Cypress Hills National Cemetery was established during the Civil War. Today, it is operated by the Long Island National Cemetery. The 18-acre cemetery opened in 1862, accepting veterans and their spouses until the cemetery ran out of space in the 1950s. More than 21,000 people, both veterans and civilians, are buried in the cemetery, including twenty-four Medal of Honor recipients. The cemetery serves as the final resting place for veterans of the American Revolution, War of 1812, Civil War, Spanish-American War, as well as the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. A number of monuments were created as Federal Works Progress Administration projects during the Great Depression.
Public School 65K in Cypress Hills was built in 1870 and enlarged to the front and back in 1889. P.S. 65K was entered on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981. This is not the same building as present-day P.S. 65, which is a couple blocks north at 696 Jamaica Avenue and had served grades pre-K to 5 since 2009. The 1870-1889 building, now known as the Little Red Schoolhouse, has housed a charter school, Achievement First East New York Middle School, since September 2009.
Public School 108 was built in the Cypress Hills neighborhood of Brooklyn in 1895. The Romanesque Revival massive building is one of the few school buildings designed by James W. Naughton for Brooklyn public schools that continues in use as a public school. The school was renamed the Sal Abbracciamento School in 1981 for one of its early twentieth-century graduates who fought to keep the school from closing in the 1960s. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 and was named a New York City landmark in 1981.
This monument is located on Jamaica Ave and Cleveland Street in Highland Park in Brooklyn. This monument was created in 1928 by Pietro Montana, an Italian-American sculptor. It is a figure of bronze color on a pedestal. The monument is to honor those in the local community who served the United States in World War I. The statue is of a man standing face turned skyward who has unveiled as a spirit and has his dead corpse on his shoulders like a blanket.
Built in 1886 as the station house of the 17th Police Precinct of the City of Brooklyn, this Romanesque Revival style, three-story building with a sandstone base features a distinctive corner tower. The local precinct later became the 75th in the Borough of Brooklyn. The NYC police stopped using the building in 1973 and the city sold the building to Peoples Baptist Church three years later. A three-story garage to the west, attached to the station by a hyphen passageway, was added in 1926 to replace the original stable. The former precinct house was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2007 for its architectural significance. A new owner has stabilized the building, but it remains vacant.
The white wood-frame church on New Lots Ave. near Schenck Ave. in East New York is the New Lots Reformed Church, built in the 1820s by and for the local farming community. The church's cemetery originally was on the opposite (north) side of New Lots Avenue from the church, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. That former cemetery reportedly included graves of Revolutionary War soldiers and African-American slaves; a public library and a city park/ playground now stand in this area and the park has been renamed Sankofa Park (also a Clio entry). The cemetery in the churchyard adjacent to the church was reportedly established in 1841; at that time, many of the graves from across the street were moved to this churchyard. The church (and adjacent cemetery) is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as of 1983 and has been a New York City landmark since 1966. The building has served a local congregation as New Lots Community Church for many decades.
The city renamed a third of a New York City playground/ park in East New York in 2013 as African Burial Ground Square. The square is being reconstructed and relandscaped in honor of the African-American enslaved persons who were buried here, to honor their memory and celebrate story-telling traditions. The unnamed playground's name was changed to Schenk Park in 1987 after a local family that dates back to the Dutch colonial era. The family was one of the known local landowners who owned slaves. After the connection of the land to its past as a burial ground was rediscovered, the park was renamed Sankofa Park in 2016. Sankofa is a word from a Ghanian language meaning a mythical bird that keeps its beak turned toward the past while moving forward.
At this location in 1916, Margaret Sanger opened the Brownville Clinic- the first birth control clinic in the United States. Opened and operated for its short life in secret, Sanger provided many women with information and access to contraceptives and gave open information to subjects such as sex. The clinic first shut down a few months after its opening resulting in the arrest of Sanger. Though the clinic did not survive long, it was the first of its time to openly approach the subject, thus giving aid to hundreds of women, and starting a movement still felt today.
This memorial was dedicated to soldiers who served in the United States armed services during World War I. The monument was designed by Henry Beaumont Herts and sculpted by artist Charles Cary Rumsey and dedicated in 1925.
This Tour is a Driving or Biking Tour.
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Starting from Cypress Hills National Cemetery, drive from Jamaica Ave. to historical Brooklyn landmarks in Cypress Hills, East New York, and Brownsville. Visit locations important to colonial, military, African-American, educational, and women's history.
