Talk:Gravesend, Brooklyn

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I've always wondered this: what's the correct pronunciation of Gravesend? Is it "Grave Send" or "Grave's End"? Does anybody know? It should probably be included in the article.

  • The latter (with the "s" like a "z") is the only pronounciation I have ever heard. I couldn't definitely say if this is the original way of saying it, though.--Pharos 06:29, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Origin of the name

Just out of interest the article only mentions Dutch settlers but the town name is English. Was the town named by English settlers then taken over by the Dutch or vice versa? If the Dutch named it first - did their original name for the town survive? The town would certainly have been named after Gravesend, Kent which was a port where a great many of the first settlers moving to America left from. --LiamE 14:30, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

  • The town was actually founded by English settlers in Dutch New Netherland; they were Anabaptists who had fled religious persecution in New England. Later, of course, the whole area was taken over by English Crown.--Pharos 19:38, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
    • Well worth adding that to the article I'd say. Thanks for the clarification. --LiamE 20:14, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

From what I have seen this is a change on a name for two towns in dutch

http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-history-hs304a,0,5912509.story The inhabited part of the town consisted of four squares of a little more than four acres each, with two main roadways bisecting north-south and east-west (today's McDonald Avenue and Gravesend Neck Road). These squares appear to still exist even after the grid of streets was overlayed onto brooklyn. Each of the four sections had 10 house lots surrounding a one-acre commons. Outside of the village itself were the individual, triangular pieces of 100-acre farms, called boweries, radiating out from the center like spokes from a wheel. Is this possibly why Ave V is the way that it is? (Not parrellel to the other avenues?)

[edit] Bensonhurt name change

I heard thet Gravesend separated from Bensonhurt 20 years ago, where should I put this in the article?

Gravesend was the name of the town containing what is now Bensonhurst. Also Gravesend is the name of what was the central village of the town. There hasn't been any separation in the last century. -- Cecropia 18:15, 16 April 2006 (UTC)