William Merritt Chase depicts late 19th century Brooklyn parks in several of his paintings.
He lived with his family on Marcy Avenue at the time, so it’s no surprise that he painted scenes like this one from Tompkins Park in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Tompkins, named after a local abolitionist, was the first park established by the city of Brooklyn and laid out by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted.
Opened in the 1870s, it’s now called Herbert Von King Park, after a Bed-Stuy community leader.
Ephemeral New York 