If Prospect Park seems like Brooklyn’s answer to Central Park, there’s a reason – Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux designed both of these gigantic green spaces in the mid-19th century.
As for Prospect Park, it’s 2,400 square kilometres and the effect of grandeur is accentuated by Long Meadow, whose name is not a false boast; at 1,600 metres long, it is arguably the longest uninterrupted meadow in an American park. The meadow is a popular space for sports and picnics.
Prospect Park as a whole offers endless possibilities for recreation, not just ordinary leisure activities such as jogging and cycling, but also rarer pleasures such as swimming for dogs. Four-legged New Yorkers can swim at Dog Beach.
The beach is part of Prospect Park Lake, where visitors know they can go fishing (it’s a great place to catch Largemouth Bass, – but anglers must abide by the “catch and release” rule).
Prospect Park is also home to Brooklyn’s only remaining natural forest, covering 1,000 square kilometres (in total, the park has over 30,000 trees).
The attractions of Prospect Park
Other attractions of interest in Prospect Park include:
- the historic Lefferts House, where visitors can see traditional activities, churn butter making, flint and steel fire throwing, sewing and other rural practices that once characterised Flatbush life
- the Zoo de Prospect Park, home to a wide variety of animals that you probably won’t see in most other parks, including red pandas and kangaroos
- the Prospect Park Bandshell, home to the summer event “Celebrate Brooklyn!”, a series of generally free concerts that has featured Sonic Youth, They Might Be Giants, David Byrne and more.
A new development, the Lakeside, offers year-round skating rings, scenic terraces, a watering hole and a café area. Finally, the nearby Brooklyn Botanical Garden is one of the largest and most comprehensive attractions of its kind; notable features include a fragrant garden for the blind and a tranquil Japanese tea garden.
Nearby sites of interest include the Brooklyn Museum and the splendid main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.
