Vale of Cashmere, ca. 1913.

Bishop McDonnell Memorial High School for Girls, 1929. This Beaux Arts style school building was constructed between 1924 and 1925. Designed by Robert J. Reiley, one of the go-to architects for Catholic buildings in this period, the classical building with a columned facade fits in very well as the neighbor to McKim, Mead and White's Brooklyn Museum, just across the street. Known as “Bishop," the school opened for the fall term in 1926. It was a scholarship only institution until the 1960s and served the large Irish and Italian communities of Crown Heights, but also of nearby Flatbush and Park Slope. The school closed in 1973, which coincided and was likely prompted by the massive Catholic exodus to the suburbs that was occurring in that period. Today the building is the St. Francis De Sales School for the Deaf, an elementary and middle school for deaf children.

Eastern Parkway Greenway, Brooklyn. Eastern Parkway was designed with a 20-foot wide foot and bicycle path flanking either side, adorned with park benches and octagonal tiles under the shade of elm and maple trees. Frederick Law Olmsted described the road he co-designed as "a shaded green ribbon, absolutely formal or strikingly picturesque." It is the first parkway meant exclusively for personal and recreational traffic. Designers Calvert Vaux and Federick Law Olmstead were inspired by Under den Linden in Berlin and Avenue Foch in Paris. The parkway met Ocean Parkway, which was designed simultaneously. The two roads connected Prospect Park with East New York

Talk a walk, smell the flowers. Brooklyn Botanical Garden's Cranbrook Rose Garden has over five thousand rose bushes. Each rose is said to have a different fragrance.

Brooklyn Botanic Garden, unknown date. The start of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden dates back to 1897 when New York State legislation reserved 39-acres for the garden. The Garden opened to the public in May, 1911. Today the Brooklyn Botanical Garden spans 52-acres and attracts 900,000 visitors annually. Its most famed garden, located in the Steinhardt Conservatory, is the home of the C. V. Starr Bonsai Museum.

Woodrow Wilson Apartments, ca. 1925. Named for the 28th President and completed in 1924, this apartment building was designed by brothers Joseph and Louis Shampan, who constructed many other similarly sized residential buildings in the surrounding Brooklyn neighborhoods. At six-stories the Early Art Deco building with Gothic details was the new standard for fashionable living on Eastern Parkway. It offered a varied of apartment sizes, ranging from $75 to $210 a month in rent. Conveniently located near subway lines, the nature of Prospect Park and the cultural institution therein, the building also offered its middle class tenants all the best modern amenities, including a 24 hour doorman and apartments with two (!) bathrooms.

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s (BBG’s) Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden was the first Japanese garden curated within a public botanic garden in America. Designed by Japanese-American landscape architect Takeo Shiota, the garden took two years to complete, opening to the public in 1915. The project cost $13,000 and was funded largely by a gift from Alfred T. White, a benefactor and trustee. In 1947, Japanese-American Gardener Frank Okamura was hired to care for the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden, which had been vandalized during World War II. During his almost thirty-five year tenure at BBG, from 1947 to 1981, Okamura also began teaching bonsai classes and traveling all over the country lecturing on the art of creating bonsai. When Okamura died in 2006 at the age of ninety-four he was one of the leading experts on the art of bonsai in America. This photograph, taken around 1975, shows the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden fully restored by Okamura, keeping Shiota’s vision alive for future generations. The Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden is three acres and includes a waterfall, pond, bridges, a pavilion, and a traditional Shinto shrine. In 2001, the garden received a New York Landmark Conservancy Preservation Award.

Rose Garden, Prospect Park, ca. 1916.

Nellie's Lawn, ca. 1890.

Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, ca.1897-1930. The massive Beaux-Arts building of the Brooklyn Museum opened in 1897. But the roots of the institution date back to the 1820s with the founding of the Brooklyn Apprentices’ Library in Brooklyn Heights. That organization, though venue moves and mergers eventually became the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences in 1890, with the Museum as one of its subdivisions. (The other institutions under the Arts and Sciences umbrella were the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the Brooklyn Children's Museum.) Designed by McKim, Mead and White, the museum building was constructed in sections. The first wing opened in 1897, the central pavilion was completed in 1905, and final original wing (which included the sky-lit Beaux-Art Court) was not fully finished until 1926. Despite the massive structure, the building as completed in the 1920s was only a section of the original design. The staircase of the building has always been a contentious feature. The large staircase leading up to the entrance was only completed after the central wing opened in 1905. In 1934 the Municipal Art Commission (without the knowledge of the architects) approved the removal of the front staircase in an effort to create a more direct and "democratic" entrance. Finally, in the early 2000s, architect James Polshek designed a new glass entrance pavilion that included a stepped roof, a stepped amphitheater, and terraced lawns. While it was praised by many, there were also many critics (particularly historic preservationists) who thought that it was garish and inappropriate. It is well-loved by the skateboarding teens of Brooklyn, though.

New park benches Father and son, mother with baby carriage, and other pedestrians sitting on benches under leafy trees along median strip; convertible automobile in left background. Caption: "New park benches and new footpaths add to the comfort of residents of Eastern Parkway from Ralph to Washington Aves."

