Prospect Park is a 585-acre (2.37 km
2) (237 ha) public park in the New York City
boroughNew York City, one of the largest cities in the world, is composed of five boroughs. Each borough now has the same boundaries as the county it is in. County governments were dissolved when the city consolidated in 1898, along with all city, town, and village governments within each county...
of
BrooklynBrooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
located between
Park SlopePark Slope is a neighborhood in western Brooklyn, New York City's most populous borough. Park Slope is roughly bounded by Prospect Park West to the east, Fourth Avenue to the west, Flatbush Avenue to the north, and 15th Street to the south, though other definitions are sometimes offered. Generally...
,
Prospect-Lefferts GardensProspect Lefferts Gardens is a residential neighborhood in Flatbush in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The area is bounded by Empire Boulevard to the north, Clarkson Avenue to the south, New York Avenue to the east, and Ocean Avenue/Prospect Park to the west.Prospect Lefferts Gardens is...
,
KensingtonKensington is a neighborhood in the center of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is the area south of Prospect Park and the Green-Wood Cemetery. It is bordered by Coney Island Avenue to the east, Fort Hamilton Parkway and Caton Avenue to the north, McDonald Avenue and 37th Street to the...
,
Windsor TerraceWindsor Terrace is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is bounded by Prospect Park to the northeast and Green-Wood Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark, to the southwest. Its southeastern boundary is Caton Avenue, while to the northwest it is bordered by Prospect Park West...
and Flatbush Avenue,
Grand Army Plaza and the
Brooklyn Botanic GardenBrooklyn Botanic Garden is a botanical garden in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, and Park Slope neighborhoods, the garden includes a number of specialty "gardens within the Garden," plant collections, and the Steinhardt Conservatory,...
. It is run and operated by the
New York City Department of Parks and RecreationThe City of New York Department of Parks & Recreation is the department of government of the City of New York responsible for maintaining the city's parks system, preserving and maintaining the ecological diversity of the city's natural areas, and furnishing recreational opportunities for city's...
and is part of the
Brooklyn-Queens GreenwayThe Brooklyn-Queens Greenway is a bicycling and pedestrian path connecting parks and roads in the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, connecting Coney Island in the south to Fort Totten in the north, on Long Island Sound...
.
The park was designed by
Frederick Law OlmstedFrederick Law Olmsted was an American journalist, social critic, public administrator, and landscape designer. He is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture, although many scholars have bestowed that title upon Andrew Jackson Downing...
and
Calvert VauxCalvert Vaux , was an architect and landscape designer. He is best remembered as the co-designer , of New York's Central Park....
after they completed Manhattan's
Central ParkCentral Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
. Attractions include the Long Meadow, a 90-acre (36 ha) meadow, the Picnic House, which houses offices and a hall that can accommodate parties with up to 175 guests;
Litchfield VillaLitchfield Villa is an Italianate mansion built in 1854 on a large private estate that has since become part of Prospect Park, Brooklyn.The villa was designed by Alexander Jackson Davis, America's leading architect of the fashionable Italianate style for railroad and real estate developer Edwin...
, the pre-existing home of Edwin Clark Litchfield, an early developer of the neighborhood and a former owner of a southern section of the Park;
Prospect Park ZooThe Prospect Park Zoo is a zoo located off Flatbush Avenue on the eastern side of Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York City. Its precursor, the Menagerie, opened in 1890. The present facility first opened as a city zoo on July 3, 1935 and was part of a larger revitalization program of city parks,...
; a large nature conservancy managed by the
Wildlife Conservation SocietyThe Wildlife Conservation Society based at the Bronx Zoo was founded in 1895 as the New York Zoological Society and currently manages some of wild places around the world, with over 500 field conservation projects in 60 countries, and 200 scientists on staff...
; The
BoathouseBoathouse on the Lullwater of the Lake in Prospect Park is located in the eastern part of Prospect Park on the northeast shore of The Lake, southeast of the Ravine District in Brooklyn, New York...
, housing a visitors center and the first urban
Audubon CenterThe National Audubon Society is an American non-profit environmental organization dedicated to conservation. Incorporated in 1905, Audubon is one of the oldest of such organizations in the world and uses science, education and grassroots advocacy to advance its conservation mission...
