A Sunday in Herbert Von King Park
Brooklyn’s parks are the closest most neighborhoods get to a town square, a refuge for all across class and culture. Coming to you not from the fields of Prospect Park, but the smaller spots across the borough, “A Sunday in…” spotlights residents who turn to the commons — and asks what’s on their mind.
“The people in this delightful locality naturally deserve a pleasure ground.”
That’s what the Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote about Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Tompkins Park in July of 1880. Renamed for community activist Herbert Von King — known as the mayor of Bed-Stuy — over a century later, the park extends from Marcy Avenue to Tompkins Avenue from west to east, and Greene Avenue to Lafayette Avenue south to north.