Dyker Beach Park

You've left the glow of 84th Street behind, and now you're at 86th Street, the northern edge of Dyker Beach Park. Look past the edge of the street into that wide, open dark. After all those blazing front yards, it feels like the lights just stop. What's out there is grass: fairways of one of the oldest public golf courses in the country. But that's not what this land was supposed to be.

Start with the name. Long before anyone strung a single bulb here, this ground was meadow, marsh and swamp. The Canarsee people lived on this land, and later the Dutch settlers of New Utrecht called it the common land, because no one could farm it or build on it. In the 1600s the Van Dyke family tried to drain it by building dikes. So the park is named for the Van Dykes, or for the dikes the Van Dykes built. Take your pick.

In 1895, around the time the houses behind you were being sold as a new suburb, the City of Brooklyn bought the first piece of this park, a stretch running down to the shore of Gravesend Bay. It hired the landscape firm of Olmsted, Olmsted and Eliot, the successors to the man who designed Central Park. The plan was grand: a saltwater lagoon, bathhouses, lawns, drives along the water. The Brooklyn Parks Department's report of 1896 promised it would be the finest seaside park in the world.

That's not quite how it went. Some bathhouses and roads went up, but the plans kept getting revised, and the swamps had to be filled in. Meanwhile the higher ground, up here near 86th Street, was private land, leased to golf clubs. Around 1916 a school, Poly Prep, tried to buy that land and came up about 80,000 dollars short. So the city bought it instead. Piece by piece, eight parcels in all, the park was stitched together by 1934, and it became a golf course.

And here's the turn. The world's finest seaside park never really happened, but something else did. In the 1950s and 1960s, Dyker Beach was the busiest golf course on Earth. In 1965 golfers played more than 100,000 rounds here. Locals lined up early in the morning just to get a number. In 1972 an Army officer stationed at nearby Fort Hamilton, Lieutenant Colonel Earl Woods, learned to play the game. A few years later he'd have a son named Tiger.

So the dream of a grand public park came true after all. It just turned out to be a neighborhood one: ballfields, tennis and bocce courts, and a golf course where anyone with a number can play. It's a lot like the block you just left. Ordinary people, sharing something big, right where they live.

That's the end of the tour. Thanks for walking Dyker Heights with us, and for being a good guest on its streets. Happy holidays.