; Brooklyn's only lake, covering 60 acre (24.3 ha); the Prospect Park Bandshell that hosts free outdoor concerts in the summertime. The park also has sports facilities including seven baseball fields in the Long Meadow, and the Prospect Park Tennis Center, basketball courts, baseball fields, soccer fields, and the New York Pétanque Club in the Parade Ground. There is also a private
Society of FriendsThe Religious Society of Friends, or Friends Church, is a Christian movement which stresses the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. It is made of independent organisations, which have split from one another due to doctrinal differences...
cemetery on Quaker Hill near the ball fields, where actor
Montgomery CliftEdward Montgomery Clift was an American film and stage actor. The New York Times’ obituary noted his portrayal of "moody, sensitive young men"....
is interred.
History
Approximately 17,000 years ago the
terminal moraineA terminal moraine, also called end moraine, is a moraine that forms at the end of the glacier called the snout.Terminal moraines mark the maximum advance of the glacier. An end moraine is at the present boundary of the glacier....
of the receding Wisconsin Glacier that formed
Long IslandLong Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
established a string of hills and kettles in the northern part of the park and a lower lying outwash plain in the southern part. Mount Prospect, or Prospect Hill, near the intersection of
Flatbush AvenueFlatbush Avenue is one of the major avenues in the New York City Borough of Brooklyn. It runs from the Manhattan Bridge south-southeastward to Jamaica Bay, where it joins the Marine Parkway Bridge, which connects Brooklyn to the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens...
and
Eastern ParkwayEastern Parkway is a major boulevard that runs through a portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The road begins at Grand Army Plaza and extends east, running parallel to Atlantic Avenue, along the crest of the moraine that separates northern from southern Long Island, to Ralph Avenue...
, rises 200 feet (61 m) above sea level and is the highest among a string of hills that extends into the park, including Sullivan, Breeze, and Lookout hills. The area was originally forested, but became open pasture after two centuries of European colonization. Significant stands of trees remained only in the
peat bogsA bog, quagmire or mire is a wetland that accumulates acidic peat, a deposit of dead plant material—often mosses or, in Arctic climates, lichens....
centered south of Ninth Street and Flatbush Avenues, and in a large bog north of Ninth Avenue and contained
chestnutChestnut , some species called chinkapin or chinquapin, is a genus of eight or nine species of deciduous trees and shrubs in the beech family Fagaceae, native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The name also refers to the edible nuts they produce.-Species:The chestnut belongs to the...
, white poplar, and
oakAn oak is a tree or shrub in the genus Quercus , of which about 600 species exist. "Oak" may also appear in the names of species in related genera, notably Lithocarpus...
. Some of these stands were preserved in the Park's Ravine and have been popularized as 'The Last Forest of Brooklyn.'
During the
American RevolutionThe American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...
the Park was a site of the
Battle of Long IslandThe Battle of Long Island, also known as the Battle of Brooklyn or the Battle of Brooklyn Heights, fought on August 27, 1776, was the first major battle in the American Revolutionary War following the United States Declaration of Independence, the largest battle of the entire conflict, and the...
. American forces attempted to hold Battle Pass, an opening in the terminal moraine where the old Flatbush Road passed from Brooklyn to
FlatbushFlatbush is a community of the Borough of Brooklyn, a part of New York City, consisting of several neighborhoods.The name Flatbush is an Anglicization of the Dutch language Vlacke bos ....
. It fell after some of the heaviest fighting in the engagement, and its loss contributed to George Washington's decision to retreat. Even though the Continental Army lost the battle, they were able to hold the British back long enough for Washington's army to escape to New Jersey. There are plaques north of the zoo that honor this event. The City of Brooklyn built a reservoir on Prospect Hill in 1856. Preserving the Battle Pass area and keeping the lots around the reservoir free of buildings were two reasons for establishing a large park in the area.
Planning and construction
The original impetus to build Prospect Park stemmed from an April 18, 1859 act of the New York State Legislature, empowering a twelve-member commission to recommend sites for parks in the City of Brooklyn. This was due to Brooklyn becoming the world's first commuter suburb, which eventually became the third largest city in the country after New York and Philadelphia. During this time, concepts concerning public parks gained popularity. In 1858 Fredrick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux created Central Park in Manhattan. It became the first landscaped park in the United States. James Stranahan believed that a park in Brooklyn, "Would become a favorite resort for all classes of our community, enabling thousands to enjoy pure air, with healthful exercise, at all seasons of the year..." He also believed that a public park would attract wealthy residents. Of the seven sites mentioned in their February, 1860 proposal, a 320 acres (1.3 km²) plot centered on Mount Prospect was the most ambitious. Under plans prepared by Egbert Viele in 1861, this "Mount Prospect Park" was to straddle Flatbush Avenue and include the eponymous Prospect Hill and territory now occupied by the Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and Brooklyn Museum. By the end of 1860, land had been purchased for Viele's plan, but the Civil War stopped further activity. According to Lancaster (1972), the delay prompted some reflection;
James S. T. StranahanJames Samuel Thomas Stranahan was a United States Representative from New York.-Early years:Born in Peterboro, Madison County, New York to Samuel Stranahan and Marrianne Fitch. He attended the common schools and Cazenovia Seminary. He founded the town of Florence in Oneida County in 1832 and...