Brooklyn Botanical Rose Garden, 1931. Brooklyn Botanical Garden's Cranbrook Rose Garden has over five thousand rose bushes. Each rose is said to have a different fragrance. The 5,000 bushes of the garden contain almost 1,400 differents kinds of roses including wild species roses, old garden roses, hybrid tea roses, floribundas, polyanthas, hybrid perpetual, climbers, ramblers, and miniature roses. Harold Caparn, and landscape architect, and BBG's horticulturist Montague Free collaborated to design the Cranford Rose Garden in 1928.

Prospect Park is the second largest public park in Brooklyn. Famous for its trees and manmade wetlands, the 596-acre park also contains the bulk of the borough's remaining indigenous forest. On this walk, The Great Outdoors: Prospect Park Edition, we'll guide you through the park's most leafy and green natural habitats, while also teaching you some history along the way.

It's rare that a plethora of a city's most prominent cultural institutions spring from one source, but in Brooklyn, that is just what happened.

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s (BBG’s) Japanese Hill-and Pond Garden was the first Japanese garden curated within a public botanic garden in America.

St. Francis De Sales School for the Deaf 260 Eastern Parkway Designed by Robert J. Reilly 1925 The construction of this large school was inspired by Crown Heights South’s inexpensive land, nearby public transportation and a growing Catholic population, while the building’s Beaux-Arts design was inspired by that of the Brooklyn Museum across the street. Its most striking feature is an impressive colonnade running almost the entire length of the building. Originally constructed as the Bishop McDonnell Memorial High School for Girls, its students were known as “Memorialites” and were all awarded tuition-free scholarships until the 1960s. In another design nod to the museum, whose façade is engraved with the names of historic figures known for their contributions to the arts, philosophy, science and literature, the school features the names of female saints engraved above the third-floor windows. The high school closed in 1973, and was repurposed as a school for the deaf. The building’s architect, Robert J. Reilly, trained at Columbia University and worked extensively with the Catholic diocese of New York. Reilly was also a protégé of Ernest Flagg, known as much for his mastery of Beaux-Arts design as for his advocacy of urban reform and the social responsibility of architecture.

Turner Towers, 1928. This imposing apartment building was constructed in 1926 and was considered Brooklyn's first residential high rise. Built by developer Morris Turner the apartments were originally rentals. It became a coop building in the early 1980s when the owners were forced to declare bankruptcy and a group of savvy residents sponsored a coop conversion. The cost to purchase an apartment that you were already renting/living in? $7,600. That same four-bedroom apartment sold for the first time since it was originally purchased in 2015 and the asking price was $2.15 million. The 16-story building was the childhood home of comedian Joan Rivers.

Institute Park, unknown date.

The Prospect Heights neighborhood is located immediately north of Prospect Park, bounded by Atlantic Avenue to the north, Eastern Parkway to the south, Flatbush Avenue to the west, and Washington Avenue to the east. The area was home to the Le-nape Indians at the time of European contact. During the 18th century, the land came into possession of a number of different owners, several of whom were slave owners. It was still predominately farm and wood lands until the middle of the nineteenth century. The two most important factors in the growth of Prospect Heights were transportation improvements—which included new links between Prospect Heights and the ferries along Brooklyn’s waterfront — and the development of Prospect Park. The original design of Prospect Park, like the original design of Central Park, was the work of the civil engineer Egbert Ludovicus Viele. In his 1861 plan, the park extended as far south as 9th Street, and as far north as Prospect Place. It included all the land between the present Prospect Park West and Washington Avenue, bisected by Flatbush Avenue. The city acquired all the land to execute Viele’s plan, but the Civil War put the execution on hold. In 1865, consultant Calvert Vaux proposed that additional land be purchased to the south (to 15th Street) and east (to Ocean Avenue), and that everything east of Flatbush Avenue be jettisoned. The City of Brooklyn agreed, and figured they would just sell off the extra land. Construction began on Prospect Park in 1866 and the park opened to the public in 1871, although it was not yet complete. During the 1880’s, the city sold off the land between Sterling Place and Prospect Place, which was developed with row houses that are now the Prospect Heights Historic District. In 1898, when the City of Brooklyn became the Borough of Brooklyn, Park Slope was largely urbanized. P.S. 9 and its Annex (both designated NYC Landmarks) stood at Sterling Place and Vanderbilt Avenue, the Brooklyn Museum had recently opened (only about a quarter as large as it is today), the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch was in place, and Frederick MacMonnies’s bronze quadriga had just been placed atop it. Prospect Heights north of Sterling Place (Butler Street) was an established area, but not the “East Side Park Lands.” The land between Eastern Parkway and St. John’s Place was mired in litigation over title to the land, and remained undeveloped until well after the turn of the century. There were buildings along Plaza Street to the west of the oval plaza, but no buildings on Plaza Street to the east. By 1908, the Museum had more than doubled in size, but the East Side Park Lands remained empty. Meanwhile, Bedford-Stuyvesant was intensely developed. This development delay led into the apartment house era. The 1920 opening of the IRT Subway extension under Eastern Parkway spurred the construction of six-story elevator apartment houses. This typology was an attractive choice for developers, as the NYC Building Code only required the first two floors of six-story buildings to be fireproof, as opposed to all floors of seven-story buildings. In 1915-16, the Martinique building, at 163- 169 Eastern Parkway, was the first building to rise on the land. Many followed, making the East Side a rare example, especially in Brooklyn, of a central area developed with apartment houses from the start.