Dyker Beach Park

Dyker Beach Park is a 216.8-acre park in the Dyker Heights and Bay Ridge neighborhoods of southwestern Brooklyn, one of the largest parks in the borough. The park is best known as the home of the Dyker Beach Golf Course, an 18-hole public course that is the oldest in Brooklyn and the closest full 18-hole course to Manhattan, one of two public golf courses in the borough alongside the Marine Park Golf Course.

The golf course, which dates to 1897 and was redesigned into its current layout in 1935, occupies the bulk of the park's acreage and provides affordable public golf in a city where private club memberships are prohibitively expensive for most residents. The course offers views of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and New York Harbor, and it draws golfers from across the city.

Beyond the golf course, the park includes playing fields, tennis courts, a playground, and walking paths. The non-golf portions of the park serve the surrounding residential neighborhoods of Dyker Heights and Bay Ridge with the kind of large-scale recreation space that is rare in Brooklyn.

Dyker Heights is famous for its elaborate Christmas decorations: each December, homeowners in the neighborhood create spectacular light displays that draw visitors from across the region. The park and its surrounding streets become part of this annual spectacle, adding seasonal magic to the community.

Dyker Beach Park's combination of golf, athletics, and green space makes it one of the most versatile recreation facilities in southern Brooklyn. Its generous scale, a legacy of the era when this part of Brooklyn was still semi-rural, provides a welcome contrast to the dense development of the surrounding neighborhoods.