The Fort at the End of the Shoreline
If you walk south from our counter at 10 Bay Ridge Ave and keep the water on your right, the neighborhood changes character about twenty minutes in. The apartment buildings of Shore Road give way to lower houses. The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, which has been looming politely in the distance the whole time, suddenly fills the sky. And on your left, behind a chain link fence and a line of old trees, there is grass mowed differently than park grass.
That is Fort Hamilton, and it has been standing guard over the mouth of New York Harbor for almost two hundred years. It is one of the oldest continuously garrisoned military posts in the country, still an active Army installation, and it sits at the end of a flat waterfront walk that most of Bay Ridge has taken halfway and then turned around. This is a guide to going the rest of the way.
What Fort Hamilton Actually Is
Start with the geography, because the geography is the reason the fort exists. The Narrows is the channel between Brooklyn and Staten Island, and before the bridge it was the only way a hostile fleet got into New York. Whoever held both sides of that channel held the city. The British understood this in 1776, when guns from a small battery near this site fired on their warships as they came up to take Long Island. The guns did not stop them.
The fort you can see today came later. Work on the permanent stone fortification began in 1825, part of a national program of coastal defense, and finished around 1831. It was named for Alexander Hamilton. Over the following century it was rebuilt and re-armed repeatedly as artillery outgrew masonry, and it never stopped being a working post.
The Names You Will Hear
Fort Hamilton has an unusually long roster of officers who went on to matter. Robert E. Lee served here in the 1840s as a young Army engineer, strengthening the harbor defenses. Thomas J. Jackson, later known as Stonewall, was posted here as well, and the Episcopal church nearby picked up the nickname Church of the Generals from the officers who worshipped there. Abner Doubleday, whose name later got attached, not very accurately, to the invention of baseball, also served at the fort.
The Harbor Defense Museum
The fort's museum is the part the public can actually see. The Harbor Defense Museum is New York City's only military museum, housed in the caponier, a detached brick structure built in the 1840s to cover the fort's landward approach. It is not a converted office. It is a piece of the fortification, thick walls and gun embrasures included, which is most of the appeal.
Inside, the collection is about the defense of this harbor specifically: cannon and small arms, uniforms, period artifacts and models that make the evolution from stone forts to disappearing guns to coastal missiles legible in a way a textbook does not.
Getting In Takes Planning
Here is the practical catch, and it is why this trip rewards a phone call first. The museum sits inside an active Army garrison. You do not stroll in from the sidewalk. Access runs through a controlled gate, visitors need valid identification, and the requirements and open hours have changed more than once depending on security posture.
Treat the museum like a reservation, not a drop-in. Confirm current visitor procedures with the garrison before you walk two miles to the gate.
That should not discourage you. Check first, bring ID, build the museum into the plan. And if the timing does not work, the best free piece of this history sits outside the fence anyway.
Cannonball Park, the Free Version
At Fourth Avenue and 101st Street, right where the bridge comes down, there is a small triangular park that everyone in the neighborhood calls Cannonball Park. Its real name is John Paul Jones Park, and it is open to anyone, always, for nothing.
The reason for the nickname is immediately obvious. Mounted on the lawn is a Rodman gun, a Civil War era coastal cannon of genuinely absurd scale, with a pyramid of iron cannonballs stacked beside it. Photographs do not prepare you. It was built to throw a projectile at a wooden warship a mile away, and standing next to the muzzle explains the entire logic of the fort behind it in about four seconds.
The park also holds the Dover Patrol Monument, a granite obelisk commemorating the Allied naval patrol that guarded the English Channel in the First World War. Two identical obelisks stand in England and France. The third is in Bay Ridge, which says something about how seriously this corner of Brooklyn once took the sea.
How to Walk It From the Waterfront
The good version of this trip is on foot, northernmost point to southernmost, along the water. From 10 Bay Ridge Ave, head down to the 69th Street Pier and pick up the promenade heading south. The path is flat and continuous, with the harbor on one side and the Belt Parkway on the other, and it runs all the way to the bridge.
Figure a mile and a half to two miles, or 35 to 45 unhurried minutes. You pass under Shore Road Park on the way, and can detour up into the Narrows Botanical Gardens to make a morning of it. The payoff at the far end is walking directly beneath the Verrazzano, which is louder and more impressive than anyone expects.
If You Would Rather Bike
On two wheels the same stretch takes 10 to 15 minutes, and it is one of the better rides in southern Brooklyn. Our guide to biking the Bay Ridge waterfront has the details on where the path starts and where it gets busy.
Getting There Without the Walk
If walking is not the plan, the R train to 95th Street, the last stop in Brooklyn, puts you a few blocks from both John Paul Jones Park and the garrison's Fourth Avenue gate. Driving works but parking in the residential blocks around the fort thins out badly on weekends and in good weather. Our notes on parking and transit along the Bay Ridge waterfront apply to the south end too.
Coffee and Food Before You Start
One thing to know before you set out: the south end of Bay Ridge is residential and the commercial strip near the fort is thin. That makes the north end, where we are, the sensible place to load up.
We open at 6 AM on weekdays and 7 AM on weekends, which is early enough for the version of this walk where you get to the bridge before the path fills up. A cold brew or a cortado travels fine. If you would rather eat first, the breakfast side of the menu runs from avocado toast on thick sourdough to Belgian waffles, and there are breakfast sandwiches if you want something you can carry. Coming back hungry is the more common outcome, and lunch, from the Pier 69 Burger to the salads and soup, runs all day.
Bringing a group down for the museum? Our catering side handles the part where eleven people want eleven different things.
Why We Keep Sending People South
Bay Ridge gets described as a quiet neighborhood with a nice view. The view is nice for a reason. This is where the harbor narrows, and people have been building things here to control that fact since before there was a United States to control it for. The fort, the cannon in the triangular park, the obelisk, the bridge overhead: all of it answers the same question about the same stretch of water. It is a good walk, and a better one when you know what you are looking at.
Where to Find Us
Pier 69 Market is at 10 Bay Ridge Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11220, open Monday through Friday from 6 AM to 9 PM and Saturday and Sunday from 7 AM to 9 PM. The phone is (718) 777-6969, and pickup and delivery both run through GetSauce. We are a waterfront cafe a few minutes from Owl's Head Park, the Shore Road promenade and the NYC Ferry landing, serving La Colombe coffee and Rishi tea. Directions, a map and current hours are on the visit page, and anything else is on the FAQ or a phone call away.
