BEECHER STATUE IN COLUMBUS PARK FACING BROOKLYN’S BOROUGH HALL: John Quincy Adams Ward’s 1891 statue of Henry Ward Beecher on Richard Morris Hunt’s pedestal with figures of African-American and other young people for whose welfare Beecher was a famous advocate.
Hezekiah Beers Pierrepont
- Moved to Brooklyn from New Haven, CT.
- Owner of the first distillery in the American Colonies, the Anchor Gin Distillery below the Heights. Majority investor with Robert Fulton in the first steam-powered ferry from Wall Street to Fulton Ferry Terminal.
- Developer of much of what we now know as Brooklyn Heights.
- Buried in Green-Wood Cemetery.
Henry Evelyn Pierrepont (son of Hezekiah Beers Pierrepont)
- Founder of Green-Wood Cemetery, 1834.
Seth Low, the elder
- Born in Glouchester, MA, in 1782.
- Moved to Manhattan from Salem, MA, in 1828, then moved to Nassau Street in Brooklyn Heights in 1829.
- Made a fortune in the import/export business with China. Developer of Brooklyn Heights real estate.
- Incorporator of the City on Brooklyn in 1834, and first president of the Board of Education. Supporter and founder of Packer Collegiate Institute; among the founders of First Unitarian Church at Pierrepont Street and Monroe Place.
Abiel Abbot (“A. A.”) Low, (son of Seth the elder)
- In the import/export business to China. Built the first “clipper ship”, which significantly reduced the travel time to China.
- President of Packer Institute, incorporator of the Long Island (now Brooklyn) Historical Society and of Brooklyn Hospital.
Seth Low, the younger, (grandson of Seth the elder)
- Mayor of Brooklyn 1881-85.
- President of Columbia College, 1900-01.
- Mayor of New York City, 1902-03.
- Chairman of the Board, Tuskegee Institute, 1907 until his death in 1916
Henry Ward Beecher
- Born Litchfield, Connecticut, June 24, 1813, died March 8, 1887, Brooklyn.
- Congregational Church minister in Brooklyn Heights who prior to the Civil War famously conducted mock auctions of escaped slaves to support abolitionist causes, and raised money to purchase rifles (“Beecher’s Bibles”) for abolitionist forces in Kansas.
- Widely-circulated editions of his sermons following the Civil War supported the women’s suffrage movement, temperance, and Social Darwinism, making Beecher the most famous (and controversial) clergyman in the country.
Frederick Law Olmsted
- Hartford, CT; Yale University dropout.
- While not a resident of Brooklyn, Olmsted, along with Calvert Vaux, was the designer of Prospect Park, “a great, truly public playground … the finest of its age” (Campanella, Brooklyn, the Once and Future City), as well as Central Park in Manhattan. Prospect Park brought the recreational benefits of a rural landscape to a dense urban population in Brooklyn.