Gravesend was one of the original towns in the Dutch colony of Nieuw Amsterdam and became one of the original towns of Kings County in colonial New York. It was the only English chartered town in what became Kings County. The former name survives, and is now associated with a neighborhood in Brooklyn. Gravesend is notable for being a founded by a woman, Lady Deborah Moody .

Gravesend Town encompassed a fairly large area in southern Kings County, including the entire island of Coney Island, which was originally the town's common lands on the Atlantic Ocean, divided up, as was the town itself, into 41 parcels for the original patentees.

The current community of Gravesend is centered on the former village square centered at the intersection of [Gravesend] Neck Road and McDonald (formerly Gravesend) Avenue. The center of the square is dominated and served by the elevated train station of the BMT Culver Line of the New York Subway system.