It's not much of a road. The pavement has long since given way to patches of gravel. Garbage is strewn about. Children drag sticks and skid bicycles, and pale gray cobblestones peek between bits of concrete.
But the blocklong Clove Road has become a rising star for Community Board 9 ever since the discovery of its role in the American Revolution.
Originally, the board wanted to use the little-traveled road as open space for the growing number of local children. Residents knew the road was old, but didn't know much more.
But last year, Robert Furman, President of Brooklyn Heritage, a non-profit group that wants to create trail markers to follow the Revolu-ion, told the board that Clove Road had played a central role in the Battle of Brooklyn, the first battle fought after the Declaration of Independence. The road, Mr. Furman said, is Bedford Pass, one of three wooded routes the colonials tried to protect to keep the British from Brooklyn Heights.
In his book "The Battle of Brook-lyn, 1776" John Gallagher writes of the road,
"Where it passed through the hills it was called Clove Road because 'clove through,' making a pass that was an easily defensible chokepoint."
Mr. Furman estimates 600 men were stationed near Clove Road. "There are numerous preserved colonial roads in Brooklyn," he said. "The one-block remnant of Clove Road is one of the few that played a major role in the battle and still resembles its 18th-Century con-figuration."
The community board wants to create a pedestrian mall that will celebrate the road's history. It hopes to redo the cobble-stones, make the area green and add ben-ches and other pedestrian amenities
To get financing, the board is seeking land- Mark status for the road, but so far without success.ThestateOfficeof Parks, Recreation and HistoricPreservation turned down a request for a battlefield designation.
"No one is denying the history of the site," said Kathleen Howe, a historic preservation specialist at the state office. But, she said, the setting and landscape of Clove road does not take one back in time, as does, say, the Gettysburg battle site.
But the community board is not easily dissuaded. A proposal is pending at the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission to make the road a landmark, and the board hopes to hire an archaeologist to find historical proof of the road's importance.
"We're just going to continue the fight," said Pearl Miles, the district manager.
