Like many of New York's greatest green spaces, the juxtaposition of Prospect Park's natural and manmade beauty is captivating. On this walk, we'll take you on a scenic path that winds through some Prospect Park's most picturesque landscapes, as well as its landmarked bridges, historic arches, and boulder spans.

Prospect Park is one of Brooklyn’s most treasured destinations with more than 10 million visitors each year. Since it opened in the mid-19th century, the park has been the site of celebrations, demonstrations, and everyday activities. From monuments and statues to pastoral vistas, this walk will guide you through Prospect Park's historic points of interest. More information about Prospect Park's history can be viewed here.

49 Eighth Avenue, 1960. The large building on the corner of 8th Avenue and Berkeley Place may only be 25 feet wide but has more than 6,500 square feet of space in its 4-plus stories. A fine example of Park Slope architecture with decorative metal work lining the mansard roof and the projected (oriel) window, the entire home has 42 windows. When the home was on the market in 2009 listings noted a ballroom on the parlor floor.

Brooklyn Riding and Driving Club, 1928. The Riding and Driving Club of Brooklyn, a fancy equestrian club, was established in 1889 by a group of elite Brooklyn men. The club commissioned the firm of McKim, Mead & White to design a Roman circus inspired building. Massive, with a curved front facade facing Prospect Park (fronting Plaza Street west of Vanderbilt Avenue), the facility was three interconnected buildings: the clubhouse, the riding ring and the stables. Here members had an indoor place to ride, practice dressage, harness and polo, and socialize with tony, like-minded neighbors. Aiming to create an exclusive community, the club originally limited membership to 200, but quickly doubled that number, a nod to its popularity and appeal (even though the $100 membership fee was not a paltry sum for most). The venture proved to be so successful that the buildings were reconfigured and added to by 1894. Frank Freeman was hired to design additions, pushing the club's campus all the way to Flatbush Avenue. The popularity of the club continued into the first two decades of the 20th century but the 1920s saw many changes for the club and its neighborhood. Interest in horse sports declined, as other entertainment pursuits flourished. The cost of upkeep to the now five buildings outpaced the revenue, particularly as the demographics of the community changes. With the wealthy leaving the neighborhood for the suburbs or Manhattan, the new apartment dwellers of the neighborhood were not interested in or could not afford this type of hobby. Finally closing in 1938, the facilities were sold soon after. The larger buildings were demolished for apartment houses, while the carriage house and motor garage were as garages until 1950s, before meeting their own end.

James S. T. Stranahan Statue in Grand Army Plaza, unknown date. Stranahan was a Congressman from New York between 1855 and 1857 and later was an influential municipal official in Brooklyn. He was president of the Brooklyn Park Commission and helped secure funds and political capital for the planned Prospect Park. As a trustee of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge Company, he presided over the dedication of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883. The bronze statue, designed by Frederick William MacMonnies with a pedestal by Standford White, was dedicated in 1891.

The city is home to more than one million school-aged children—at least an eighth of the population across the five boroughs. While there many distinct ways to be a kid in New York City, there are also some iconic experiences, places, and routines that most, if not all, city kids share as they grow up.

“90 Eighth Avenue, formerly the home of C. T. Christensen, and later of Timothy Lester Woodruff, Park Commissioner of Brooklyn and three times Lieutenant Governor of New York State. 1928.” Woodruff — a member of the Skull & Bones secret society at Yale — was major figure in the city’s Republican politics. As Park Commissioner, he was an advocate of bike paths, a full century before protected lanes along Prospect Park West became a local political flashpoint. The “for sale” sign advertises a “desirable apartment house site.” Indeed, the house was bought and razed later that year. Today, a ten-story apartment building occupies the site, which is part of the Park Slope Historic District.

The Army: Genius of Patriotism Urging American Soldiers On To Victory" group on the south pedestal of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch, ca. 1975.

Statue of Lincoln at its original location, the Prospect Park Plaza Entrance, ca. 1890.

