Gravesend, Brooklyn

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Afternoon by the Sea (Gravesend Bay), a pastel by William Merritt Chase, ca 1888 shows traditional catboats in the bay and the Navesink Highlands across Lower New York Bay.

Gravesend (pronounced "GRAVES end", not "grave SEND") is a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, USA. It is bordered by Bensonhurst, Sheepshead Bay, and Coney Island. The name is derived from the Dutch "grafe ende," which means "the end of the grove." However, many speculate that the namesake of Gravesend comes from many roads that intersect the Washington Cemetary located in the area, between 65th Street, Bay Parkway and Ocean Parkway.

Rough Sketch Map of Gravesend Area.

Gravesend was one of the original towns in the Dutch colony of New Netherland and became one of the six original towns of Kings County in colonial New York. It was the only English chartered town in what became Kings County and was designated the "Shire Town" when the English assumed control, as it was the only one where records could be kept in English. Courts were removed to Flatbush in 1685. The former name survives, and is now associated with a neighborhood in Brooklyn. Gravesend is notable for being founded by a woman, Lady Deborah Moody; a patent was granted to the English settlers by Governor Kieft, December 19, 1645.

Gravesend Town encompassed 7000 acres in southern Kings County, including the entire island of Coney Island, which was originally the town's common lands on the Atlantic Ocean, divided up, as was the town itself, into 41 parcels for the original patentees. When the town was first laid out, almost half were saltmarsh wetlands and sandhill dunes along the shore of Gravesend Bay. An independent town up until the late nineteenth century, Gravesend was annexed to Brooklyn on May 4, 1894.

The current community of Gravesend is centered on the former village square centered at the intersection of [Gravesend] Neck Road and McDonald (formerly Gravesend) Avenue. The center of the square is dominated and served by the elevated train station of the BMT Culver Line of the New York City Subway system.

References

• J. H. French, Gazetteer Of the State of New York (1860) [link]

• (May 4, 1894). "[Becoming Wards One By One]" [The Brooklyn Daily Eagle] Page 12

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