Our New Brooklyn Arsenal, and Its Reminiscences

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OUR NEW BROOKLYN ARSENAL, AND ITS REMINISCENCES.

The New Arsenal, for consolidated Brooklyn, just north of Washington Park, is almost completed—looking like some enormous animal crouching along the ground with its head elevated high in the air, to spy around the surrounding country. It is a very fair looking structure, however, strongly timbered, and with a sort of semi-military appearance, as is becoming to the place where the warriors of the place are henceforth to congregate, and whence they are to draw their supplies.

The upper room will be a noble place for exercises and military drills. Its dimensions are superior, for that purpose, to those of any other place in Brooklyn—being without post, pillar, or partition to interfere with the movements of the soldiers; and the roof, one of the self-supporting ones, of the style now common for large buildings.

It may not be generally known that the site and neighborhood of the New Arsenal are not without some appropriate and patriotic associations. It was across here, at a time passing the memory of any now living among us, that the line of fortified posts and entrenchments were made, reaching from Wallabout to Red Hook, that formed the American lines, in the Battle of Long Island,¹ in the early part of the Revolutionary War. It was this line of rude fortifications that stopped the progress of the enemy, and secured the safety of the American troops—till Washington made his masterly retreate over to New York island, which saved the revolutionary cause.

On the same neighborhood were thrown up hasty entrenchments during the last war,—the men and boys of New York and Brooklyn turned out voluntarily with "pickaxe, shovel, and spade," (as the song hath it,) to provide for any emergency that might happen. For several days there were large forces of such volunteers at work, under officers appointed to oversee them—one force duly relieving another. It was feared that the British fleet might make an attempt to land, and cross the river in the same way as in 1776—and the fortified embankments were intended to oppose them. If the reader is curious in the matter, he will find, here and there, an old Brooklynite left, (and not a few New Yorkers also) who took a hand at the dirt-digging and throwing up the embankments, of the occasion. The women, as usual, (ever forward in good works) assisted by gifts of food, drink, &c.; and often enlivened the scene by their presence. Happily, however, the last war passed over, without any war-guns having occasioned to be fired on these particular shores of ours.

But there will be plenty of our readers who, during the past thirty or forty years, remembering the embankments and deep trenches of Fort Greene, we have mentioned. They remained in pretty much the same condition, down to the commencement of the improvements for Washington Park. Indeed some of the highest walks of the present Park are literally the ground thrown up by the patriotic hands of the men and boy volunteers we have spoken of—those banks being left as they were, and included in the plan of the Park.

During those former times, be it remembered, the site of the present Arsenal was a part of the whole ground, the hill, slope, fortifications, &c.; of course not being divided off, in any such way as we see it at present, by the intersection of streets—hardly even of roads. This statement may be necessary to those who notice that Washington Park, with its apex, and beautiful walks, is on one side of the busy and thronged pavements of Myrtle avenue, and the Arsenal a little distance to the north of the avenue, on the other.

There will be some of our readers also who will remember the old Powder Houses of Brooklyn, as they appeared thirty and thirty-five years ago. One of them stood in immediate proximity to the site of the present Arsenal, if not on the exact spot. These Powder Houses were covered with slate, and were the only edifices in the neighborhood—being placed out there, at a safe distance from the thickly settled parts of the city, (or rather village, as it then was,) which were around the Old and New Ferries, and up perhaps as high as Cranberry or Concord streets. The whole scene, around the grounds of the present Arsenal was indeed, in those days, a wild, hilly, unfenced, open landscape—something far different from its present appearance.

Later than the war times we have alluded to, the grounds on which the present Arsenal is built, and for some distance west of it, were appropriated to a free city Burial Yard, or Potter's Field. Many hundreds of people were buried there, and the workmen engaged in excavating for cellars, &c., in that neighborhood, continually come, at the present day, upon the remains of those burials.

The Alms House of the County was also then in that neighborhood—the same range of buildings now used for part of the Marine Barracks, on Park avenue. (By the by, we should think the Government could afford to tear down the miserable old yellow-wooden shanty, with its rotten old board fences and sheds, and put up a substantial pile of buildings more creditable and comfortable. The present structure is a disgrace to the Navy Department, and an eyesore to that part of Brooklyn.)

Just west of the site of the present Arsenal used to be a vast, low, miry, stagnant place, covered with a shallow depth of water, on which, in summer, was spread a sickening yellow scum. Only one or two roads, and a bridge, made this bad spread of a place passable. Part of it was, in due time, filled up by the city, and forms the present City Park, with its northerly front on Flushing avenue. The rest has been, by degrees, filled up by its owners—appeared, and left no sign or memento, except in such reminiscences of these of ours about the New Arsenal.

Along what is now Flushing avenue, or rather just south of it, and on toowards our present "Eastern District," led a beautiful wild lane, the "Wallabout road," rising and falling, and bending circuitous, according to the banks of the shore. It was a fine summer walk, or drive, having fields on one side, and the river on the other. This road, which was within gun shot of the present Arsenal, intersected the first settlements of this part of the American Continent—the Walloon settlers, from Hollands, sent out under the auspices of the Amsterdam Trading Company. These Walloons, attracted by the beauty and fertility of this part of the Island, and its contiguity to what was then a mere trading post and stockade, (now New York city;) settled for good in the quarter we have mentioned, and laid the first foundations of what has now become the City of Brooklyn.

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