Prospect Park is a urban park in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The park is situated between the neighborhoods of Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Flatbush, and Windsor Terrace, and is adjacent to the Brooklyn Museum, Grand Army Plaza, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Prospect Park is the second-largest public park in Brooklyn, behind Marine Park. Designated as a New York City scenic landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Prospect Park is operated by the Prospect Park Alliance and NYC Parks.
First proposed in legislation passed in 1859, Prospect Park was laid out by landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux for the then-independent city of Brooklyn. Prospect Park opened in 1867, though it was not substantially complete until 1873. The park subsequently underwent numerous modifications and expansions to its facilities. Several additions to the park were completed in the 1890s, in the City Beautiful architectural movement. In the early 20th century, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (NYC Parks) commissioner Robert Moses started a program to clean up Prospect Park. A period of decline in the late 20th century spurred the creation of the Prospect Park Alliance, which refurbished many parts of the park from the 1980s through the 2020s.
Main attractions of the park include the Long Meadow; the Picnic House; Litchfield Villa; Prospect Park Zoo; the Boathouse; Concert Grove; Brooklyn's only lake, covering ; and the Prospect Park Bandshell that hosts outdoor concerts in the summertime. The park also has sports facilities, including 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 Friends (Quaker) cemetery on Quaker Hill near the ball fields. In addition, Prospect Park is part of the Brooklyn-Queens Greenway, a network of green spaces that stretch across western Long Island.
History Before the park
Approximately 17,000 years ago, the terminal moraine of the receding Wisconsin Glacier that formed Long Island, known as the Harbor Hill Moraine, 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 Avenue and Eastern Parkway, is the highest among a string of hills that extends into the park, including Sullivan, Breeze, and Lookout. Rising 200 feet (61 m) above sea level, it is one of the tallest hills in Brooklyn. The area was originally forested, but became open pasture after two centuries of European colonization. Significant stands of trees remained only in the peat bogs centered south of Ninth and Flatbush Avenues, as well as in a large bog north of Ninth Street, and contained chestnut, white poplar, and oak. Some of these stands were preserved in the modern-day Prospect Park Ravine and nicknamed "The Last Forest of Brooklyn".
During the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), the park was a site of the Battle of Long Island (aka Battle of Brooklyn). The Continental Army attempted to hold Battle Pass, an opening in the terminal moraine where the old Flatbush Road passed from the villages of Brooklyn to Flatbush, where a large white oak tree was cut down to block the progress of the British forces.Dongan Oak Marker , New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Accessed January 1, 2024. "One of several small monuments in the vicinity of what is known as the "Battle Pass" in Prospect Park, the Dongan Oak Monument commemorates events which took place in this area during the Battle of Long Island on August 27, 1776. During this significant battle of the Revolutionary War, a large white oak mentioned in 1685 in the patent of Governor Thomas Dongan (1634–1715), was cut down by Colonial soldiers and thrown across the road to impede the advance of the British army." The pass fell after some of the heaviest fighting in the engagement, and its loss contributed to George Washington's decision to retreat. Even though American forces lost the battle, they were able to hold the British back long enough for Washington's army to escape across the East River to Manhattan. Plaques north of the zoo, as well as the Maryland Monument at Lookout Hill's foot, honor this event.
The then-independent city of Brooklyn built Ridgewood Reservoir on Prospect Hill in 1856 to serve its western half. The need to keep the lots around the reservoir free of development, as well as the preservation of the Battle Pass area, were cited as two reasons for establishing a large park nearby.
Planning
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. At the time, Brooklyn was promoted as New York City's first commuter suburb,Margino, Megan. "From Suburb to City and Back Again: A Brief History of the NYC Commuter" , New York Public Library, May 10, 2016. Accessed January 1, 2024. and it became the third largest city in the country from 1860 to 1880, behind New York City (which then included Manhattan and parts of the Bronx) and Philadelphia.Berman, Andrew (August 9, 2016). "Sorry, Chicago: Brooklyn Will Soon Be The Third Largest City In America" , Gothamist, August 9, 2016. Accessed January 1, 2024. "Brooklyn has held the Third City spot twice before: From 1860–1880, when Philly was No. 2 and New York, which comprised Manhattan and parts of today's Bronx, was No. 1; and again (unofficially) from 1910, when it overtook Philadelphia, until 1970, when the population of Los Angeles surpassed Brooklyn's for the first time." During this time, concepts concerning public parks gained popularity. In 1858, landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux had created the design for Central Park in Manhattan, which became the first landscaped park in the United States. James S. T. Stranahan, then President of the Brooklyn Board of Park Commissioners, 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 thought a public park would attract wealthy residents. Stranahan originally envisioned one large park extending eastward to the community of Jamaica and what was then Queens County. However, the city's rapid development made this impossible, and today, the largest remnants of this proposed landscape are Prospect Park and the Forest Park in Queens.
