Boiler Installation in Clinton Hill, NY

The area’s European history began in the 1640s, when Dutch colonists laid tobacco plantations near Wallabout Bay. Bedford Corners, situated just southeast of Clinton Hill, was incorporated in 1663, and the settlers (both Dutch and French Huguenot) purchased surrounding lands from the native Lenape in 1670.

On August 27, 1776, the “Road to Jamaica” (approximately Atlantic Avenue, the southern edge of today’s neighborhood) was used by the British army in a surprise overnight march to outflank the American army, which was forced to retreat toward Gowanus Creek, and two nights later, to Manhattan. After the war, the Dutch continued to build on the land, which sloped toward the East River and offered great views of the water and of Manhattan.

The tree-lined Clinton Avenue was laid out as a boulevard along the crest of the hill in 1832, and by the 1840s, Clinton Hill and neighboring Fort Greene had become fashionable neighborhoods for the wealthy of Brooklyn, who could commute to Manhattan by way of stagecoach to the Fulton Ferry. The area was originally devised as a rural get-away for those “determined to escape from the closeness of city life”, as Walt Whitman, editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, put it in 1846. George Washington Pine had bought up the land in the area and broke it into lots, selling them to those who wanted to lead a quiet life not too far from the conveniences of the Navy Yard. Whitman, a 28-year resident of Brooklyn, had lived for less than a year in the area in 1855, where he completed his masterpiece Leaves of Grass. The 1995 New Yorker article “Walt Whitman’s Ghost” identified the address as 99 Ryerson Street, which still stands.