Marine Park and its neighboring communities of Midwood and Mill Basin were among the last major sections of New York City to harden into cityscape before the Great Depression and World War II. An aerial photographic mosaic of New York City compiled in 1924 reveals the still-vast extent of agriculture in this area on the eve of development. These fields had been under cultivation since about 1640. Indeed, the relative youth of this part of New York City must be set against its very long history as a cultural landscape—a place that sustained not only European newcomers but the Canarsee Indians who hunted, fished and camped here for more than a thousand years before them.