General Warren Statue, date unknown. Gouverneur Kemble Warren was a New York-born Union Army General. After participating in a number of early Civil War battles, he was named Chief Topographical Engineer of the Army of the Potomac in 1863. Later that year, he was wounded at Gettysburg. Referred to as the "Hero of Little Round Top," he survived the war (and the humiliation of being relieved of his command during the 1865 Battle of Five Forks). His later career included building railroads near the Mississippi River in the Corps of Engineers. He died in 1882. He is one of three Civil War monuments in Grand Army Plaza. His statue was commissioned in 1896 by the G.K. Warren Post, No. 286, Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternal organization. Created by German sculptor Henry Baerer, the memorial was dedicated on July 4, 1896. Baerer's likeness of the Warren is similar to an earlier statue erected at Gettysburg in 1888. The statue's pedestal is made from granite quarried at Little Round Top, the site of his heroic moment.

St. John’s Episcopal Church, 1960. The Victorian Gothic church was completed in 1869, becoming the permanent home of the St. John’s Episcopal parish, founded in 1826. At the time, the church building included only the transepts (left) of the current structure. The present nave and chapel (right) were added during the 1880s, by which point the corner of Seventh Avenue and St. Johns Place (renamed from Douglass Street in 1870) was home to three churches of three different denominations: St. John’s, Grace United Methodist, and Memorial Presbyterian.

The Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch, ca. 1904. The Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch is a Civil War memorial located at the entrance to Prospect Park in Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza. Designed by John H. Duncan with sculptures by Frederick MacMonnies, the granite arch began construction in 1889 and was dedicated on October 21,1892 to honor the Union soldiers who perished in the Civil War. Additional statuary groups and smaller bronze pedestals were added between 1892 and 1901.

New York City accommodates all juxtapositions. Spend enough time here and no two things paired together, however odd, will seem unusual. This is the city where nothing can be out of place however willy-nilly the arrangement may be: from the gently surreal sight of a coyote cowering beneath an SUV in Manhattan, to the more terrible and spectral image of ash-covered workers wandering the daytime streets of the Financial District. Whether it is welcome or not, the city will make room for it. But for all this open-armed receptiveness -- allowing this or that to suddenly and irrevocably appear and to become a new fact of city life -- the city remains a strange host and one whose ultimate indifference can seem a form of cruelty. (This story can be seen in its original context here)

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.

Margret Apartment Building, 1921. William H. Reynolds was a Brooklyn-born real estate developer of Prospect Heights, Borough Park, and Bensonhurst. Not only known for his real estate dealings (he opened a broker's office at age 18), he was also a New York State Senator (the youngest senator at age 24), amusement park (Coney Island's Dreamland) and theatre owner, mayor of Long Beach, Long Island, convicted swindler, athlete, and all around lover of the good life. He built the Margret across from Prospect Park in the 1890s while also developing rowhouses on the surrounding blocks. In 1898 he was involved in a real estate exchange with the Cord Meyer Development Company of Queens. They got the plot the Margret was on and he got a 354 lots in Flushing, Queens. His later real estate projects included Laurelton, Queens and Long Beach, Long Island. The trolley seen at center is traveling along the Vanderbilt Avenue Line, which began service as a horse-drawn streetcar in 1869 and though a number of owners and name changes survived as a trolley through the middle of the 20th century.

Survey photograph showing the intersection of Plaza Street West, St. John's Place, and Flatbush Avenue; September 15, 1914. The photo was taken ahead of the construction of the IRT Eastern Parkway Line. Today, an there is an entrance to the Grand Army Plaza station immediately to the north of the fire hydrant in the foreground.

Meadowport Arch, ca. 1870.

With its breathtaking façade, sweeping grand lobby and vast contemporary and historical collections, Central Library is a Brooklyn icon. To read on about the Branch's history, see this page on the Brooklyn Public Library's website.

Towering over the northern entrance of Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch was built between 1889-1892 in the Beaux-Arts style as part of Prospect Park Plaza, known today as Grand Army Plaza.

