The
Lenape indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands were the first inhabitants in what is now the
New York City metropolitan area. In 1694, Jeremias Remsen purchased a farm in the
Wallabout section of Kings County, which later represented the borders of Brooklyn. In 1777, a childless descendant of Remsen's, Jeremiah Remsen, died and left his estate to Barent Johnson, a Kings County land owner married to Anna Remsen. Johnson and Remsen's son
Jeremiah Johnson was born in 1777, served as
mayor of Brooklyn from 1837 to 1838, and died in 1852. Jeremiah's grandson, Tunis Johnson, was one of the largest landowners in King's County by the time of his death in 1912. In 1857, part of Tunis's family estate was condemned and acquired by Brooklyn later to become one of the first parks of the city. In June 1857, the Common Council of the City of Brooklyn voted to establish Tompkins Park, making it the first park established by the city of Brooklyn. Funding was achieved six months later, as the incorporation papers were misplaced and had to be relocated. In 1870, the
Parks Commission took control of the park, and in 1871,
James Stranahan commissioned
Calvert Vaux and
Frederick Law Olmsted – architects for
Central and
Prospect parks – to submit a plan for the park. The original design was highly symmetrical and did not include any trees or paths, believing they would be used "for clandestine purposes by people of bad character." In the 1870s and 1880s, the park was used for military review as well as public leisure; in 1875, the Tompkins Park Croquet Club was formed. In 1878, a shelter and veranda meant for women and children was constructed. Artist
William Merritt Chase, a resident of Bedford-Stuyvesant, was a frequent visitor of the park and painted it at least five times in the 1880s, creating some of the earliest color representations of the neighborhood. The park also underwent improvements in the 1910s, with a concert space being constructed in 1915. , 1887. A playground was added in 1927, and at some point, the pathways were redesigned and trees replanted, with little trace of the original layout. In 1963, the Tompkins Park Recreation and Cultural Association was formed as an extension of the Central Brooklyn Coordinating Council, led by
Almira Kennedy Coursey, with the goal of improving the park and the neighborhood by extension. The library burned down in 1969, and was shut down on March 14 of that year. After years of lobbying from the Tompkins Park Association, a new recreation center was constructed in the former place of the library, opening on March 13, 1973. Built at a cost of $1.5 million, the facility contained an outdoor sunken amphitheater, a lounge, an information center, and an indoor auditorium named after local musician
Eubie Blake. The auditorium features a mural by Akwesi M. Asante depicting African American leaders including
David Dinkins and
Frederick Douglass. after a local community activist who was nicknamed the "mayor of Bedford–Stuyvesant." In 2011, the outdoor amphitheater was named after Almira Kennedy Coursey, who died in 1996. == Transportation ==