In February 1860, a group of fifteen commissioners submitted suggestions for locations of four large parks and three small parks in Brooklyn, as well as a series of boulevards to connect them. The largest of these proposed parks was a plot centered on Mount Prospect and bounded by Warren Street to the north; Vanderbilt, Ninth, and Tenth Avenues to the west; Third and Ninth Streets to the south; and Washington Avenue to the east. Egbert Viele began drawing plans for "Mount Prospect Park", as the space was initially called, and published his proposal in 1861. The park was to straddle Flatbush Avenue and include Prospect Hill, as well as the land now occupied by the Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and Brooklyn Museum.
By late 1860, land had been purchased for Viele's plan. However, the onset of the Civil War stopped further activity, and the boulevards and smaller parks were pushed back. The delay prompted some reflection; Stranahan invited Calvert Vaux to review Viele's plans early in 1865. Vaux took issue with Flatbush Avenue's division of the park, thought that the park should have a lake, and urged for southward expansion beyond the city limits and into the then-independent town of Flatbush. Vaux's February 1865 proposal reflected the present 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 being divided by Flatbush Avenue. Vaux included an oval plaza at the northern end of the park, which would later become Grand Army Plaza.Grand Army Plaza , New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Accessed January 1, 2024. "Grand Army Plaza, the oval at the main entrance of Brooklyn's Prospect Park, was meant to provide a wide and picturesque approach to the park, which park designer Calvert Vaux (1824–1895) considered a vital design element. The Plaza was one of the first features of Prospect Park to be built and marks the beginning of the Eastern Parkway (1866), the world's first parkway, also designed by Vaux and his partner Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903)."Grand Army Plaza – Brooklyn , The Cultural Landscape Foundation. Accessed January 1, 2024. "First envisioned in 1865, the plaza was conceived as the primary entrance for Olmsted and Vaux's 526-acre Prospect Park. The elliptical plaza capped the park's northern tip with a paved, pedestrian area ringed by carriageways and heavily-planted crescent-shaped berms." The revised plan called for the purchase of additional parcels to the south and west to accommodate Prospect Lake, but it excluded parcels already purchased east of Flatbush Avenue, including Prospect Hill itself. In addition, engineer-in-charge Joseph P. Davis and assistants John Bogart and John Y. Culyer were named to work on the project.
By then, land speculation was underway. The plot bounded by Ninth and Tenth Avenues between Third and Fifteenth Streets was held by real estate developer Edwin Clarke Litchfield, who had erected his home, Litchfield Manor, on the east side of Ninth Avenue in 1857. The Parks Commission ultimately acquired the Litchfield plot in 1868 for $1.7 million, forty-two percent of the overall expenditure for land, even though the plot constituted just over five percent of the park's acreage. Much of this acreage houses the maintenance yards and is rarely seen by the public. In 1866, the New York state legislature passed a bill approving the acquisition of additional land on the southwest side of the park. The park was built around the preexisting Quaker cemetery, which was accommodated by an agreement under which the Society of Friends deeded their unused acreage to the park. In exchange, they retained the remaining 10 acres for their private cemetery in perpetuity, as well as the rights to access the cemetery.
Construction Despite the repercussions of Vaux's revisions, Stranahan championed the revised proposal. Vaux recruited Olmsted and formally presented the plan in February 1866. The revised plan was accepted by May. Construction started the following month, and initial work focused on draining the land. Then, the roads, bridle paths, and walks within Prospect Park were graded and individual features were landscaped. Three scenic roads, the West, Center, and East Drives, were built within the perimeters of the park. Depending on the time of year, between 250 and 2,000 workers were employed. Much of the landscaping focused on removing obstructions such as pits and swamps, and enhancing other natural features such as hills. Trees were only removed if they blocked a roadway or path that was being built.