Millbrook Playground

E. 135 St. bet. Cypress Ave. and St Ann's Ave.

Bronx

This text is part of Parks’ Historical Signs Project and can be found posted within the park.

This playground, bordering on the Bronx neighborhoods of Mott Haven and Port Morris, is named, like the nearby Mill Brook Houses, after the stream that once flowed through the area from the North Bronx and emptied into the Bronx Kill. Mill Brook, also known as Saw Mill Creek, provided water that transported goods and powered many saw mills in the Bronx during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

In January 1952, Ira S. Robbins, Executive Vice President of the Citizens’ Housing and Planning Council, recommended the construction of a housing project in the Bronx both to assist the plight of the indigent and to revitalize the area. In a letter to the City Planning Commission, he also argued for the community’s concern for “the lack of park and playground facilities in the area.”