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.

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.

The House that Gum built! In the late 1860s, Thomas Adams carried out a series of experiments with chicle, which is extracted from Mexican Sapota trees, hoping he could make the rubber-like substance into toys, boots or bicycle tires. The trials were a failure. He was just about to throw the chicle into the East River when he remembered that his boss, who was the ex-dictator of Mexico, regularly chewed it. Experimenting by adding sugar, he created a better-tasting gum than any other available at that time. Adams and his son, Thomas Jr. began production of the gum in 1871 and in 1888 they opened a factory in Brooklyn, which was one of the largest of its kind in the world. With his gum fortune, Thomas Jr. built a mansion at 117 Eighth Avenue. This house, located across the street from the photo above, was designed as a double house in the Romanesque Revival style by C.P.H. Gilbert, with one entrance facing 8th Avenue and the other facing Carroll Street, it is decorated with stained glass windows and dragon ornaments. It was also the first on the block to have an elevator. The home pictured is similar in style and was constructed as its neighbor, though this building was demolished to make way for a new apartment building in the 1950s. The story around the neighborhood goes that one summer the family came home from vacation to find their calls for the servants went unanswered. When they went to look for them, it transpired that the elevator had stuck. The servants were all trapped, no one had heard their calls, and they were all dead inside the contraption! Residents of the building have claimed to hear voices crying in an Irish brogue, "Mary Mother of God help us!" Though there is little proof that this actually happened, it sure is an interesting tale. In 1897, Thomas Jr. sold his home for $75,000 and moved to New York City. Thomas Sr. retired from the business in 1898, leaving his sons in charge. On February 7, 1905, he died of pneumonia at the age of 87. He is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery.

Swiss Thatched Cottage, unknown date. This cottage was one of many small rustic shelters with thatched roofs that were once scattered throughout Prospect Park. Constructed in the 1860s by Olmsted and Vaux, the cottage was a popular spot for scenic picnics. The cottage burned down in 1937 and was not rebuilt.

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.

“Beth Elohim Temple House. Temple exterior, September 16, 1929." Congregation Beth Elohim was founded in 1861 as a Reform breakaway from Congregation Baith Israel, first meeting on Myrtle Avenue, and later worshiping in renovated church buildings on Pearl Street (1862) and State Street (1885). In 1908, the congregation purchased land for a purpose-built and permanent home at the corner of Garfield Place and Eighth Avenue in Park Slope. The Classical Revival synagogue was completed in 1910, with a verse fragment from the Book of Isaiah carved above the sanctuary entrance: “Mine house shall be an house of prayer for all people.”

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.

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.