Urban park in Brooklyn including 90-acre (36 ha) Long Meadow, the Picnic House, Litchfield Villa, Prospect Park Zoo, the Boathouse, and Concert Grove

Overview

Prospect Park is an urban park in Brooklyn. The park is situated between the neighborhoods of Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Flatbush, and Windsor Terrace, and is adjacent to the Brooklyn Museum, Grand Army Plaza, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. With an area of 526 acres (213 ha), Prospect Park is the second largest public park in Brooklyn, behind Marine Park.

Prospect Park was laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, who also helped design Manhattan's Central Park, following various changes to its design.

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Main attractions of the park include the 90-acre (36 ha) Long Meadow; the Picnic House; Litchfield Villa; Prospect Park Zoo; the Boathouse; Concert Grove; Brooklyn's only lake, covering 60 acres (24 ha); and the Prospect Park Bandshell that hosts free 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.

Prospect Park was designated a New York City scenic landmark on November 25, 1975, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 17, 1980. The park is operated by the Prospect Park Alliance and NYC Parks.

Design

Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux engineered Prospect Park to recreate in real space the pastoral, picturesque, and aesthetic ideals expressed in contemporary paintings. The overall design was inspired partially by Birkenhead Park in the United Kingdom. Prospect Park had recent precedents in the pastoral style, notably Mount Auburn Cemetery near Boston and Green-Wood Cemetery a few blocks away. Olmsted and Vaux felt they had greater success in Brooklyn because of the lack of obstacles there, but they were also assisted in part by park commissioner James Stranahan's patronage and support of their plan.

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The two designers wanted visitors to be able to traverse Prospect Park with a myriad of perspectives so that the features could be enjoyed in any order. Olmsted was more involved with the general design of Prospect Park, while Vaux was more involved with specific details. They created the large Long Meadow out of hilly upland pasture interspersed with peat bogs. They also moved and planted trees, hauled topsoil and created a vast unfolding turf with trees placed both separately and in groups. 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. To create an illusion of an expansive space, Olmsted and Vaux designed the paths in Prospect Park to be meandering.

Layout

In Olmsted and Vaux's final plan for the park, it was divided into three distinct zones: an open section, a wooded section, and a waterside section. The Parade Ground at the far southwestern corner was excluded from the system of zones.

The first zone consisted of the Long Meadow, a wide open space along the west side of the park. It contains two entrances through tunnels: Meadowport Arch and Endale Arch. The Third Street Playground, Harmony Playground, bandshell, and the picnic and tennis houses are also located here. West Drive traverses this section of Prospect Park.

The second zone is the wooded area in the middle of the park called the Ravine, and contains the headwaters of the park's watercourse. In this zone, on the northeast side of the park, there are several points of interest: the Vale of Cashmere, the Rose Garden, the Zucker Natural Exploration Area, and the Prospect Park Zoo. The area contains the Nethermead Arch, an elaborate triple-span bridge. Quaker Hill and the Friends Cemetery are located near the southwest boundary of Prospect Park. Lookout Hill, as well as a large open space called the Nethermead, are located to the south and east of Quaker Hill, respectively. The Ravine also contains the Midwood, an old-growth forest incorporated into Prospect Park during its construction.

The third zone is along the park's south side and consists of Prospect Lake, as well as a peninsula jutting eastward from the lake's northern shore. It is the outlet for the Lullwater, a meandering stream. The Lullwater contains the classical-style Boathouse, a city- and federally-designated landmark, on the Lullwater's eastern shore. To the south, along the lake's eastern shore, are the White Levy Esplanade, as well as the LeFrak Center at Lakeside, a multipurpose recreation center.

Parkside Avenue, a roughly west-east street, divides the southwestern part of Prospect Park from the rest of the park. This detached sliver of parkland is bounded by Parkside Avenue to the north, Coney Island Avenue to the west, Caton Avenue to the south, and Parade Place to the east. It contains the Parade Ground, which has fifteen numbered courts and fields for various sports.

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Prospect Park's lake

The mouth of Prospect Park's watercourse is the artificial, 60-acre Prospect Lake (also known as Prospect Park Lake). Prospect Lake includes several islands and is home to over 20 species of fish. Every year, the lake hosts the R.H. Macy's Fishing Contest, a tradition that dates to 1947. Though NYC Parks generally allows licensed anglers to fish, it maintains a catch and release policy to prevent depletion of the fish population. In addition, visitors may explore the lake in kayaks and pedal boats, available at the LeFrak Center at Lakeside, or the Independence, a replica of the original electric launch which took day-trippers around the lake in the 20th century. On the shore of the lake, there are several "rustic shelters" that provide scenic views of the water.

The Ravine

A 146-acre (59 ha) section of Prospect Park's interior is known as the Ravine. The region contains the headwaters of the park's water system, as well as Brooklyn's only remaining old-growth forest, the Midwood. Olmsted and Vaux saw the Ravine as the heart of Prospect Park and the centerpiece of mountainous tableaux similar to the Adirondack Mountains, and designed it in a similar fashion to their Ramble in Central Park. 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.

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Directly south of the Ravine is a meadow called the Nethermead, which occupies much of the space along the western bank of the watercourse between Center and Wellhouse Drive. To the southwest of the Nethermead is Lookout Hill, which occupies the remaining area between Center and Wellhouse Drives.

Long Meadow

The Long Meadow stretches down the western side of Prospect Park. The meadow contains two playgrounds, the Tennis House, the Picnic House, a bandshell, a dog beach, and NYC Parks maintenance facilities. In a contrast with the Ravine and the watercourse, the Long Meadow is mostly flat open space. As designed, it provided a visual buffer between the neighborhoods to the west and the interior of the park. During construction, Olmsted laid out hundreds of trees in meticulous patterns around the meadow.

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.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Prospect Park (Brooklyn)", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0