Gravesend is a neighborhood in the south-central section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, on the southwestern edge of Long Island in the U.S. state of New York. It is bounded by the Belt Parkway to the south, Bay Parkway to the west, Avenue P to the north, and Ocean Parkway to the east.
Gravesend was one of the original towns in the Dutch colony of New Netherland. After the English took over, it was one of the six original towns of Kings County in colonial New York. Gravesend was the only English chartered town in what became Kings County and is notable as being one of the first towns founded by a woman, Deborah, Lady Moody. The town of Gravesend encompassed in southern Kings County, including the entire peninsula of Coney Island, and was annexed by the City of Brooklyn in 1894.
The modern-day neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community Board 11, Brooklyn Community Board 13 and Brooklyn Community Board 15. As of 2020, Gravesend had a population of 30,587.
__TOC__
Name
The name "Gravesend" was given to the area by New Amsterdam's Dutch authorities. Local sources think that the name probably comes from Dutch words, which when combined can mean "groves end" or "count's beach."
Historic sources, written in Dutch, suggest that it was named by the Dutch governor general Willem Kieft for the Dutch settlement of 's'Gravesande (now 's-Gravenzande) in the Netherlands, which means "count's beach" or "count's sand."Letter to the Editor: Gravesend, The New York Times, December 20, 1992. Accessed October 28, 2007. "As a historical archeologist specializing in the early history of New York, I can tell you that what is now the Gravesend section of Brooklyn was not named for the hometown that Lady Deborah Moody and her followers left in England, as you stated in your article about the community on Oct. 18, but by the Dutch governor-general, William Kieft. Kieft chose to name the settlement " 's'Gravesande" after the town in Holland that had been the seat of the Counts of Holland before they moved to the Hague. It means the count's sand or beach." A 1656 map of Nova Belgica confirms this, by mentioning the names of Dutch towns like Vlissingen (Flushing), Breukelen (Brooklyn), Amersfoort (Flatlands), Heemstee (Hempstead, Heemstede which means homestead) and Gravesant ('s-Gravenzande).
Because of the association with Lady Moody, some speculate that it was named after the English seaport of Gravesend, Kent.
Geography
The modern neighborhood of Gravesend lies between East 12th Street or Coney Island Avenue to the east, Stillwell Avenue to the west, Avenue P to the north, and Coney Island Creek and Shore Parkway to the south. To the east of Gravesend is Homecrest and Sheepshead Bay, to the northeast Midwood, to the northwest Bensonhurst, and to the west Bath Beach. To the south, across Coney Island Creek, lies the neighborhood of Coney Island, and across Shore Parkway lies Brighton Beach.
Calvert Vaux Park, formerly Dreier Offerman Park, is located southwest of the neighborhood.
White Sands South of Shore Parkway and north of Coney Island Creek, is sometimes called White Sands. Originally, White Sands consisted of several short, dead-end streets with no through-routes within the neighborhood. Currently, it consists of two blocks of residences and a Home Depot location.
White Sands' name is derived from the white sand which formerly covered the shore and the mouth of Coney Island Creek. The first houses to be built in the neighborhood were bungalows that were raised on stilts above the sand, but as development slowly progressed, much of the sand was removed and replaced with landfill. In 1993, Home Depot became interested in White Sands as the location for a new store due to its location near the highly used Cropsey Avenue and Shore Parkway. By 2000, Home Depot had acquired about two-thirds of the properties in White Sands, and by 2002, the acquired properties had been razed and replaced by a new Home Depot location.
History
Early history
The island and its environs were first inhabited by bands of Lenape, an Algonquian-speaking tribe that occupied territory along both sides of Long Island Sound, and through coastal areas through present-day New Jersey and down to Delaware.Gravesend, Forgotten NY The first known European believed to set foot in the area that would become Gravesend was Henry Hudson, whose ship, the Half Moon, landed at Coney Island in the fall of 1609. The Dutch claimed this land as part of their New Netherland Colony.
Gravesend is notable as one of the few colonial towns to be founded by a woman, Lady Deborah Moody (Jeanne Mance being another notable female founder). In 1643, governor general Willem Kieft granted her and a group of English settlers a land patent on December 19, 1645. Moody, along with John Tilton and wife Mary Pearsall Tilton, came to Gravesend after choosing excommunication, following religious persecution in Lynn, Massachusetts. Moody and Mary Tilton had been tried because of their Anabaptist beliefs, accused of spreading religious dissent in the Puritan colony. Kieft was recruiting settlers to secure this land that his forces had taken from the Lenape. Some clashes continued, and the town organization was not completed until 1645. The signed town charter and grant was one of the first to ever be awarded to a woman in the New World.Lady Moody Triangle, New York City Parks John Tilton became the first town clerk of Gravesend and owned part of what later would become Coney Island. Moody, the Tiltons, and other early English settlers were known to have paid the Lenape for their land.American Indians and English settlers Gravesend deed, 1665, 1977.594; Brooklyn Public Library, Center for Brooklyn History. Another prominent early settler was Anthony Janszoon van Salee.
