This Italianate mansion, located just inside the entrance at Prospect Park West and 5th Street, was built for Edwin C. Litchfield between 1855 and 1857. A prominent Brooklyn real estate developer and landowner in present-day Park Slope, Litchfield was responsible for the expansion of the Gowanus Canal from a tidal creek into a shipping channel

50 Prospect Park West, 1972. Financier Henry Hulbert built his grand Romanesque Revival mansion in 1889. Designed by one of Brooklyn's architects to the wealthy, Montrose W. Morris, the mansion was rendered in a gleaming white limestone, unlike the dark red and brown tones of most Romanesque Revival buildings. The home also features a number of telltale Morris features including extensive stained glass, wrought iron, and carved detail. A number of schools and cultural organizations have called the asymmetrical building home since the mid-century. Since 1995 it has been home to the lower school of Poly Prep.

Manual Training School, September 9, 1930. Constructed in 1904 in the classic H-shape that Snyder devised, the Manual Training School is a Renaissance Revival style building. Originally housing a school which filled the niche between a trade school and a technical school, the structure is best known as John Jay High School, which it became in the 1960s. During its time as John Jay, the school earned a reputation as the place the Board of Ed. sent its troubled students. The high school closed in 2003 and has been reopened in the educational complex model of current NYC public high schools in which the building houses a number of smaller, professionally focused schools.

“The corner of Prospect Park West and 9th Street at the entrance to Prospect Park. Two women with a baby carriage are visible to the right and a mailbox and an apartment builidng \[sic] are visible to the left. Ca. 1915." The building at left is no. 138 Prospect Park West. Streetcar tracks turning left at 9th street are part of the Smith Street Line, between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Ninth Avenue Depot at Prospect Park Southwest.

Park Slope Branch, ca.1925. Completed in 1906 to the designs of Raymond F. Almirall, the current Park Slope Branch was originally named the Prospect Branch (it was renamed in 1975). Raymond F. Almirall designed four Brooklyn branches and was a member of the Brooklyn Carnegie Committee’s Architects’ Advisory Commission. Built in a Classic Revival style, the building is set back from the street and is symmetrical in floorplan. The interior of this branch is notable for being particularly ornate and largely still original. The entrance floor is a multi-colored mosaic and the walls of the reading rooms are clad in wooden wainscoting. Other interior features include arched stained glass windows and tiled and wood-framed fireplaces.

Lafayette Memorial, unknown date. Marshal Joseph Joeffre of the French War Commission unveils the memorial to the Marquis de Lafayette; May 10, 1917. Daniel Chester French's bronze sculpture, a gift of Henry Harteau, depicts Lafayette, his groom James Armistead Lafayette, and his horse. The memorial's carved dedication omits James Armistead Lafayette, an African American born into slavery in Virginia who later served the Continental Army as a spy during the Revolutionary War. After the war, Lafayette, a staunch abolitionist, interceded to secure Armistead's freedom. In a gesture of appreciation, Armistead adopted the surname Lafayette as a free man.

Acme Hall was a prominent social club built in 1890. It was designed in the Romanesque style by architect C. Nickenig. The original building was adorned with a crenelated roofline and a tower that jutted out of its southeast corner. The tower bore its name, "The Acme," in an Amherst stone carving. The hall lost its elite status however: in the 1930s it was raided for showing stag films - quite a departure from its well-to-do upbringings. By then, the eatery downstairs was "Diamonds," a bar and grill infamous for a shooting in 1938. A patron, Robert Joyce, was upset over a comment about the Brooklyn Dodger's defeat by the Giants in the National League. Joyce, who had reportedly consumed 18 glasses of beer that evening, shot two people - one of them was the son of the bar's owner. In 1945 , The Acme was turned over to become a mixture of stores and lofts after being purchased by Ernest S. Felzman. An illegal garment factory and loft residencies also found their way into the building around this time. The Acme was turned over once again to Howard Pronsky in 1986. Sometime before the new ownership, the tower was removed and the whimsical crenelation was replaced by a more modest roofline. The space was converted to offices after a $750,000 renovation, making it one of the first non-brownstone buildings with office space in the neighborhood. Today, it operates as a music studio.

Litchfield Villa, unknown date. This stucco mansion, located just inside the entrance at Prospect Park West and 5th Street, was built for Edwin C. Litchfield between 1855 and 1857. A prominent Brooklyn real estate developer and landowner in present-day Park Slope, Litchfield was responsible for the expansion of the Gowanus Canal from a tidal creek into a shipping channel. In 1855, Litchfield hired acclaimed architect Alexander Jackson Davis to construct an Italianate estate for his family. In addition to the hilltop mansion, Davis also built a coach house, greenhouse, and chicken house (none of which remain today). When completed in 1857, the structure was named Grace Hill, after Edwin's wife Grace Hill Hubbard Litchfield. In 1869, the Litchfields reluctantly ceded their home and its grounds to the City of Brooklyn, but were granted permission to lease the property until 1883. Those 50 acres of Litchfield land now constitute over five percent of the park's present acreage. In 1882, Litchfield's Brooklyn Improvement Company — the firm that oversaw the Gowanus Canal project — moved into the former NY & LI Coignet Stone Company building at Third Avenue and 3rd Street (adjacent to the present-day Whole Foods). In 1883, a year after Grace Litchfield's death, Edwin Litchfield moved abroad and his villa was passed on to the City Park Commissioners. The Litchfield Villa, as it is now known, is now the Brooklyn borough headquarters of the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation and also the home of the Prospect Park Alliance.

Public School 39 ARCHITECT: Samuel B. Leonard DATE: 1876-77 STYLE: French Second Empire Erected in 1876-77 as P.S. 39, this building was renamed in 1916 to honor Henry Bristow, whose home had served as a temporary schoolhouse during construction. Believed to have been designed by Samuel B. Leonard, the building is transitional in style, combining distinctive Italianate features – such as round-arched windows, cornices with modillions, and paired brackets – with mansard roofs typical of the French Second Empire style.

Park Slope Branch, Brooklyn Public Library 431 Sixth Avenue Raymond F. Almirall, 1905-06 This library was originally the Prospect Branch, housed beginning in 1900 in Prospect Park’s Litchfield Villa and consisting solely of books related to natural history. As Park Slope’s population grew, the demand for a larger, all-purpose library led to its relocation in 1901 to several storefronts on 9th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues. By 1904, the city purchased a large site and began planning for a new Carnegie-funded building. Its name was changed to Park Slope in 1975. The Classical Revival style, brick-clad building with limestone trim features an imposing, projecting portico entrance with Doric columns and a stone pediment. Like those found on the Pacific Branch, the torches in the keystones above the entrance and windows represent the light of learning. Its intact interior features stained glass, tiled fireplaces, wood paneling and marble mosaic floors. The Park Slope branch was designated in 1998.

Litchfield Villa ARCHITECT: A.J. Davis DATE: 1856 STYLE: Italianate This romantic mansion commanding a small hill in Prospect Park is one of the finest “Italian Villa” style houses in the country. Unique in plan, the two irregular shaped towers and a tall slender turret are all attached to the main building and combine to form a picturesque architectural composition. One of the unusual features of this mansion is to be found in tops of the columns of the colonnade in which the Classical decorations are replaced by our native plants, corn and wheat.