Why James Forten Playground in Prospect Heights Is Still Waiting

Ask a parent who has lived in Prospect Heights for more than five years what they call the playground on Underhill Avenue between Prospect Place and Park Place, and the answer splits by tenure. The city calls it James Forten Playground. Plenty of longtime neighbors still call it Underhill. In 2023, a $500,000 renovation was proposed, but the city's project listing does not show a completed renovation.

The playground's renaming and renovation proposal offer one view of public-space planning and community involvement in Prospect Heights.

A Playground With Two Names

The park was named Underhill Playground in 1985, after the avenue it sits on and after Captain John Underhill, a 17th-century settler whose own writing describes his role in the killing of most of the Pequot tribe. In 2021, as part of a citywide effort to expand recognition of Black New Yorkers in the park system, it was renamed for James Forten, an abolitionist born in Philadelphia in 1766 to free Black parents. Forten went to sea as a teenager, working as a powder boy aboard the Royal Louis, was captured by the British, and spent time as a prisoner aboard the Jersey, a prison ship anchored in Brooklyn's Wallabout Bay near what is now the Navy Yard. He returned to Philadelphia on foot, apprenticed again as a sailmaker, and went on to become a businessman, a founding member of the Free African Society, and vice president of the Anti-Slavery Society. The rename gave the park a name with a direct, if unexpected, Brooklyn connection.

The renaming involved a new sign. A separate renovation proposal followed.

The Renovation Proposal and Its Current Status

In the 2023 participatory budgeting cycle, Council Member Crystal Hudson's office proposed a half-million-dollar renovation of James Forten Playground, flagging its water features and play equipment as hazards that needed replacing. The pitch leaned on real numbers: 42 percent of Prospect Heights family households have children under 18, and nearly 4,000 residents in the area are under 14. The case for spending was that this is one of the most-used playgrounds for local families.

Three years later, the city's park profile lists one capital project for James Forten Playground: a public restroom building reconstruction. The main page currently shows no entries under capital investment or upcoming events. The listing does not name new equipment, new water features, or a new play surface as project items.

None of that means the playground has gone quiet. As of this summer, kids are still running trikes and ride-on cars through the spray, still ducking between two water-spraying fish sculptures, still getting soaked by the six-foot fountain at the center of the water feature. Julie Peppito's 2007 mosaic and sculpture work is still there, whimsical duck and fish figures worked into concrete and tile. The 1996 safety surfacing is now thirty years old, and the city's project listing does not show replacement work.

Community Care and Volunteer Work

Neighbors also contribute to the playground's day-to-day care.

Friends of James Forten Playground grew out of the Park Place-Underhill Avenue Block Association's community initiative, and its volunteers have taken on maintenance tasks including weeding the tree and flower beds, clearing broken toys, planting ferns along Prospect Place to control erosion, replacing fence stakes after storms. Volunteer coordinator Den Gordon has organized family cleanup days that draw in whoever from the wider Prospect Heights community shows up that Saturday, not just families from the two blocks nearest the gate. The block association has kicked in grant money to help cover new shrubs, and in June 2021 the volunteer group ran its own stoop sale out front, selling items members had donated to raise additional funds.

The playground's unofficial toy trove, the tricycles, ride-on cars, and scooters that show up unattended for any kid to use, isn't stocked by the Parks Department. It's stocked by the families who use it, leaving behind what their own kids have outgrown for the next round of toddlers.

Residents and volunteers help maintain the playground, while the 2023 renovation proposal does not appear as a completed full renovation in the city's project listing.

Everyday Life Along Underhill and Washington Avenues

This summer, Vanderbilt Avenue's news included the Saturday-only Open Street coming back at full length after four years of cuts, Zig Zag Oyster Bar opening at the corner of Prospect Place and Grand, and Grimm's tavern taking over part of the old Olmsted space.

Underhill and Washington Avenues also have a range of destinations tied to school pickup, cake orders, and stroller trips. BCakeNY, a Black-owned custom cake studio on Washington Avenue, has become the default stop for a kid's birthday order. The Tiny Scientist on Underhill Avenue runs hands-on science sessions for kids from preschool through fifth grade, the kind of program where a family's own kid brings home a different experiment every week. Prospect Heights Academy, also on Washington Avenue, runs full-day enrichment with a dedicated baking room, a STEAM room, and an indoor playground built to look like a miniature town. A Chelsea Piers Gymnastics location, the newest in Brooklyn's mini-chain, gives the corridor a gymnastics and parkour option that didn't exist here a few years ago. The Washington Avenue-Prospect Heights Association, a merchants group along the strip, organizes cleanups and small business advocacy.

These destinations are part of everyday life along the corridor. All of it shows up on a Tuesday afternoon walk along Underhill and Washington Avenues, past the playground gate, past the cake shop window, past the science center with kids filing out clutching whatever they built that day.

What This Actually Means If You Live Here

The playground's recent history includes its 2021 renaming, the 2023 renovation proposal, and ongoing volunteer work. Residents interested in the proposal may want to follow discussions through Community Board 8 and the block association.

If you're the kind of neighbor who already knows which fountain sprays the hardest on a July afternoon, you didn't need this piece to tell you the playground exists. For local families, the playground is one part of what makes these blocks feel like home.

The Valvo Team keeps an eye on details like this because they shape what it actually feels like to live on a given block, long before anyone starts thinking about buying or selling here. If you're weighing a move within Prospect Heights or anywhere else in South Brooklyn, or you just want a read on how a specific street is holding up, The Valvo Team is a good place to start that conversation.