Olmsted and Vaux's second park, built after Central Park with everything they had learned. Most New Yorkers who have been to both prefer this one.
The one they got right
Olmsted and Vaux finished Central Park in 1873 and were already at work on Prospect Park by 1867. They considered this the better design, and they said so. Central Park is constrained by a rectangle the city drew before anyone thought about landscape; Prospect Park’s boundary was drawn around the landscape, and it does not have four transverse roads cutting through it.
The result is a park of three distinct landscapes stitched together: meadow, woodland and water, each one whole rather than fragmented.
The three parts
The Long Meadow is a mile of continuous rolling grass, the longest unbroken meadow in any American urban park. Stand in the middle and there is no building visible in any direction. On a Saturday it holds picnics, football, drum circles and several hundred dogs, and it still does not feel full.
The Ravine is the wooded middle — Brooklyn’s only forest, built around an artificial watercourse that runs from a spring-fed pool through a gorge and a series of waterfalls into the lake. All of it is engineered. The waterfalls are plumbed.
The Lake, sixty acres at the southern end, has pedal boats in summer and a boathouse in the Beaux-Arts style that was very nearly demolished in the 1960s.
Other things in it
Grand Army Plaza at the northern entrance has a triumphal arch modelled on the Arc de Triomphe and a farmers’ market on Saturdays that is one of the best in the city.
The Prospect Park Zoo, small and good for young children.
LeFrak Center at Lakeside has ice skating in winter and roller skating and a splash pad in summer.
The Bandshell runs the free BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! festival through the summer — a serious music programme, outdoors, with a suggested donation.
The Quaker Cemetery, still active and private, is inside the park, and Montgomery Clift is buried in it.
Around it
Brooklyn Botanic Garden shares a boundary at the eastern edge and is ticketed, with a cherry esplanade that draws crowds for about ten days each spring.
The Brooklyn Museum is next to the Botanic Garden and is much better than its visitor numbers suggest — the Egyptian collection is world class and there is rarely a queue.
Green-Wood Cemetery is a fifteen-minute walk south-west.
Park Slope on the western edge and Prospect Heights on the northern are the two neighbourhoods to eat in.
More Parks & Green Space
Central Park
Not a surviving piece of wilderness but a landscape built from nothing over sixteen years, including the streams, the hills and the woods. Free, and larger than you think.
The High Line
A freight viaduct that was going to be demolished, replanted as a mile-and-a-half elevated park thirty feet above the West Side. Free, and busier than you expect.
Bryant Park
Nine acres of lawn behind the Public Library that were a no-go area in the 1980s and are now the most heavily used park per square foot in the city. Free chairs, free events, free wifi.