, then President of the Brooklyn Board of Park Commissioners, invited Calvert Vaux to review Viele's plans early in 1865. Vaux found the division of the park by Flatbush Avenue problematic, thought that the park should have a lake, and urged for southward expansion beyond the city limits and into the then independent town of
FlatbushFlatbush is a community of the Borough of Brooklyn, a part of New York City, consisting of several neighborhoods.The name Flatbush is an Anglicization of the Dutch language Vlacke bos ....
.
Vaux's February 1865 proposal reflected the present day layout of the park: three distinctive regions, meadow in the north and west, a wooded ravine in the east, and a lake in the south, without the division by Flatbush Avenue. Vaux included an oval plaza at the northern end of the park: the prototype for
Grand Army Plaza. The revised plan called for purchase of additional parcels to the south and west to accommodate Prospect Lake, but it left outside of park boundaries parcels already purchased east of Flatbush Avenue, including Prospect Hill itself. It would be incorporated as
Mount Prospect ParkMount Prospect Park is a park in the central portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It includes Mount Prospect, the second highest point in Brooklyn. It is located on Eastern Parkway near Underhill Avenue, close to Grand Army Plaza...
in 1940.
The change in plans was not without consequences. Land speculation was under way, and the stretch along Ninth Avenue (now Prospect Park West) was held by real estate developer Edwin Clarke Litchfield who in 1857 had erected his home,
Litchfield ManorLitchfield Villa is an Italianate mansion built in 1854 on a large private estate that has since become part of Prospect Park, Brooklyn.The villa was designed by Alexander Jackson Davis, America's leading architect of the fashionable Italianate style for railroad and real estate developer Edwin...
, on the east side of the avenue. The 1868 purchase of his holdings, the lots between Ninth and Tenth Avenues and from 3rd to 15th streets, including his manor, cost the Parks Commission $1.7 million USD, forty two percent of the overall expenditure for land. The lots, however, constitute just over five percent of the park's acreage. Ironically, much of this very expensive acreage presently houses the maintenance yards and is rarely seen by the public. By contrast, the Quaker cemetery was accommodated by an agreement under which the Society of Friends deeded their unused acreage on very favorable terms so as to retain the 10-acre remainder as their private cemetery in perpetuity; it is still active today, with the public occasionally invited to visit. Despite the repercussions of Vaux's revisions, Stranahan championed the plan. Vaux recruited Olmsted and formally presented their proposal in January, 1866 and it was accepted in May, with work commencing in June. The park commissioners opened the park to the public on October 19, 1867, while it was still under construction. Work continued for another six years until it was substantially complete in 1873, though certain facets of the original design were never undertaken. With the
financial panic of 1873The Panic of 1873 triggered a severe international economic depression in both Europe and the United States that lasted until 1879, and even longer in some countries. The depression was known as the Great Depression until the 1930s, but is now known as the Long Depression...
, Olmsted and Vaux ceased significant operations in the park and dissolved their partnership.
Overall, the cost of acquiring the Park land by the City of Brooklyn was upwards of $4 million. The actual cost of construction of the Park amounted to more than $5 million.
Although designers Olmsted and Vaux enjoy twenty-first century fame, Stranahan was regarded by his 19th century peers as the true "Father of Prospect Park", a reputation established through his 22 year reign as Park Commission president (1860–1882), engagement of Olmsted and Vaux, overseeing complex, politically charged land acquisitions, securing funding to build the park, and, after its completion, defending its design against unwanted changes, leaving Brooklyn perhaps its greatest legacy. His statue appears just inside the Grand Army Plaza entrance, sculpted by
Frederick MacMonniesFrederick William MacMonnies was the best known expatriate American sculptor of the Beaux-Arts school, as successful and lauded in France as he was in the United States...
and presented to Stranahan in June, 1891.