Statue of General Henry Warner Slocum in Prospect Park, ca. 1975. Seated in his horse, grandly gesturing to his troops, General Henry Warner Slocum is memorialized in Prospect Park in bronze. Slocum, a Union general who played decisive role in the Union victory at the Battle of Gettysburg, later became New York Congressman. He was also very involved in Brooklyn politics and civic life in the second half of the 19th century, as investor in local businesses, as Commissioner of the Department of City (Brooklyn) Works, and as an early advocate and investor in the Brooklyn Bridge. The statue of the man was unveiled on Memorial Day 1905. Created by Frederick MacMonnies, the bronze statue echos the tradition of equestrian military portraits. The life-size piece, in its highly visible location at Grand Army Plaza suffered some during the 20th century: the metal corroded, vandals stole a number of decorative features, and graffiti covered the pedestal. The monument underwent a large-scale renovation in 1989 under the Municipal Arts Society's Adopt-a-Monument program and continues to be regularly maintained.

This grand corner home within the Park Slope Historic District was designed by Lawrence B. Valk for Charles Pied. The corner home and the three buildings to the south were all designed in the same Romanesque Revival style. No. 21 is known as the Lillian Ward Mansion as it was once the home of Ward, a famous late 19th century singer. On the morning of December 16, 1960 two commercial airliners collided in the airspace over Staten Island. One of the pilots, attempting to land the plane in Prospect Park, came down instead at the corner of Sterling Place and 7th Avenue, directly in front of the Ward Mansion. All 128 people on both planes were killed, as well as six people on the ground. The debris scattered around the neighborhood and set more than 10 buildings on fire. A church on Sterling Place was completely destroyed while the building directly across from No. 21 had its cornice sheared off by the crashing plane. Somewhat surprisingly the mansion was left completely unharmed.

Helen and Hugh L. Carey and family posed in front of the Stranahan Monument during the Prospect Park Centennial celebrations, 1966.

Meadowport Arch, date unknown. Located along Prospect Park’s West Drive between Union Street and Montgomery Place, Meadowport Archway opens out onto the 75-acre Long Meadow. This Victorian Orientalist double-archway was designed by park architects, Frederick Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, and completed by 1870. The arch has since been landmarked and registered as a National Historic Place. In the 1980s, the arch was restored with its original cedar planking.

Montauk Club This club found its inspiration in the Palazzo Santa Sofia (Ca' d'Oro ) in Venice. It is built of brick and terra cotta, and a warm yellow color pervades the whole structure. Certain windows, reminiscent of the loggia of this Italian palazzo, are replete with flamboyant Venetian Gothic detail.

Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch, ca. 1977. This full-fledged triumphal arch bearing aloft a sculptured quadric is a symbol of civic pride as well as a memorial to the soldiers and sailors it honors. It makes the principal entrance to Brooklyn's most beautiful park and closes the long vista of Flatbush Avenue most effectively.

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.

Public School 111 ARCHITECT: Samuel B. Leonard DATE: 1867-68 STYLE: Romanesque Revival Public School 111 has been a neighborhood institution in the Prospect Heights section of Brooklyn for 150 years. Prominently sited at the northwest corner of Sterling Place and Vanderbilt Avenue near Grand Army Plaza, it is a handsome brick school building in the early Romanesque Revival, or round-arched, style. When the building opened in 1868 it was known as Public School 9. The school building is a fine example of the early Romanesque Revival style, distinguished by round arches executed ln brick.

Sixth Avenue Baptist Church, February 28, 1960. Founded in 1872 following a split with the nearby Hanson Place Baptist Church, the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church first occupied a wood-frame Sunday school mission on its present site. Construction on the current church building commenced in 1880 and completed just after Christmas of that year.

"East side of Sixth Avenue between Berkeley Place and Lincoln Place, looking north."

Walking in a winter wonderland… As the City continues to reopen there are many opportunities to enjoy the enchanting sights and sounds of the season. There are holiday train shows, ice skating, holiday markets, decorated department store windows, and more just waiting for you to discover and explore.

The Prospect Hill Water Tower, unknown date. The Prospect Hill Water Tower once stood at the intersection of Eastern Parkway and Flatbush Avenue. First built to supply nearby houses with water, by the late 1800s the towering 30-foot gothic structure had become a famed Brooklyn sight. It stood adjacent to Mount Prospect Reservoir, which no longer exists today, and afforded Brooklynites with a view that overlooked the the entire city. According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the 20-feet deep Mount Prospect Reservoir contained “just about enough water to cook the breakfast of the people of Brooklyn for a week.” In fact, back when Brooklyn was an independent city, most drinking water was pumped from Long Island, into a large receiving reservoir in Ridgewood, Queens, and eventually fed into this reservoir. During water shortages, including an acute episode in January of 1893, the tower was pressed into service to relieve parched residents. In 1930, the Water Tower was demolished to make way for the expansion of the Brooklyn Public Library.

