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This article is reprinted, with permission, from the
website MisterGWorld.com. The webmaster, Mr. G
(F. Guariglia), teaches history at I.S. 278, which is located at the
northwestern corner of Marine Park. |
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Marine Park is one of New York City's
largest recreation and nature preserve areas. Located in southern
Brooklyn, the park currently covers 798 acres. This number includes both
the land and water boundaries of the park. Marine Park surrounds the
westernmost inlet of Jamaica Bay. The bay is one of several formed during
the last 5,000 years as ocean currents deposited sand in a series of long
strips off the south shore of Long Island. These strips of beach form a
barrier against the surf and allow salt marshes to grow in the calm water
on their protected bay side.
Gerritsen Creek takes
its name from Dutch colonist Wolfert Gerritsen, who built a gristmill on
the creek in the latter half of the 17th century. The mill was in
continuous operation until 1889, and it was destroyed by fire in 1935.
Gerritsen Creek was a freshwater stream that once extended about twice as
far inland as it does today. The creek extended as far north as
present-day Quentin Road. Around 1920, the creek north of Avenue U was
converted into an underground storm drain. This section of creek was later
land-filled to build houses and the park itself.
At the turn of the 20th century developers began making plans to turn
Jamaica Bay into a port, dredging Rockaway channel to allow large ships to
enter the proposed harbor. Land speculators anticipated a real estate boom
and bought land along the Jamaica Bay waterfront. Fearing that the
marshland around Gerritsen Creek would be destroyed, Frederick B. Pratt
and Alfred T. White offered the city 150 acres in the area for use as a
park in 1917. After a seven-year delay, the city finally accepted the
offer. The idea of a new park inspired developers to erect new homes in
the area. In the 1930s, new land purchases increased the park's area to
1822 acres by 1937. That year the park was named "Brooklyn Marine Park."
However a series of additional land transfers has reduced the size of the
park. The largest transfer of land was in 1974, when 1024 acres were given
to the National Park Service. The transferred land is now part of the
Gateway National Recreation Area -- leaving Marine Park at its current
size of 798 acres.
Over the past sixty years,
portions of Marine Park have been improved with recreational
facilities, while other areas have been preserved to protect plants and
wildlife. In 1939, the Pratt-White athletic field was dedicated in tribute
to the two fathers of Marine Park. A 210-acre golf course opened in 1963
-- the Marine Park Golf Course, on Flatbush Ave. New ballfields (south of
Avenue U) were opened in 1979 and named for baseball lover and police
officer Rocco Torre in 1997. Nature trails established along Gerritsen
Creek in 1984-85 invite parkgoers to observe the wealth of plant and
wildlife in southern Brooklyn. Ongoing improvements at the end of the 20th
century included the reconstruction of basketball, tennis, boccie courts,
baseball fields. and the Lenape Playground just south of Avenue U. A new
Nature Center opened in 2000. Plans are under way to reconstruct Wolfert
Gerritsen's gristmill and convert it into a museum in association with the
Nature Center on Avenue U and the Lott House at 1940 East 36 Street.
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