Carroll Park and Parkhouse at Smith Street

Carroll Park at Carroll and Smith Streets, 4/17/1928. The first and second pictures are looking north on Smith Street from Carroll Street. In the background, on President Street near Smith, is the steeple of the St. Martin’s Protestant Episcopal Church, which was demolished for the construction of the subway.

The second picture is of the Carroll Street comfort station, a fountain, and park worker before it was filled in to create the parkhouse. According to records at the Parks Department Map File Division, there is a drawing dated 1935 for “alterations to the Comfort Station” that illustrates new walls and foundations in the center section between the restrooms. The floor plan labels it as a “Playroom.” The park received an overall redesign and renovation in 1935-36.

Carroll Park

Carroll Park
Carroll Street between Court and Smith Streets

Brooklyn’s third oldest park is named for Charles Carroll (1737-1832), an American Revolutionary leader and signer of the Declaration of Independence, for whom Carroll Street is also named. The land for the park, laid out as private gardens in the late 1840s, was secured through an act of the New York State legislature in 1850, but was not built until 1867. The 1.874-acres park is one of the significant features of the neighborhood, occupying a city block bordered by Carroll, Court, President and Smith Streets.

On September 10, 1993, after nearly a 20-year effort by local resident and elected official to upgrade the park, a newly refurbished park opened to the delight of neighborhood children. The $1.3 million park renovation was funded by Borough President Howard Golden and included reconfiguring two new play equipment areas – one for toddlers and another for older children, a children’s water spray in the form of a compass where distances are marked off to the North and South Poles and the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The historic character of the park was enhanced with decorative cast iron gates and fencing that echoes the fences of neighborhood brownstones.

Another bocce ball court was built, and the park was completely re-landscaped and new parkscape elements were added including decorative lighting, World Fair benches, signature park hexagon pavers, and game tables. The bronze and granite of the Soldier and Sailors World War I Monument (1920), by sculptor Eugene H. Morahan, was conserved under the same project.

A tall granite shaft, with four bronze plaques done by Eugene H. Morahan, is dated 1920, and stands in Carroll Park, President and Court Streets. It is dedicated to the memory of the men from the district who gave their lives in the War. 187 names are engraved on two side tablets. The front tablet represents a soldier in a cemetery, and the back, a sailor on the deck of a ship. Erected by the Eighth Assembly district memorial Committee, June 1921.

Louis Valentino Jr. Ballfield in Carroll Park

Court Street, between Carroll and President Streets

The property for the park’s ballfield that borders Court Street was acquired by the Parks Department on June 3, 1953. The playground was first built in 1957 and was renamed “Louis Valentino Jr. Ballfield” under a local law introduced by Councilmember Stephen DiBrienza and signed by Mayor Rudy Giuliani on June 25, 1996. On February 5, 1996, Valentino, who grew up in Red Hook, was killed while searching for wounded firefighters in a three-alarm blaze in an illegal Flatlands garage.

Valentino fulfilled his lifelong aspiration to become a firefighter when he joined the Fire Department in 1984. He was assigned to Engine Company 281 where he battled fires for two years. He was twice cited for his bravery, in 1987 and again in 1990, and served with Ladder Company 147 in Flatbush. Valentino was accepted to the elite Rescue Company 2 in Crown Heights in 1993, joining the ranks of the city’s most experienced and versatile. A commemoration plaque on the ballfield fence memorializes that “The Louis Valentino Jr. Ballfield preserves the memory of a man who not only demonstrated selfless devotion to fighting fires and saving lives but was also renowned for his prowess as a member of the Fire Department softball team.”

In 1999, Councilmember DiBrienza allotted $603,773 to refurbish the .90-acre ballfield. The scope of the renovation included paving the park’s field with new asphalt, chain link fencing, single and double gates, benches, new baseball, basketball, and bocce recreational facilities. In addition, the existing perimeter landscape was enhanced with additional plant material to create a grove and community garden.

Link to NYC Parks Department History