The Fort Greene and Clinton Hill Neighborhood and Architectural History Guide
The Fort Greene and Clinton Hill Neighborhood and Architectural History Guide by Francis Morrone is a wide-ranging social and cultural history of the part of Brooklyn bounded roughly by Flatbush, Classon, Atlantic, and Flushing Avenues and includes extensive material about the development of the Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and Wallabout neighborhoods; the history of Fort Greene Park; notable neighborhood personages including Walt Whitman, Marianne Moore, Theodore Ledyard Cuyler, Richard Wright, William C. Kingsley, Susan Smith McKinney-Steward, Charles Pratt, and Spike Lee; and the histories of local institutions such as Pratt Institute, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Colored School No. 1, St. Joseph's College, Lafayette Avene Presbyterian Church, and much more. The guide is illustrated with contemporary architectural photographs by Etienne Frossard as well as numerous older and archival photographs
To complement the Fort Greene / Clinton Hill Neighborhood & Architectural History Guide by Francis Morrone, the Brooklyn Historical Society presents a new audio tour of Fort Greene / Clinton Hill. The tour is hosted by author, filmmaker, and longtime Fort Greene resident Nelson George. It features excerpts from oral history interviews from the Brooklyn Historical Society’s collections: artists, community activists, and longtime residents both past and present including professional basketball player Albert King, WNYC’s Jad Abumrad, and former Freedomways managing editor Esther Cooper Jackson. Historian Francis Morrone tells us about landmarks like the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument and Underwood Park as well as the poet Marianne Moore. And we learn more about keystones of the neighborhood like BAM, Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, and Pratt Institute from the inside.
You can listen here, or download the audio tracks via iTunes: Search the iTunes Store for the free Brooklyn Historical Society podcast.
1. Fort Greene Park: Now the park is beautiful and safe, but for residents who remember the 1970s and 80s, it wasn’t always that way.
2. Prison Ship Martyrs Monument: The soul of Fort Greene Park commemorates a sad moment in U.S. history.
3. Fort Greene Houses: The Brothers King.
4. Washington Park: Home to industrialists, artists, and organizers for social change.
5. Richard Wrights’ Legacy: From Native Son to Do the Right Thing.
6. Marianne Moore and more Poets: A city of churches, a city of trees.
7. Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church: Abolitionists set the standard.
8. Brooklyn Academy of Music: The oldest performing arts center in the country.
9. Clinton Hill: The Hill.
10. Underwood Park: Typewriters and crack.
11. Pratt Institute: When the Pratt Center for Community Development was accused of subversive activities.
Hosted by Nelson George
Produced by Sady Sullivan, Director of Oral History, Brooklyn Historical Society with production help by Dorothy Saint Jean, Long Island University
Music by Black Star, Mos Def, Living Colour, Betty Carter, Erykah Badu, Biggie Smalls, Talib Kweli, and Bill Lee and The Natural Spirit Orchestra (with Branford Marsalis)
Thank you to Nelson George, Edward Lee, Spike Lee, Francis Morrone, Ina Howard-Parker, and all the other artists heard here, for your time and creativity. And to the New York Center for Visual History and the Media Arts Department at Long Island University.
Special thanks to Hillel Arnold, Alexis Taines-Coe, Ann Heppermann, and Selma Jackson who contributed interviews to the collection and YouTube users dominoize and oojenoo who captured great live sound of important events in Fort Greene: Soul Summit 2009 and 2010, and election night 2008.
And a very special thank you to the people of Fort Greene / Clinton Hill who shared their memories with the Brooklyn Historical Society’s oral history collections. We’re so happy your voices are heard in this tour: Jad Abumrad, Marianne Engberg, Dr. Josephine English, Yolande Garcia, Hal Glicksman, Ruth Goldstein, Colvin Grannum, DK Holland, Karen Brooks Hopkins, Esther Cooper Jackson, Albert King, Irene Levy, Karla Murthy,, Ron Shiffman, and Mary Elizabeth Smith.
The Fort Greene and Clinton Hill Neighborhood and Architectural History Guide by Francis Morrone is a wide-ranging social and cultural history of the part of Brooklyn bounded roughly by Flatbush, Classon, Atlantic, and Flushing Avenues and includes extensive material about the development of the Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and Wallabout neighborhoods; the history of Fort Greene Park; notable neighborhood personages including Walt Whitman, Marianne Moore, Theodore Ledyard Cuyler, Richard Wright, William C. Kingsley, Susan Smith McKinney-Steward, Charles Pratt, and Spike Lee; and the histories of local institutions such as Pratt Institute, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Colored School No. 1, St. Joseph's College, Lafayette Avene Presbyterian Church, and much more. The guide is illustrated with contemporary architectural photographs by Etienne Frossard as well as numerous older and archival photographs 
