This playground, located on Third Avenue between 46th and 47th Streets, adjoins P.S. 1, known as the Bergen School. P.S. 1 inherited this name, which is a reference to the city of Bergen, Norway and a reminder that Brooklyn was home to 15,000 Norwegian-Americans by the end of the 19th century, and 200,000 by 1950.
The first large group of Norwegian immigrants to arrive in the United States sailed into New York Harbor aboard the Restauration on October 9, 1825. Others followed, mostly merchant seamen in Norway’s expanding commercial shipping industry. Lured by higher wages, the seamen transferred to fleets sailing for the United States. As they began spending more time in the ports up and down the Atlantic Seaboard, Norwegian settlements sprang up all along the East Coast, from Brooklyn, New York to Pensacola, Florida.