Neoclassical phase
In 1882, Brooklyn mayor
Seth LowSeth Low , born in Brooklyn, New York, was an American educator and political figure who served as mayor of Brooklyn, as President of Columbia University, as diplomatic representative of the United States, and as Mayor of New York City...
did not reappoint Stranahan or the other commissioners, a change that neither Stranahan nor the other commissioners actively opposed. Stranahan, for his part, was becoming more engaged in other Brooklyn concerns. The action, however, did signal a change in the style of park management, which grew to embrace neoclassicism. With construction of the Memorial Arch at Grand Army Plaza, the park commissioners engaged
McKim, Mead, and WhiteMcKim, Mead & White was a prominent American architectural firm at the turn of the twentieth century and in the history of American architecture. The firm's founding partners were Charles Follen McKim , William Rutherford Mead and Stanford White...
to redesign the Plaza in a complementary, neo-classical way. By 1896, Grand Army Plaza sported four towering granite columns adorned with carved fasces and eagles at the base. Granite fencing with decorative bronze urns replaced simple wooden fencing, and polygonal granite pavilions on the east and west corners of the park supplanted earlier rustic shelters. All the major entrances of the park gained similar neoclassical treatments. By the turn of the twentieth century, sculptures by Frederick MacMonnies graced the Arch and works by MacMonnies and
Alexander ProctorAlexander Phimister Proctor was an American sculptor with the contemporary reputation as one of the nation's foremost animaliers.-Birth and early years:...
graced many of the entrances.
Neoclassical structures appeared within the park as well. In 1893 and 1894, the Children's Playground and Pools in the northeast quadrant of the park were transformed by McKim, Mead and White into the Rose Garden and the Vale of Cashmere, each a formally arranged space.
Stanford WhiteStanford White was an American architect and partner in the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White, the frontrunner among Beaux-Arts firms. He designed a long series of houses for the rich and the very rich, and various public, institutional, and religious buildings, some of which can be found...
's 1895 Maryland Monument, near the Terrace Bridge, was dedicated on the slopes of Lookout Hill. The 1904 Peristyle, 1905
BoathouseBoathouse on the Lullwater of the Lake in Prospect Park is located in the eastern part of Prospect Park on the northeast shore of The Lake, southeast of the Ravine District in Brooklyn, New York...
, 1910 Tennis House, and 1912 Willink Comfort Station, all designed by Helmle, Hudswell and Huberty, alumni and proteges of McKim, Mead, and White, spread neo-classical examples throughout the park.
The city of Brooklyn's merger with New York City in 1898 aligned the fortunes of Prospect Park with a larger park system. From World War I to the administration of Fiorello La Guardia, investment in park infrastructure declined. New structures were limited to the Picnic House, (1927) which replaced an earlier rustic structure that had burned down in 1926, and a small comfort station at the Ocean Avenue entrance (1930), both designed by J. Sarsfield Kennedy.
New memorials were limited to the 9th Street memorial to Marquis de la Fayette (1917) and the Honor Roll Memorial (1920), near the present day skating rink. Prospect Park was in stasis, and it was run, year after year, with declining budgets, a malaise affecting all city parks. "By the 1930s," the
New York Times observed, "generations of Parks Department officials had lived well and got rich by diverting maintenance funds, and the park showed the result of a half century of abuse and neglect."
Robert Moses and Prospect Park
In January 1934, newly elected Mayor Fiorello La Guardia appointed
Robert MosesRobert Moses was the "master builder" of mid-20th century New York City, Long Island, Rockland County, and Westchester County, New York. As the shaper of a modern city, he is sometimes compared to Baron Haussmann of Second Empire Paris, and is one of the most polarizing figures in the history of...
commissioner of a unified parks department, a new organization that eliminated borough park commissioners. Moses would remain Park Commissioner for the next twenty-six years, leaving distinctive and controversial marks on all the city parks. Moses readily tapped federal monies made available to relieve
DepressionThe Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
era unemployment. He assembled 1,800 designers and engineers centered at the Arsenal in Central Park. In addition, 3,900 construction supervisors in the field oversaw the work of 70,000 relief workers. In the years up to World War II Moses built the half million dollar
Prospect Park ZooThe Prospect Park Zoo is a zoo located off Flatbush Avenue on the eastern side of Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York City. Its precursor, the Menagerie, opened in 1890. The present facility first opened as a city zoo on July 3, 1935 and was part of a larger revitalization program of city parks,...
(1935), the Prospect Park Bandshell (1939) and children's playgrounds throughout the park.
World War II brought a hiatus in this frenetic activity. During the war, Prospect Park hosted a portion of the city's antiaircraft defense. Three hundred soldiers manned batteries, underground ammunition dumps, observation towers, repair shops and barracks around Swan Lake in the Long Meadow. Disbanded in 1944, traces of slit trenches and sandbagged gun emplacements could still be found years after the end of hostilities.