The Town of Gravesend encompassed in southern Kings County, including the entire island of Coney Island. This was originally used as the town's common lands on the Atlantic Ocean. It was divided, as was the town itself, into 41 parcels for the original patentees. When the town was first laid out, almost half of the area was made up of salt marsh wetlands and sandhill dunes along the shore of Gravesend Bay. It was one of the earliest planned communities in America. It consisted of a square surrounded by a 20-foot-high wooden palisade. The town was bisected by two main roads, Gravesend Road (now McDonald Avenue) running from north to south, and Gravesend Neck Road, running from east to west. These roads divided the town into four quadrants, which were subdivided into ten plots of land each. This grid of the original town can still be seen on maps and aerial photographs of the area. At the center of town, where the two main roads met, a town hall was constructed where town meetings were held once a month.ForgottenTour 33, Gravesend, Brooklyn, Forgotten NY. April 2008. Retrieved October 11, 2014.
The neighborhood center is still the four blocks bounded by Village Road South, Village Road East, Village Road North, and Van Sicklen Street, where the Moody House and Van Sicklen family cemetery are located. Next to, and parallel with the van Sicklen Family Cemetery is the Old Gravesend Cemetery, where Lady Moody is said to be interred. Egyptian émigré Mohammad Ben Misoud, who was part of a late 19th-century attraction at the Coney Island amusement park, was given a proper Muslim funeral upon his death in August 1896 and also buried in Old Gravesend Cemetery.
The religious freedom of early Gravesend made it a destination for ostracized or controversial groups, Nonconformists or Dissenters such as the Quakers, who briefly made their home in the town before being chased out by the succeeding New Netherland director general Peter Stuyvesant, who arrived in 1647. He was wary of Gravesend's open acceptance of "heretical" sects.
In 1654 the people of Gravesend purchased Coney Island from the local Lenape band for about $15 worth of seashells, guns, and gunpowder.
In August 1776 during the American Revolutionary War, Gravesend Bay was the landing site of thousands of British soldiers and German mercenaries from their staging area on Staten Island, leading to the Battle of Long Island (also Battle of Brooklyn). The troops met little resistance from the Continental Army advance troops under General George Washington then headquartered in New York City (at the time limited to the tip of Manhattan Island). The battle, in addition to being the first, would prove to be the largest fought in the entire war.
Popularity and success
Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, Gravesend remained a sleepy suburb. With the opening of three prominent racetracks (Sheepshead Bay Race Track, Gravesend Race Track, and Brighton Beach Race Course) in the late 19th century, and the blossoming of Coney Island into a popular vacation spot, the town was developed as a successful resort community. John Y. McKane was credited with this. A Sheepshead Bay carpenter and contractor, he gained a variety of elected and appointed positions: as Gravesend town supervisor, chief of police, chief of detectives, fire commissioner, schools commissioner, public lands commissioner, superintendent of the Sheepshead Bay Methodist Church, head tenor of the church choir, and Santa Claus at the annual Sabbath school Christmas celebration. From the 1870s to the 1890s, McKane cultivated Coney Island, which was then part of the township of Gravesend, as a pleasure ground. He participated in both political and physical development.
As town constable, McKane expanded the Gravesend police force considerably and personally patrolled the beach. McKane became corrupt, using the pretense of town permits to extort tribute from every business, large or small, on Coney Island. Presenting himself as a champion of law and order, he skimmed much money from the many brothels and gambling parlors that thrived in his bailiwick. During McKane's reign Coney Island came to be known by many as "Sodom by the Sea".
McKane became a Democratic Party ward boss and had loose standards on who was allowed to vote: immigrants, dead people, seasonal migrant workers, and criminals. Voting records show many specious entries. On the eve of the 1893 election, William Gaynor, a lawyer running for Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice, decided to test McKane's methods by dispatching more than 20 Republican observers to examine the Gravesend voter registries and oversee the voting in all six districts of the town, as he was entitled to do by law. However, when the observers reached Gravesend town hall at dawn on election day, McKane, along with a large group of policemen and cronies, confronted them. When the observers balked and produced injunctions from the Brooklyn Supreme Court, McKane supposedly declared "injunctions don't go here" and ordered the men away. A scuffle ensued and five of the observers were beaten and arrested. This event raised great outrage.(May 4, 1894). "A New Chapter in History " The Brooklyn Daily Eagle Page 4; "Becoming Wards One By One " The Brooklyn Daily Eagle , p. 12 Early in the following year, McKane was tried, convicted, and sentenced to six years in Sing Sing for such corruption. He was released near the end of the century and died of a stroke in his Sheepshead Bay home in 1899.(September 6, 1899) "John Y. McKane Dies " The Brooklyn Daily Eagle
After McKane's fall from power, Gravesend and Coney Island were annexed in 1894 by the city of Brooklyn, which in turn became part of New York City in 1898., p.79 George C. Tilyou created one of Coney Island's first amusement parks, Steeplechase Park, the opening of which ushered in Coney Island's golden age.