Amersfort Park

Amersfort Park is a 3.56-acre neighborhood park in the Flatlands section of Brooklyn, occupying a full block between Avenues I and J at East 38th and 39th Streets. The park takes its name from the original Dutch colonial settlement of Amersfoort (later Flatlands), one of the six original towns established in what would become the borough of Brooklyn.

Flatlands was settled by Dutch colonists in the 1630s and named for the flat, marshy terrain of southeastern Brooklyn. The area remained predominantly agricultural into the late 19th century, far longer than most of Brooklyn, and traces of its rural past can still be found in the neighborhood's wider lots and lower building heights.

The park features a playground, basketball courts, and open recreation areas. It serves the Flatlands community, a residential neighborhood of single-family homes and small apartment buildings that maintains a quieter, more suburban character than the denser neighborhoods of central and northern Brooklyn.

Flatlands today is a diverse residential community with significant Caribbean-American, South Asian, and Eastern European populations. The park provides shared outdoor space for these communities in a neighborhood where the pace of life is calmer than in Brooklyn's more prominent areas.

Amersfort Park connects the modern neighborhood to its Dutch colonial origins, preserving a name that dates to the very first European settlement of Brooklyn nearly four centuries ago.