Peacetime improvements resumed at a slower pace after World War II. In 1959, the southern third of the Long Meadow was graded and fenced off for ballfields, while in the following year the Kate Wollman Skating Rink was built in a land-filled portion of Prospect Lake. For the first time, the Wollman rink furnished a consistently reliable setting for ice skating, replacing the customary Lullwater venue which had always been subject to seasonal fluctuations in ice thickness. The playgrounds, ballfields, and the skating rink reflected Moses' commitment to modernity and athletic recreation, coupled with only a limited appreciation of the park as a work of landscape architecture. In furnishing a reliable skating venue, the Wollman Rink caused the removal of Music Island and the panoramic view of the lake which had once been visible from Concert Grove.
Clay LancasterClay Lancaster , was an authority on American architecture, an orientalist, and an influential advocate of historical preservation...
, curator of Prospect Park in the 1960s, found such trade-offs wanting. An early critic of Moses, he termed many of his park contributions "centripetal". The zoo, bandshell, ballfields, and skating rink drew people out of the park and into specialized structures, "...which are not the park at all but extraneous attractions, and those surrounded by knit-wire fences exclude all but participants." Many Moses era projects entailed the destruction of Olmsted and Vaux or neoclassical works. The Dairy Farmhouse, Concert Grove House, Music Island, the Old Fashioned Flower Garden, many of the original rustic structures, the Thatched Shelter, the Model Yacht Club and the Greenhouse Conservatories had all been lost to either accident or deliberate demolition by the time Moses left his Park Commission post in May, 1960.
No park commissioner since Moses has been able to exercise the same degree of power. Nor did the Park Commission remain as stable a position in the aftermath of his departure, with eight commissioners holding the office in the twenty years following. This instability, coupled with the 1970s city fiscal crisis, devastated the Parks department. Staffed by 6,000 personnel in 1960, the Parks department consisted of just 2,800 permanent and 1,500 temporary workers by 1980. Much of Prospect Park suffered soil erosion and lack of maintenance caused the landscaping to deteriorate. By 1979, park attendance dropped to two million, the lowest recorded level in the history of the park.
A slow recovery
In September 1964 the Parks Department was within forty-eight hours of demolishing the
Boathouse on the LullwaterBoathouse on the Lullwater of the Lake in Prospect Park is located in the eastern part of Prospect Park on the northeast shore of The Lake, southeast of the Ravine District in Brooklyn, New York...
. At the time the structure was underutilized; the boat concession only operated on weekends and the Boathouse was visited by fewer than ten people an hour, even on the busiest summer weekends.
It was not unusual in the Moses years and the decade after his departure, to quietly remove underutilized or redundant structures; it was regarded as economical and prudent management. In the previous decade, the greenhouses on the western edge of the park were considered redundant, given the nearby Brooklyn Botanical Garden, and were demolished without much protest. Much the same had been the case in previous decades. With the opening of the new zoo in 1935, The Dairy Farmhouse had been demolished along with the rest of the Menagerie, though it had predated the original zoo. The Concert Grove House had been demolished in 1949. Once the park's restaurant, it was replaced with a snack bar under the Oriental Pavilion. But the late 1963 demolition of
Pennsylvania StationPennsylvania Station is a label first applied by the Pennsylvania Railroad to several of its grand passenger terminals.-New York City:...
in Manhattan had spawned a nascent
historic preservationHistoric preservation is an endeavor that seeks to preserve, conserve and protect buildings, objects, landscapes or other artifacts of historical significance...
movement, and the 1905 Boathouse
shared many features with the famous station. A preservation group, The Friends of Prospect Park, including in its membership, poet
Marianne MooreMarianne Moore was an American Modernist poet and writer noted for her irony and wit.- Life :Moore was born in Kirkwood, Missouri, in the manse of the Presbyterian church where her maternal grandfather, John Riddle Warner, served as pastor. She was the daughter of mechanical engineer and inventor...
, built public awareness over disappearing historical structures and threatened flora within the park. Public pressure induced Park Commissioner
Newbold MorrisNewbold Morris was an American politician, lawyer, president of the New York City Council, and two-time candidate for mayor of New York City....
to rescind the decision to demolish the Boathouse in December, 1964.
The Koch administration formed plans in 1980 to turn over the administration of the troubled
Prospect Park ZooThe Prospect Park Zoo is a zoo located off Flatbush Avenue on the eastern side of Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York City. Its precursor, the Menagerie, opened in 1890. The present facility first opened as a city zoo on July 3, 1935 and was part of a larger revitalization program of city parks,...
to the
Wildlife Conservation SocietyThe Wildlife Conservation Society based at the Bronx Zoo was founded in 1895 as the New York Zoological Society and currently manages some of wild places around the world, with over 500 field conservation projects in 60 countries, and 200 scientists on staff...
