Chekhov's Mistress
Brooklyn Events: Celebrating Leaves of Grass at Ft. Greene Park
“I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,”
Walt Whitman was born on this day in 1819 in Long Island, New York. More than any other writer he is most associated today with the borough of Brooklyn.
From the chapter on Brooklyn and Brooklyn Heights in the 1976 book Literary New York – A History and Guide:
The borough’s first and most significant writer, Walt Whitman, spent most of his life in the region north of downtown Brooklyn. In 1823, when Whitman was four years old, his family moved from Long Island to a house on Front Street, an area of taverns and grog shops near the waterfront. Whitman’s father was a carpenter who built one house after another for his family, intending to sell them at a profit…All of Whitman’s houses are gone today, and housing projects and roadways to Manhattan have replaced most of the old neighborhood.
…During the same era [1851 to 1855] the young Walt Whitman was supervising the typesetting of Leaves of Grass in a print shop on the southwest corner of Cranberry and what was then Fulton, now Cadman Plaza West. Unfortunately, this building , in recent years a little brick luncheonette, was torn down in 1964.
150 Years later, close to the place Whitman lived is a housing project called the Whitman Houses. Ft. Greene Park sits across the street, the park Whitman championed while editor of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. He wrote “almost daily urging for a park in Brooklyn. The park would be a ”lung“ to provide the densely populated city with free circulation of air and where the people could spend a few grateful hours in the enjoyment of wholesome rest. As a result, Washington Park on the site of Fort Greene was established as Brooklyn’s first park in 1847.”
Fittingly, on June 18th the city celebrates the 150th anniversary of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass at Ft. Greene Park, with readings and events all day along in the park and along Myrtle Avenue where Whitman once lived.
Links:
Ft. Greene Park
Library of Congress
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: May 31, 2005
- Filed Under:
Reading Railroad: Events
- Comments:0
- Links to this Post: Technorati
