Gravesend (pronounced "GRAVES end", not "grave SEND") is a neighborhood in the south-central section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, USA.

The derivation of the name is unclear. Some speculate that it was named after the English seaport of Gravesend, Kent. An alternative explanation suggests that it was named by Willem Kieft for the Dutch settlement of "'s- Gravesande", which means "Count's Beach" or "Count's Sand". There is also a city in The Netherlands called 's-Gravenzande.

Gravesend was one of the original towns in the Dutch colony of New Netherland and became one of the six original towns of Kings County in colonial New York. It was the only English chartered town in what became Kings County and was designated the "Shire Town" when the English assumed control, as it was the only one where records could be kept in English. Courts were removed to Flatbush in 1685. The former name survives, and is now associated with a neighborhood in Brooklyn. Gravesend is notable for being founded by a woman, Lady Deborah Moody; a land patent was granted to the English settlers by Governor Willem Kieft, December 19, 1645.

Gravesend Town encompassed 7,000 acres (28 km²) in southern Kings County, including the entire island of Coney Island, which was originally the town's common lands on the Atlantic Ocean, divided up, as was the town itself, into 41 parcels for the original patentees. When the town was first laid out, almost half were salt marsh wetlands and sandhill dunes along the shore of Gravesend Bay.

As of 2007 Gravesend had a population of 181,651.

The modern neighborhood of Gravesend lies between Coney Island Avenue to the east, Stillwell Avenue to the west, Kings Highway to the north, and Coney Island Creek and Shore Parkway to the south. To the east of Gravesend is Sheepshead Bay, to the northeast Midwood, to the northwest Bensonhurst, and to the west Bath Beach. To the south, across Coney Island Creek, lies the neighborhood of Coney Island, and across Shore Parkway lies Brighton Beach. The neighborhood center is still the four blocks bounded by Village Road South, Village Road East, Village Road North, and Van Sicklen Street, where the Moody House and Van Sicklen family cemetery are located. Next to, and parallel with the van Sicklen Family Cemetery is the Gravesend Cemetery, where Lady Moody is purported to be interred. (Gravesend Cemetery's most exotic occupant is Egyptian émigré Mohammad Ben Misoud, who was part of a Coney Island attraction and was afforded a proper Muslim funeral upon his death in August, 1896.)

Gravesend is served by three lines of the New York City Subway system: the D elevated line (also called the BMT West End Line), at the 25th Avenue and Bay 50th Street stations; the F elevated line (also called the IND Culver Line), at the Kings Highway, Avenue U, and Avenue X stations, and the N open-cut line, (also called the BMT Sea Beach Line), at the Kings Highway, Avenue U, and Gravesend/86th Street stations. Gravesend is patrolled by the NYPD's 60, 61, and 62 Precincts.

The first known European to set foot in the area that would become Gravesend was Henry Hudson, whose ship, the Half Moon, landed on Coney Island in the fall of 1609. The island and its environs were at that time inhabited by five Native American tribes—the Narriockh, the Mannahanning,the Massebackhun, the Morpeesah, and the Makeepaca. To them the area was known as Savanehachee, "the sea-bounded plain."

Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions

Cornelius Jacobsen Mey (1620-25)

New Netherlander

The land subsequently became part of the New Netherland Colony, and in 1643 it was granted to Lady Deborah Moody, an English expatriate who hoped to establish a community where she and her followers could practice their Anabaptist beliefs free from persecution. Due to clashes with the local native tribes the town wasn't completed until 1645. But when the town charter was finally signed and granted it became one of the first such titles to ever be awarded to a woman in the new world.

The town Lady Moody established was one of the earliest planned communities in America. It consisted of a perfect square surrounded by a 20-foot-high wooden palisade. The town was bisected by two main roads, Gravesend Road (now McDonald Avenue) running from north to south, and Gravesend Neck Road, running from east to west (Map). These roads divided the town into four quadrants which were subdivided into ten plots of land each (The grid of the original town can still be seen on maps and aerial photographs of the area). At the center of town, where the two main roads met, a town hall was constructed where town meetings were held once a month.

The religious freedom of early Gravesend made it a desirable home for many ostracized or controversial groups, such as the Quakers, who briefly made their home in the town before being chased out by New Netherland governor Peter Stuyvesant, who was wary of Gravesend's open acceptance of "heretical" sects.

In 1654 the people of Gravesend purchased Coney Island from the local natives for about $15 worth of seashells, guns, and gunpowder.

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries Gravesend remained a sleepy Long Island suburb. Then, with the opening of three prominent racetracks (Sheepshead Bay Race Track, Gravesend Race Track, and Brighton Beach Race Course) in the late 19th century, and the blossoming of Coney Island into a popular vacation spot, the town was transformed into a (relatively) bustling resort community.

The man who spearheaded this metamorphosis was John Y. McKane, a Sheepshead Bay carpenter and contractor who rose to become the Gravesend town supervisor, chief of police, chief of detectives, fire commissioner, schools commissioner, public lands commissioner, superintendent of the Sheepshead Bay Methodist Church, head tenor of the church choir, and, last but not least, Santa Claus at the annual Sabbath school Christmas celebration.