.
In the 1980s the Parks Department began entering into restoration projects with the Prospect Park Alliance, a local non-profit organization. In 1987, this organization secured funding for and oversaw the restoration of the 1952 Carousel. Through the 1990s, the Alliance oversaw the restoration of the Ravine, the 150 acre (0.607029 km²) region which contains the headwaters of the park water system.
The Alliance remains active in restoration projects and takes a balanced approach between historical preservation and patterns of modern use. Though disliked by some preservationists, Moses era playgrounds and the Bandshell are being retained because their venues are popular. Original rustic summer houses have been restored or recreated on the shores of Prospect Park Lake, along the Lullwater and in the Ravine. The Kate Wollman skating rink, unpopular with park preservationists but enjoyed by the public at large, will be replaced by two rinks in the proposed Lakeside Center, slated for construction in the nearby Concourse beginning in 2008. These plans include restoring Music Island and the original shoreline, both obliterated by the construction of the original rink in 1960. The Alliance managed a $9.8 million USD budget in 2007, with financial support largely coming from foundations, sales, rentals and fees, corporate and individual donations. Over 80% of the Alliance's expenditures were in support of park development projects.
Large sections of the park remain in disrepair, but the downward decline has been checked. From a 1979 nadir, when only an estimated two million people visited the park, now over seven million visits occur annually. Yet additional funding, and time, will be needed before the park again fulfills the design set forth by Olmsted and Vaux.
Olmsted and Vaux's vision
As a work of engineering and
landscapingLandscaping refers to any activity that modifies the visible features of an area of land, including:# living elements, such as flora or fauna; or what is commonly referred to as gardening, the art and craft of growing plants with a goal of creating a beautiful environment within the landscape.#...
Prospect Park was so revolutionary in its time that many considered the Park a work of art in itself. Others were critical of the idea of building a single, large park in the wealthiest section of Brooklyn rather than several smaller parks at different locations to serve a wider public. The idea of a single, large park won out, and its backers overcame their opponents in Brooklyn politics by having the park built by a state-appointed commission.
Olmsted and Vaux engineered the Park to recreate in real space the pastoral, picturesque, and aesthetic ideals expressed in hundreds of paintings. Breaking ground in June, 1866, they created the large Long Meadow out of hilly upland pasture interspersed with peat bogs, they moved and planted trees, hauled topsoil and created a vast unfolding turf with trees placed singly and in groups to approximate the English pastoral style of landscape which had emerged in England in the previous century. Prospect Park's designers had recent precedents in the pastoral style in this country, notably
Mount Auburn CemeteryMount Auburn Cemetery was founded in 1831 as "America's first garden cemetery", or the first "rural cemetery", with classical monuments set in a rolling landscaped terrain...
near Boston and Green-Wood Cemetery a few blocks away in Brooklyn. By the 1850s and '60s, pastoralism was the thing in landscape design in eastern North America. Both Central and Prospect Parks are considered by landscape historians to be among the best examples of the type. The designers themselves felt they had greater success in Brooklyn than in New York because the Prospect Park site presented fewer obstacles than the Central Park site, where they had to contend with two reservoirs, a relatively narrow, rectangular site, and a requirement that four city streets cross over the site. The design formula at Prospect Park included elements of both the picturesque and the sublime ideals, the picturesque being represented by the Ravine and its series of pools, waterfalls, and defiles.
Although the sublime ideal would be difficult to realize in the gentle Long Island topography, the designers wanted Lookout Hill to be a place of broad views out over Prospect Lake, the farmland beyond, and the bay and ocean in the distance. Trees have been allowed to obscure the view, however. The design also created a visual screen consisting of earth forms and trees around the perimeter to heighten the effect of seemingly limitless rural scenery by screening out views of buildings, traffic, and other aspects of the growing city around the park. The designers did not foresee the high-rise buildings built in the twentieth century which would to some extent spoil the effect. Ironically, at Central Park, views of park scenery in the foreground and skyscrapers in the background have long been iconic New York images.
In designing the watercourse Olmsted and Vaux also took advantage of the pre-existing glacier-formed
kettle pondsA kettle is a shallow, sediment-filled body of water formed by retreating glaciers or draining floodwaters.-Overview:...
and lowland outwash plains. A winding naturalistic stream channel with several ponds feeds a sixty-acre (24 ha) lake. They crafted the watercourse to include a steep, forested Ravine – perhaps their greatest masterpiece of landscape architecture – all with significant river edge flora and fauna habitats. This was all done to give the urban dweller a "sub-conscious" experience of nature within the city as Olmsted believed it was possible and necessary to provide such nourishment for the general public in the overwhelming urban environments of his time.
