Adam Yauch Park

Adam Yauch Park is a small neighborhood park in Brooklyn Heights at the corner of Columbia Place and State Street, named in 2013 for Adam Yauch, the Brooklyn-born musician, filmmaker, and activist best known as MCA of the Beastie Boys. Yauch grew up in Brooklyn Heights and attended Edward R. Murrow High School in the Midwood section of Brooklyn before co-founding one of the most influential groups in hip-hop history.

The Beastie Boys emerged from the New York punk and hip-hop scenes of the early 1980s and went on to sell over 40 million records worldwide. Yauch was the group's philosophical anchor, channeling his Buddhist practice into social activism including advocacy for Tibetan independence and benefit concerts for disaster relief.

Yauch died of salivary gland cancer in 2012 at the age of 47, and the community responded by renaming this park in his honor. The renaming was championed by neighborhood residents who remembered Yauch playing in this very park as a child, creating a direct connection between the artist and the place.

The park features a playground, benches, and shade trees. Its location in Brooklyn Heights, one of the borough's most architecturally distinguished neighborhoods, places it amid brownstone row houses, tree-lined streets, and the quiet residential atmosphere for which the neighborhood is celebrated.

Adam Yauch Park honors a Brooklyn native who brought the borough's creative energy to the world stage. His naming reflects a newer tradition in New York City park naming: honoring cultural figures and artists alongside the politicians, military heroes, and civic leaders who dominate the older park names.