1212 



PARK 



PLAN OF 



PROSPECT PARK 



BROOKLYN 

 CIT-V 



BOROUGH OF 



NEW VOPtK 



1642. Plan of Prospect Park, Brooklyn, to illustrate the large rural park. 



tunately become more so in proportion to the size of 

 the cities within the last fifteen years through the de- 

 velopment of trolley car lines and the use of the bicycle ; 

 but this increased accessibility of the country has been 

 in part offset by the growth of the cities during the same 

 period, and by the serious impairment of the rural quiet 

 of the suburban regions through the same cause im- 

 proved cheap transportation. It is therefore necessary, 

 if the people of large cities are to have easy access to 

 refreshing rural scenery, that the municipality should 

 withdraw from its taxable area a tract sufficiently large 

 to provide such scenery within its own limits. The cost, 

 both directly in money and indirectly through interfer- 

 ence with the street system and with the normal com- 

 mercial development of the land, is necessarily very 

 great, and only the purpose of providing beautiful scen- 

 ery, thoroughly contrasting with the city life and 

 measurably sequestered from all its sights and sounds, 

 can justify this cost, because almost all the other 

 purposes served in public recreation grounds can be 

 met more economically and far more conveniently in 

 smaller areas distributed throughout the city. The 

 essential characteristics of a well-designed and well- 

 managed park of this class are, therefore, that all of 

 the numerous other objects which it may serve are 

 subordinated to the provision of beautiful scenery and 

 to rendering this scenery accessible and enjoyable by 

 large numbers of people, and that the subordinate ob- 

 jects are met only in such ways and to such a degree 

 as will not interfere with the simplicity and the rural 

 and natural quality of the scenery. 



Although Central Park, in New York, is the most 

 noted park of this class in America, it can hardly be 

 taken as the most typical example on account of its 

 rocky, complicated topography, its unfortunately nar- 

 row shape, owing to which the surrounding high build- 

 ings to a great extent dominate its scenery, and to the 

 interruption offered by the great reservoirs which cut it 

 into two independent parts. Prospect Park, in Brook- 

 lyn, begun in 1866, is here described in some detail for 

 the purpose of affording a concrete example of the 

 principles that the writer wishes to illustrate respect- 

 ing rural parks. Fig. 1642 and Plate XXV. 



Prospect Park has an area of 526% acres. Its main en- 

 trance is about 3% miles from New York City Hall, or 

 \% miles from Brooklyn City Hall. It is approached from 

 the city by four lines of trolley cars, but is at the city 



end of the Parkway System, so that it must be reached 

 through ordinary streets. The chief features of its de- 

 sign are: 1st, the open, park-like landscape of the Long 

 Meadow; 2d, the woodland section, hilly and rising to 

 an elevated outlook; 3d, the lake and its surroundings; 

 4th, a series of minor passages of scenery and ele- 

 ments of interest fitted in at points not appropriated 

 for the main effects. The most characteristic and most 

 valuable part of the park is the Long Meadow with 

 its surrounding masses of wood, from the shade of 

 which the outlook ranges over one of the most beauti- 

 ful and simple park landscapes in the country. But 

 one is not brought directly to the Meadow from the 

 outside streets. One goes at first through a formal plaza, 

 then through a retired, shady ante-chamber, just long 

 enough to give a sense of retirement from the city, then, 

 if on foot, through an archway under the drive, that 

 does away with the nervousness of crossing a throng of 

 carriages, and then one comes out suddenly upon the 

 joyous, sunny greensward. Its extent over 50 acres- 

 is enough to secure an effect of breadth and enlarged 

 freedom without bringing its whole expanse into a sin- 

 gle view. One can see that it reaches beyond the pro- 

 jecting groves and scattered trees that form the back- 

 ground of the main composition, and he is tempted to 

 stroll on and open up the prospects thus suggested. The 

 surrounding groves are freely used for picnic parties, 

 and although much of the ground is tramped bare 

 beneath the trees, but little serious harm is done. A 

 carrousel or merry-go-round with its loud, mechanical 

 organ, the only discordant feature of the place, was 

 removed to this point a few years ago. This piece of ap- 

 paratus was originally designed to be in a retired section 

 devoted to children's games, where all sorts of amusing 

 apparatus might be placed without intruding on the park 

 at large. The children's playground, not being shady 

 or attractive for its purpose, has now been transformed 

 into a rose garden. On the lower edge of the Long 

 Meadow are the pools which are at the source of the 

 park ornamental water system. They illustrate both the 

 value of water in a park landscape and the practical 

 difficulty of securing and maintaining agreeable natural 

 shores within the confines of a large city. Where the 

 banks are clothed with shrubs the effect is admirable, 

 but wherever the grass-land comes to the water's edge 

 and in many places where shrubs once grew, the ground 

 has become foot-worn to utter bareness. Little iron 