Watercourse
One of the most noteworthy features of Olmsted and Vaux's creations is the Prospect Park watercourse. All the waterways and lakes in Prospect Park are man-made. Originally engineered by Olmsted and Vaux to be a series of picturesque tableaux as an oasis for urban residents, by the mid-twentieth century nature had taken its course and these artificial waterways and the steep slopes around them had lost their original design character. In 1994 the Prospect Park Alliance launched a 25-year $43-million restoration project for the watercourse. By 2007 the Boathouse was completed.
If one follows the water from its source, the water in Prospect Park takes us on a course starting at the top of Fallkill Falls into Fallkill Pool past the Fallkill Bridge through the recently restored Upper Pool and Lower Pool, where migratory birds rest and marsh and other water plants can be found. Past the Esdale Bridge through Ambergill Pond one enters into a tree-covered area, then on to the smaller Ambergill Falls through Rock Arch Bridge, past the gorge area called The Ravine. The design called for the trickle of water to be heard throughout the forest and this effect lasts on to the through the where a variety of waterlilies can be found. The watercourse then moves on to the where performances of music were often given.
The waters then cascade beneath the Binnen Bridge to the Lullwater, upon the east bank of which stands the Boathouse, the current Audubon Center & Visitor Center. It then flows under the Lullwater and Terrace bridges to the Peninsula – an area managed both as bird sanctuary and recreational field. It flows past the Wollman Rink and enters the sixty-acre (24 ha) artificially built Prospect Lake that includes several islands. Prospect Lake is presently home to over 20 species of fish and hosts an annual fishing contest; visitors may explore the lake in pedal boats, available at the Wollman rink, or the
Independence, a replica of the original electric launch which took day-trippers around the lake a century ago.
Ice skating, popularized in Central Park, was a key reason for including Prospect Lake in the design of the park's watercourse. Prospect Lake was much larger than any lake in its New York City predecessor, but very shallow, so as to develop an ideal skating surface. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, red balls raised high on trollies signified that the ice was at least four inches thick in the Lullwater. Unfortunately, safety concerns have ended skating on the lake, perhaps forever. The venue moved to the Kate Wollman rink in 1960, and will move again to the Lakeside Center around 2010.
This trip along the watercourse demonstrates the revolutionary approach of Olmsted and Vaux in their re-creation of various types of natural water formations; not only did they plant a variety of trees, bushes and other plants, but they moved rocks, boulders and earth to simulate a variety of natural environments for the pleasure and stimulation of Brooklyn’s nineteenth century urban dwellers.
The Ravine District
With the watercourse moving through it, a 146 acres (59.1 ha) section of the Park's interior at the center of Brooklyn's only forest is known as the Ravine District. Olmsted and Vaux saw the Ravine as the heart of Prospect Park and the centerpiece of mountainous tableaux similar to the
Adirondack MountainsThe Adirondack Mountains are a mountain range located in the northeastern part of New York, that runs through Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Fulton, Hamilton, Herkimer, Lewis, Saint Lawrence, Saratoga, Warren, and Washington counties....
. The perimeter of the area is a steep, narrow 100 foot (30 m) gorge. The watercourse goes through the Ravine en route to the Boathouse. Still recovering from decades of overuse that caused soil compaction and erosion, the Ravine and surrounding woodlands have been undergoing restoration since 1996. As of 2003 the Ravine has been partially restored; the restored section is open to the public.
Recreation
Seven baseball fields span 9th–15th Streets in the park. Two are
major leagueMajor League Baseball is the highest level of professional baseball in the United States and Canada, consisting of teams that play in the National League and the American League...
-sized fields serving older age groups. The other five are slightly smaller, for younger children; typically 8–12 years old. The youngest children play on the grass.
The
Prospect Park Track Club, formed in the early 1970s, organizes regular training runs and races in and around the park. (The park has a 3.38-mile or 5.44 km loop.) The
Prospect Park Women's Softball League has been playing
softballSoftball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of 10 to 14 players. It is a direct descendant of baseball although there are some key differences: softballs are larger than baseballs, and the pitches are thrown underhand rather than overhand...
games on summer evenings in Prospect Park for over 23 years.
