History

Amusement Parks and Sporting Grounds: How Bergen Beach Got Its Name

Brownstoner takes on Brooklyn history in Nabe Names, a series of briefs on the origins and surprising stories of neighborhood nomenclature. Originally an island in Jamaica Bay, off Canarsie’s coast, Bergen Beach was joined to the mainland with landfill in the early 1900s. The area composes a somewhat arrow-shaped section of Brooklyn, forming a manmade…

by Hannah Frishberg

03/17/2016 3 minute 0

Brownstoner takes on Brooklyn history in Nabe Names, a series of briefs on the origins and surprising stories of neighborhood nomenclature.

Bergen Beach Brooklyn — A trolley approaches on tracks leading to Bergen Beach. Photo via National Amusement Park Historical Association

Originally an island in Jamaica Bay, off Canarsie’s coast, Bergen Beach was joined to the mainland with landfill in the early 1900s.

The area composes a somewhat arrow-shaped section of Brooklyn, forming a manmade peninsula between Mill Basin and Canarsie. A residential nabe accessible only by bus or car, the area is miles from the nearest subway, a farther distance than nearly anywhere else in New York.

In addition to its neatly gridded streets, the area also contains, on its eastern edge, McGuire Fields, a large sports-friendly park containing five baseball fields, a football field, a roller-hockey rink, a beach-volleyball court and three tennis courts.

Bergen Beach also has a large portion of almost entirely undeveloped land sandwiching the Belt Parkway, which cuts across the neighborhood’s southern stretch.

The Bergen title will sound familiar to many Brooklynites — Bergen Street, Bergen Avenue and Bergen Triangle all exist within the borough. All are named for Hans Hansen Bergen, a Norwegian colonist and landowner who was one of the earliest settlers of Wallabout Bay. The late Scandinavian emigrated to what was then New Netherland in 1633 and, along with his father, came to acquire a sizable portion of the borough.

Small in both size and reputation, Bergen Beach contains within it a subdivision known as Georgetown. For a period in the late 19th century up until the early 1900s, the area was home to a high-class amusement park and resort, competing with nearby Coney Island for pleasure seekers.