The Montauk Club, 1928. Described as “an architectural treasure on the slope” in the 1973 Park Slope Historic District Designation Report, the Montauk Club building was the headquarters of an exclusive gentlemen’s social club, whose founders included Gilded Age luminaries like Charles Pratt. The club was named after the Montauk Native American tribe, whose history is depicted in a continuous terra cotta frieze atop the third story, along the Eighth Avenue, Lincoln Place and Plaza Street facades. The massive Venetian Gothic clubhouse was designed by Francis H. Kimball, who took inspiration from the Ca' d'Oro, a 15th century Venetian palace on the Grand Canal. Kimball’s design includes Gothic Arches with intricate terra cotta ornamentation, surmounted by quatrefoils, and that most Venetian of features: a second floor loggia (covered exterior corridor), itself an element of a grand two-story bay facing Plaza Street. The Club was unusual for its acceptance of Jewish members and its inclusion of women in Club activities (though they were excluded from full membership until the 1960s). A separate “women’s entrance,” left of the main entrance led to a staircase to the second floor dining room. Today, that entrance leads to the residential portion of the building — the club continues to operate, but declining membership and rising costs forced members to convert and sell the upper floors and basement.

Crown Heights has a rich and diverse history. Though it began as farmland, it developed as a fashionable locale for the second homes of bourgeois Manhattanites. Eastern Parkway soon was studded with cultural institutions and mansions. Furthermore, the 20th century marked an influx of Jewish and later Caribbean immigration, with both communities infusing Crown Heights with new cultures and making their mark on the neighborhood.

“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.”

The Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch, ca. 1907.

The Hampton Apartments, ca. 1905. While Prospect Park West was developing in the early 20th century, the housing stock was made up of attractive rowhouses and mansions. In 1902 real estate developer Carl J. Zimmerman changed all of that with his plans for an upscale apartment house. The Hampton was six-story brick and limestone structure with an elevator. It was designed by Schwartz & Gross, who would go on to become one of the city's most prolific apartment house designers (particularly on the Upper West Side). The Hampton remained one of the few large apartment houses on PPW for the next 20 years. The late 1920s saw an brief influx in the construction of these types of buildings and the Hampton was victim to that development. It was purchased by developer Samuel Wander, demolished in 1928, and replaced with a 15-story (plus penthouse) building the next year.

Grand Army Plaza, ca. 1903. Grand Army Plaza was built during the original construction of Prospect Park in the 1860s, one of the first features of the park to be designed and completed. The plaza was designed by park planners Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted. Grand Army Plaza is also home to the Soldiers and Sailors Arch, which is similar in design to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France. Dedicated to Union soldiers, the arch was designed by John H. Duncan, whose proposal was selected from 36 applicants who submitted their plans for the monument. Construction began in 1889, and the arch was unveiled in 1892. The bronze statues that adorn the arch were added beginning in 1898. On top of the arch is a statue of three women in a four-horse chariot, leading the soldiers to victory. On the inside of the arch are reliefs of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant on horseback. The two large groups of figures on the south face of the arch are meant to welcome the soldiers and sailors home from war.

"St. John's Place, west from Eighth Ave., showing Grace Methodist Episcopal Church at the right, and the Memorial Presbyterian Church at the left, in the background." This 1928 looking west along St. John's Place is unobstructed enough that the photographer could capture the steeples of the two church at the next corner at 7th Avenue. The greening of these residential streets of Park Slope have made that same view today certainly more verdant but also less far reaching. This current lush view was likely created by the Park Slope Civic Council, which in the 1950s and 1960s advocated against urban renewal demolition, for historic preservation, and for the greening of the neighborhood through the planting of thousands of trees.

Parade honoring the pennant-winning Brooklyn Dodgers passes under the Soldiers' and Sailors' Arch at Grand Army Plaza, September 29, 1941.

Pillar of Fire Church, August 6, 1942.