Laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the same team behind Central Park, Prospect Park opened in 1867 and covers 526 acres in Brooklyn.
Prospect Park draws a mostly local, borough crowd rather than tourists, and its Long Meadow and Ravine woodland stay far less trafficked than the park's edges.
Olmsted and Vaux came to Brooklyn after Central Park with the benefit of the earlier argument already settled. Enabling legislation passed in 1859, the park opened in 1867, and it was not substantially complete until 1873. The Long Meadow, ninety acres running down the western side, is the clearest statement of the intent: the ground bends so that the far end is never quite in view, and the tree line is set to keep the surrounding buildings out of the frame. It reads as pasture and is entirely constructed.
So is the water. The park has no natural stream. A single fed watercourse begins at Fallkill Falls, drops through the Upper and Lower Pools, falls again at the Ambergill, runs on as the Binnen Water, passes Binnen Falls, widens into the Lullwater and finally becomes the sixty-acre Lake — six cascades and four names on one continuous engineered descent. Knowing that changes how the Ravine reads: the wildness is a designed sequence, maintained rather than found.
That Ravine covers 146 wooded acres at the park's center and holds the Midwood, Brooklyn's only remaining old-growth forest. Entry into it is stage-managed. Endale Arch and Meadowport Arch put a walker in the dark for a few paces before releasing them onto the Long Meadow, a compression-and-release device Vaux used repeatedly and which still works on people who have seen it a hundred times.
Later hands are visible against the grain of the original. McKim, Mead & White reworked the Vale of Cashmere and the Rose Garden into formal, architectural spaces in 1893 and 1894. Grand Army Plaza, laid out as the park's front door, gained the Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch, dedicated in 1892. Litchfield Villa, an 1857 house built for Edwin Clarke Litchfield and taken by the park commissioners in 1868, sits inside the boundary and holds Parks offices. The park became a New York City scenic landmark on November 25, 1975, and was listed on the National Register in 1980; the Prospect Park Alliance, formed in April 1987, has been rebuilding the watercourse and the woodland since.
Brooklyn, NY 11225 · Official site ↗
Prospect Park is a 526-acre (2.13 km2) 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.
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