Circle rules footballCircle rules football, commonly referred to as circle rules, is a sport played between two teams of six with a large spherical ball similar to a stability ball. Invented in New York City in 2006, the sport is currently played in cities across the United States, as well as in several international...
has been played every weekend from spring through fall at the tip of the Long Meadow nearest Grand Army Plaza since 2007. Horseback riders from
Kensington stables are often seen on paths in the park. Pedalboating is open to the public on the lake. In the winter, ice skating, cross-country skiing and sledding are popular pastimes. A popular sledding hill is just inside the 10th Avenue entrance, off Prospect Park Southwest. The Bandshell hosts frequent concerts, most notably the "Celebrate Brooklyn!" Performing Arts Festival, a series of summer concerts founded in 1979 that draws performing artists from around the world. The festival is produced by BRIC | Arts | Media | Bklyn.
Fellowship in the Interests of Dogs and their Owners (FIDO), founded in 1997, is an activist organization for off-leash recreation for dogs in Prospect Park.
Automobile traffic vs. recreation
A contentious debate is under way in city government concerning the role of automobile traffic in the park. One side argues that if the ability of cars to use Prospect Park as a thoroughfare were reduced, traffic on either side of the park would be increased. The other side argues that the park is designed to be a haven from the type of city stress that automobiles represent, and that having them use the park sacrifices the safety of those using the park for
recreationRecreation is an activity of leisure, leisure being discretionary time. The "need to do something for recreation" is an essential element of human biology and psychology. Recreational activities are often done for enjoyment, amusement, or pleasure and are considered to be "fun"...
. Current (2011) regulations state that automobile traffic is allowed to use the park only: northbound (Park Circle to Grand Army Plaza) from 7–9 a.m. and southbound (Grand Army Plaza to Park Circle) 5–7 p.m. on weekdays. While these are an increase of
car-freeCar-free can refer to several things:*Pedestrian zones*Car-free movement...
hours from the past, they leave automobiles in the park at
rush hourA rush hour or peak hour is a part of the day during which traffic congestion on roads and crowding on public transport is at its highest. Normally, this happens twice a day—once in the morning and once in the evening, the times during when the most people commute...
, the precise time when cyclists, runners, walkers and other park users would otherwise be most likely to use the park. A similar debate is underway concerning Central Park. The debates and issues involved in this type of consideration are a good example of developing a Livable City.
Parade Ground
Olmsted and Vaux set aside a 40 acre rectangular area just south of Parkside Avenue to be used for sports and military drills. It was set apart from the main section of the park in fear that the high level of activity would damage the grass and plants and disrupt the park's pastoral feel. The military no longer uses the Parade Ground, but it is still one of the most active athletic fields in the city, encompassing the Prospect Park Tennis Center, four baseball diamonds, two softball fields, a football field, a soccer field, basketball and volleyball courts, the Paul Ricard Pétanque Court and three giant multi-use fields. Many Major League Baseball stars got their start at the Parade Ground, including Joe Torre and Sandy Koufax. In 2004 the Parade Ground underwent a 12.4 million dollar restoration.
Murders
- June 1993: a 42 year-old man was shot to death while resisting a group of teenagers trying to steal his bicycle. The shooter received a maximum 25 year prison term.
- April 2006: A 61 year-old man was found stabbed to death in a thickly wooded area of the park known as the Vale of Cashmere.
- July 2008: A 41 year-old homeless man was found beaten to death in a wooded area near a jogging path.
- March 2011: a 23 year-old man, Julio Locarno, was murdered after being shot four times at the Parade Ground. He had recently been jailed on charges of being an accomplice in another man's murder.
Animal-related
- May 1987: Two polar bears mauled an 11 year-old boy who climbed into their enclosure after hours at the Prospect Park Zoo
The Prospect Park Zoo is a zoo located off Flatbush Avenue on the eastern side of Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York City. Its precursor, the Menagerie, opened in 1890. The present facility first opened as a city zoo on July 3, 1935 and was part of a larger revitalization program of city parks,...
. Police officers shot and killed both bears. The incident contributed to the Wildlife Conservation Society's decision to redesign the zoo to emphasize species more appropriate to its small size and to visitor interactions.
- July 2010: Federal authorities euthanized 400 Canadian geese in the park for air safety
Air safety is a term encompassing the theory, investigation and categorization of flight failures, and the prevention of such failures through regulation, education and training. It can also be applied in the context of campaigns that inform the public as to the safety of air travel.-United...
reasons following the US Airways Flight 1549US Airways Flight 1549 was US Airways' scheduled domestic commercial passenger flight from LaGuardia Airport in New York City to Charlotte/Douglas International Airport, Charlotte, North Carolina...
incident in January 2009.
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