<\/p>\n Its history is also tied to some familiar military names. Robert E. Lee and Abner Doubleday both served here early in their careers, long before the Civil War put them on opposite sides of American memory.<\/p>\n Today, Fort Hamilton is still active in a very literal sense. It\u2019s home to Army active duty, Reserve, and National Guard units. It also plays a role in more recent history. After 9\/11, National Guard units like Joint Task Force Empire Shield were activated here to help secure transit and critical infrastructure. During Hurricane Sandy and COVID-19, personnel from the installation supported emergency response efforts across the city, including coordination at places like the Javits Center.<\/p>\n Unlike most historic sites in Brooklyn (and on our walking tour), Fort Hamilton is less about \u201cwhat happened here\u201d and more about what\u2019s still happening here.\n<\/p>\n Stop 8: John Paul Jones Park<\/p>\n Getting there:\n<\/p>\n Walk ~10 minutes north along Shore Road<\/p>\n Just north of Fort Hamilton is a quiet park with a lot of military history \u2014 and the kids call it \u201cCannonball Park.\u201d<\/p>\n At John Paul Jones Park, a Civil War-era Rodman cannon sits out in the open, still aimed toward the harbor, with old cannon balls lined up in front of it. A few steps away is the Dover Patrol memorial \u2014 a granite column designed by Sir Ashton Webb and gifted by England after World War I.<\/p>\n The park is named for John Paul Jones<\/a>, the Revolutionary War naval commander known as the \u201cfather of the Navy.\u201d He rose from merchant to Continental Navy captain, and fought his most famous battle in 1779, when his squadron engaged with two British warships that had been protecting a fleet of merchant vessels. Jones\u2019 ship, the Bonhomme Richard, was heavily damaged, but he famously refused to surrender, shouting, \u201cI have not yet begun to fight!\u201d and eventually forcing a win over the British and taking over one of their ships.\u00a0<\/p>\n What was then the City of Brooklyn acquired the parkland in the late 1800s. The Civil War memorial was installed in 1900, a Revolutionary War memorial in 1916, and, more recently, a 70-foot flagpole, installed in 1980 and dedicated to Jones himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n Stops 9 and 10: Denyse Wharf & Gravesend Bay\u00a0<\/p>\n Getting there:\n<\/p>\n Walk ~20-25 minutes south along Shore Road\/Belt Parkway path or Our journey ends at Gravesend Bay, which is pretty hard to miss, and Denyse Wharf, where history is hidden away.\u00a0<\/p>\n The bay is wide, sheltered stretch of the harbor just off the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, and is still an integral part of the city\u2019s busy waterways.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n Tucked along the shore, just below the bridge, is Denyse Wharf. In colonial Brooklyn, the Denyse family ran a ferry to Staten Island from here, and nearby homesteads belonged to some of the area\u2019s earliest settlers.<\/p>\n The Denyse family home was damaged by British forces before the battle even began. In July 1776<\/a>, after Americans fired at the British ship HMS Asia, the ship fired back, launching cannon balls that damaged the family\u2019s barn and garden \u2014 narrowly missing the kitchen, where many of them were reportedly sitting at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n A month later, the area became strategic almost overnight. Thousands of British soldiers landed<\/a> on the unprotected shores of Gravesend Bay and at Denyse Wharf on Aug. 22, 1776. From there, they split up and moved inland along routes the Americans hadn\u2019t fully secured, planning to approach them from two directions.\u00a0<\/p>\n Their plan was successful \u2013 leading to everything you\u2019ve read about from Prospect Park to Fort Greene and Brooklyn Heights, where Washington fled on his way to Manhattan.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/PrisonShip-3.jpg\")
In Fort Greene Park, a towering granite monument marks one of the most overlooked chapters of the Revolutionary War.Photo by Gabriele Holtermann ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/PrisonShip-1.jpg\")
The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument honors more than 11,000 Americans who died in British captivity.Photo by Gabriele Holtermann<\/p>\n
\nSubway: 2\/3 to Grand Army Plaza, then walk ~10 minutes south<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/OldStoneHouse-6.jpg\")
At the edge of Park Slope, the Old Stone House stands as a rare surviving witness to the Battle of Brooklyn. Photo by Gabriele Holtermann<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/ProspectPark-1.jpg\")
At the edge of Prospect Park, the Lefferts Historic House preserves a surviving fragment of 18th-century Flatbush \u2014 land that once sat just behind the Battle of Brooklyn\u2019s front lines.Photo by Gabriele Holtermann<\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/prospect-park-lookout-hill-nov142020-sdevries-permission-01.jpg\")
At Lookout Hill in Prospect Park, a monument marks one of the key high points of the 1776 Battle of Brooklyn. Photo by Susan De Vries\n<\/p>\n
\nSubway: F\/G to Carroll Street, then walk ~10 minutes<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Maryland400_FakeBurialSite-2.jpg\")
In Gowanus, a modest roadside plaque marks a disputed burial landscape tied to one of the Revolution\u2019s most devastating losses.Photo by Gabriele Holtermann<\/p>\n
\nSubway: F\/G to 15 Street\u2013Prospect Park, then walk ~10 minutes<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/IMG_2498.jpg\")
Green-Wood Cemetery\u2019s historic Battle Hill.Photo by Olivia Seaman<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/250thAnniversaryTour_063026-6.jpg\")
American Revolutionary War soldiers are buried at the Old New Utrecht Cemetery.Photo by Gabriele Holtermann ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/250thAnniversaryTour_063026-3.jpg\")
The Old New Utrecht Reformed Dutch Church Cemetery, established around 1653, is one of Brooklyn\u2019s oldest surviving colonial burial grounds.Photo by Gabriele Holtermann<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/250thAnniversaryTour_063026-1.jpg\")
The Old New Utrecht Reformed Dutch Church Cemetery, established around 1653, is one of Brooklyn\u2019s oldest surviving colonial burial grounds.Photo by Gabriele Holtermann<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/250thAnniversaryTour_063026-11.jpg\")
At the Narrows, Fort Hamilton represents both the legacy and continuation of coastal defense in New York Harbor.Photo by Gabriele Holtermann<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/250thAnniversaryTour_063026-15.jpg\")
The Rodman Gun at John Paul Jones Park is the largest smoothbore, muzzle-loading coastal defense cannon ever produced in the United States. Cast during the Civil War, it remains one of the park\u2019s most striking reminders of Brooklyn\u2019s military past.Photo by Gabriele Holtermann<\/p>\n
\nSubway + walk: R train to Bay Ridge-95th Street, then walk south<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/250thAnniversaryTour_063026-17.jpg\")
Today, Gravesend Bay (seen here off of Denyse Wharf) is a quiet stretch of New York Harbor. In 1776, it served as one of the entry points for British forces launching the Battle of Brooklyn. Photo by Gabriele Holtermann<\/p>\n