Gravesend, one of the original six towns of Brooklyn, originally included an enormous amount of land that encompassed Coney Island, Sheepshead Bay, Bensonhurst, Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach.
It was settled in 1643 and chartered in 1645 by a group of English Anabaptists led by Lady Deborah Moody, a wealthy widow, as a haven for religious dissenters. Moody originally went to New England, but its residents didn’t like her radical Protestantism, so she moved to New Amsterdam, founded Gravesend and became the first woman to charter land in the New World.
Legend has it that Moody’s house was used as a hospital during the American Revolution’s Battle of Brooklyn.
Gravesend began to transform after it was annexed to the City of Brooklyn in 1894.
The electrification of the Sea Beach and Culver rail lines meant that those who settled in the area could reach Manhattan in 45 minutes. A large Italian American community then formed.
Most of Gravesend’s current houses were built after the 1920s, and while many had been converted into two-family dwellings during the Depression, recent residents have restored them.
