Cuyler Gore

Cuyler Gore. 1.158 acres. , This park is named for Dr. Theodore Ludyard Curler (1822-1909) a prominent local minister born in Aura, New York. Educated by his mother, Cuyler graduated from Princeton College in 1841 and Princeton Theological Seminary in 1846. He served as a minister in a series of congregations in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey, where he married Annie E. Mathiot in 1850., Dr. Cuyler assumed the leadership of the Park Presbyterian Church in the City of Brooklyn in 1860. His earnest work and dynamic personality attracted so many congregants that a new building, the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, was erected on South Oxford Street (just a block to the northwest) in 1861-62. Over the course of his distinguished career. Dr. Cuyler delivered more than 3,000 sermons, gave almost 2,000 addresses, and wrote between 3,000 and 4,000 acres and more than 60 books. A patriotic man, he had the Union flag hoisted atop the church steeple for the duration of the Civil War., The western portion of this gore, located at the corner of Fulton Street and Greene Avenue, was purchased by the City of Brooklyn in 1845 for one dollar. It was named for Dr. Cuyler prior to 1901, and in that year Brooklynites planned to erect a monument to the esteemed minister in Cuyler Gore. With characteristic modesty, Dr. Cuyler declined their offer. He wrote, "If my most esteemed friend the park commissioner will kindly have my name visibly and permanently affixed to that little park, and will direct that it will be always kept as bright and beautiful with flowers as it is now, I shall be abundantly satisfied.", For much of its first century Cuyler Park consisted of a well-maintained lawn, flowering shrubs, and adult trees, all surrounded by an iron fence and benches outside. In the 1960s and 1970s many of the trees were removed, and the park deteriorated. In 1980 renovations began when ground was broken with the same shovel that Dr. Cuyler had used for the church groundbreaking 119 years before. The parks reopened in 1981 with new landscaping, play areas, seating, and trees. The park was expanded in 1983 with the closing of a portion of Cumberland Street and the assignment of a parcel on Carlton Avenue.