From the 1870’s to the 1890’s McKane cultivated Coney Island (which at that time was part of the township of Gravesend) as a pleasure ground, building much of it up, literally, with his own hands. As town constable he expanded the Gravesend police force considerably and could often be found patrolling the beaches himself armed with a pistol and an oversized billy club, (neither of which he was shy about using). But despite his honest beginnings, McKane quickly morphed into a corrupt Tammany Hall -style politician in the tradition of Boss Tweed. He used the pretense of town permits to extort tribute from every business, large and small, on Coney Island, and while he presented himself publicly as a champion of law and order, privately he was profiting mightily from the many brothels and gambling parlors that thrived in his bailiwick. It was during McKane’s reign that Coney Island came to be known by many as “Sodom by the Sea.”

McKane also rigged the political machine in Gravesend by stuffing the town voter registries with as many names as he could scrape up. Seasonal migrant workers, criminals, even the corpses in the town cemetery were eligible to vote in McKane's Gravesend. And vote they all did, according to McKane's will. Finally, on the eve of the 1893 election, William Gaynor, a lawyer running for Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice, decided to put McKane's feet to the fire. As he was entitled to do by law, Gaynor dispatched over 20 Republican observers to examine the Gravesend voter registries and oversee the voting in all six districts of the town. But when the observers reached Gravesend town hall at dawn on election day, McKane, along with a large group of policemen and cronies, confronted them. When the observers balked and produced injunctions from the Brooklyn Supreme Court McKane supposedly declared "injunctions don't go here" and ordered the men away. A scuffle ensued and five of the observers were beaten and arrested. To Mckane it was just another election day dust-up, but to the rest of the nation it was seen as an outrage (some even comparing it to an act of civil war). Early the following year McKane was brought to justice and sentenced to six years hard labor in Sing Sing prison. He was released near the end of the century and died of a stroke in his Sheepshead Bay home in 1899.

The removal of McKane paved the way for Gravesend and Coney Island to become part of the city of Brooklyn, which they did in 1894. It also allowed one of McKane’s most hated enemies, George C. Tilyou, to create one of Coney Island’s first amusement parks, Steeplechase Park, the opening of which ushered in Coney Island’s golden age.

Although Coney Island continued to be a major tourist attraction throughout the 20th century, the closing of Gravesend’s great racetracks in the century’s first decade caused the rest of the old town to recede back into obscurity. In time it became a non-descript working class Brooklyn neighborhood, which it remains to this day.

Gravesend's earliest non-native settlers were predominantly English and Dutch. While slavery was legal in New York, the town also had a significant African American population. Even after the abolition of slavery, however, a number of African Americans continued to live in the area. Later, with the coming of new immigrant groups, Irish, Italian, and Jewish residents were added to Gravesend's rosters. The opening of the large race tracks, all of which were staffed heavily by African Americans, saw an increase in the black population as well. The most recent immigrant groups to dominate Gravesend are Russians, Ukranians, Chinese, and Mexicans.

In 2008, The New York Times reported that the neighborhood had become particularly popular among Sephardic Jews.

1896) "

Admiral's Row  ATURA  Barren Island  Bath Beach  Bay Ridge  Bedford  Bedford-Stuyvesant  Bensonhurst  Bergen Beach  BoCoCa  Boerum Hill  Borough Park  Brighton Beach  Brooklyn Heights  Brownsville  Bushwick  Cadman Plaza  Canarsie  Carroll Gardens  City Line  Clinton Hill  Cobble Hill  Coney Island  Crown Heights  Cypress Hills  Ditmas Park  Downtown  DUMBO  Dyker Heights  East Flatbush  East New York  East Williamsburg  Farragut  Fiske Terrace  Flatbush  Flatlands  Fort Greene  Fort Hamilton  Fulton Ferry  Georgetown  Gerritsen Beach  Gowanus  Gravesend  Greenpoint  Greenwood Heights  Highland Park  Homecrest  Kensington  Little Poland  Madison  Manhattan Beach  Marine Park  Midwood  Mill Basin  Navy Yard  New Lots  New Utrecht  Ocean Hill  Ocean Parkway  Park Slope  Pigtown  Plum Beach  Prospect Heights  Prospect-Lefferts Gardens  Prospect Park South  RAMBO  Red Hook  Sea Gate  Sheepshead Bay  South Brooklyn  South Park Slope  Starrett City  Stuyvesant Heights  Sunset Park  Vinegar Hill  Weeksville  White Sands  Williamsburg  Windsor Terrace  Wingate

Bath Beach - Bay Ridge - Bedford Stuyvesant - Bensonhurst - Beorum Hill - Bergen Beach - Borough Park - Brooklyn Heights - Bushwick - Canarsie - Carroll Gardens - Cobble Hill - Crown Heights - Cypress Hill - Ditmas Park - Dyker Heights - East New York - Flatbush - Flatland - Fort Greene - Fort Hamilton - Fulton Ferry - Gerritsen Beach - Gravesend - Kensington - Marine Park - Midwood - Millbasin - Prospect Heights - Red Hook - Rugby - Sheepshead Bay - Sunset Park - Williamsburg - Windsor Terrace -