Walt Whitman Park

There's a surprising amount of open space in downtown Brooklyn and Brooklyn Heights. Across Cadman Plaza East from the larger Cadman Plaza Park is Walt Whitman Park, a nearly three-acre rectangle of grass, trees, curved paths, and a fountain kids can stomp around in.

Don't try to drive in here. Security measures are evident, probably because of the proximity of the New York City Emergency Management center – which, per Google Maps, one intrepid citizen has actually reviewed. (Five stars, in case you were wondering. Sadly, no commentary.)

There wasn't much action in Walt Whitman Park on a sunny Saturday in spring.

Only a few people had brought their kids to the fountain.

Walt Whitman, as readers of this blog and Brooklyn-history buffs know, spent a good part of his life in the Borough of Churches, even editing for a time in the 1840s the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, for which he wrote a poem called "The Play-Ground," which begins:

When painfully athwart my brain
   Dark thoughts come crowding on,
And, sick of wordly [sic?] hollowness,
   My heart feels sad or lone—

Then out upon the green I walk,
   Just ere the close of day,
And swift I ween the sight I view
   Clears all my gloom away.

For there I see young children—
   The cheeriest things on earth—
I see them play—I hear their tones
   Of loud and reckless mirth.

Washington Park and the Old Stone House

Brooklyn's Washington Park, not to be confused with Manhattan's Washington Square Park (or Washington Market Park, or Fort Washington Park), is home to the J.J. Byrne Playground and, more famously, the Old Stone House. This handsome building was reconstructed from the original 1699 Dutch Vecht-Cortelyou House, which figured prominently in the Battle of Brooklyn (also called the Battle of Long Island) in the early going of the Revolutionary War.

The Old Stone House is now an interpretive and educational center. I've been to book fairs and parties there, and most recently attended a one-man show about Walt Whitman, who spent much of his life in Brooklyn.

The park itself provides some of those nice curvy paths that make spaces seem bigger.

Park Slope kids have plenty of room to romp in the playground named for James J. Byrne, a busy Brooklyn Borough President in the late 1920s, or to play in the big field, which was getting ready to host an evening movie.

There's also a lush "educational" garden. I felt educated when we walked through it the other evening – having just then learned of its existence.

June is the month for pretty flowers. Am I right?

All photos © Jon Sobel, Critical Lens Media