Prospect Park, Part 1

Brooklyn's massive public green space tells the historical story of its community. From an undeveloped tract of land, the space was developed to become an Olmsted and Vaux masterpiece.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to steph you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson, and I
would like to apologize for my slight cold voice today.

(00:22):
You can just start singing a torch song in the
middle horse, it'll be good. Uh. This week, we are
going to be celebrating a major milestone in a prominent
park in the United States, because it is the hundred
and fiftieth anniversary this year of Brooklyn's Prospect Park, and
there's so much celebrating to do that we're actually going
to take two episodes to do it. So here's how
that's gonna work. In this first episode, we're going to

(00:44):
talk about Prospect parks beginnings from an idea born of
a little bit of competitive civic pride to a realized
public space that could serve the recreational needs of the community.
And then, uh, we're gonna jump a little bit because
if we tried to tell the comprehensive story of press
Peg Park, it would be its own podcast for several months. Uh,
there's a lot that's happened in its history. But then

(01:05):
we're gonna jump a little bit in the second episode,
and we're going to talk about how Prospect Park is
so much part of Brooklyn's historical and cultural identity, and
how the last several decades in particular, have been a
time of great effort to rejuvenate and restore the park
after it experienced a period of decline. In some ways,
the story of Prospect Park really begins with Central Parks

(01:28):
creation in the late eighteen fifties that catalyzed a competitive
desire for a similar space in Brooklyn, But even before that,
as early as the eighteen twenties, there was a lot
of serious discussion about the need for a park space
in Brooklyn. In the eighteen thirties, the Governor of New York,
William L. Marcy, tasked a commission with exploring the possibilities

(01:49):
of a park system for Brooklyn, and the result was
a plan for eleven parks. But that plan was only
partially executed. A lot of the proposed parks that were
on it were really quite small, and the allotted space
that they had would not meet the needs of the
area's growing population. And one of the parks that did

(02:09):
come to fruition from that plan was Fort Green Park.
Which was championed by none other than Walt Whitman, who
wrote of the need for this park in his role
as editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in the eighteen forties.
Fort Green is actually where Whitman is said to have
written Leaves of Grass. But once Manhattan's Central Park was
created in eighteen fifty seven, that really lit the competitive fire.

(02:32):
Brooklyn wanted to develop a comparable space for its blue
collar residents who wouldn't necessarily have the option of traveling
to a resort in the summer, and in eighteen fifty nine,
a new Brooklyn Park Commission was authorized by the New
York Legislature. One of the parcels of land that the
committee acquired was a large plot that included the reservoir

(02:53):
at Mount Prospect, although not Mount Prospect itself. After another
plot of land, which was actually larger, was d to
be too far from the center of Brooklyn to be
ideal for the project, the Prospect Park location was chosen
for development, and James Stranahan, who was a prominent civic
leader of Brooklyn, was chosen as chairman of the Park Commission.

(03:13):
Throughout the late eighteen hundreds, James Stranahan works to bolster
Brooklyn's image. New Yorkers looked down on Brooklyn and its citizens,
and he wanted to change that. When it came to
Prospect Park, he thought that unless Brooklyn developed its own
impressive green space, it would just be relegated to a
role as a quote second rate suburb of a greater city. Yeah.

(03:34):
He's a really interesting figure and could easily be an
episode of his own. He might be in the future.
Uh And the Park Commission hired Egbert L. V Lay
in eighteen sixty two plan this new park, and Valet
had actually worked on the design of Central Park, but
his plans were abandoned in favor of a design by

(03:55):
Frederick Law Olmstead and Couvert Vox. V Lay had some
better arnus about Olmsted and Box, and and his writing
about Prospect Park, he took an opportunity to dig at
his rivals. Some of the elements of the Central Park
design that Olmsted and Box had created were man made,
including the creation of a lake. Valet wrote that this

(04:16):
was not only an expensive idea that should not be
copied in Prospect Park, but also that doing so would
be quote an infringement upon good taste and upon that
regard for the beauties of nature possessed by every cultivated mind.
It's a little snooty. Uh yeah, there, there's definitely some

(04:36):
some cattiness there. But unfortunately, the Civil War actually swarted
Vlay's Prospect Park plans. There was a construction moratorium due
to the war effort, and during the years of delay,
the Park Commission looked at other designs and ultimately, out
of this sense of competition with Central Park, decided that
they wanted a bigger park in Brooklyn than what they

(04:57):
were initially looking at. And so once the Civil Or
ended and they were able to move forward with plans,
the Commission staged another design competition. They basically um asked
people to submit their ideas for a new, bigger plan.
In In eighteen sixty five, Let's rival Calvert Vox was
chosen as Prospect Parks designer, which really had to be

(05:18):
like just a kick in the teeth after after Central Park.
Before we get into the Prospect Park project, we should
give a quipment of background on Calvert Vox and his
most famous partner, Frederick law Olmstead. Yeah, if you are
a New Yorker, you probably know their names, and if
you are at all into landscape or architecture, you probably

(05:39):
know both of their names. They're pretty famous. But in
case you don't know anything about them, we have you covered.
In particular. One is one who immediately jumps to mind. Yeah. Yeah,
they're definitely famous names in this arena. Vox was born
in England in eighteen twenty four. He was the son
of a London apothecary surgeon, and as a young man

(06:01):
he left his studies at the Merchant Taylors School in
eighteen forty three so that he could pursue an architecture
apprenticeship under Lewis Knuckles Cottingham, who influenced Vox's work For years.
While Vox learned his chosen profession and worked under Cottingham,
he also worked odd jobs, including as a calligrapher working
on maps and signs. In eighteen fifty, Vox met American

(06:24):
landscape designer Andrew Jackson Downing at a London art exhibit
where some of Fox's drawings were on display. Downing wanted
to expand his firm and he needed an architect, and
in Box's work, he thought he'd found the right man
for the job. He offered Calbert Vox a position on
the spot, which he accepted, and so the young Englishman

(06:44):
moved to New York, and before long Vox was actually
made a partner at the firm, and he and Downing
collaborated several times, including on a project to improve the
public grounds that surrounded the White House and Smithsonian Institution,
and the pair most likely would have continued their partnership
into the design of Central Park, but Downing died in
a boiler accident while he was aboard the steamer Henry

(07:06):
Clay in eighteen fifty two, so even though they became
very close and worked closely together, they really only had
a two year relationship. Vox, however, would later name one
of his children after his friend and collaborator. Fox married
Mary Swann McKenzie in eighteen fifty four, and the couple
had four children, two sons and two daughters. They moved

(07:27):
to a house on the New Jersey Palisades with a
view of the Hudson River. His friends were poets, painters,
and journalists, and he was a member of the New
York's of New York's Century Association, which promoted the arts
of literature and Caldert. Vox found the US to be
a little too obsessed with financial wealth and too void
of artistic education, and that mentality really fueled his work

(07:51):
and his home designs that he was doing really broke
with tradition, so they favored fewer of the rarely used
formal spaces, think like formal dining rooms and formal sitting rooms,
and instead he designed in more beautiful everyday room so
they were just as lovely as any of those far
more rooms, but they were intended for everyday use. He
also designed the original building for the Metropolitan Museum of

(08:14):
Art and the American Museum of Natural History. Unlike Fox,
Frederick law Onstead born in eighteen two in Hartford, Connecticut
did not attend school to become a landscape designer an architect.
He lost his mother at the age of three, and
his father and stepmother sent him away to a religious
school at age seven. He stayed in the tutelage of

(08:34):
the clergy until he was fifteen. Young Olmsted was really
intensely curious, and he was an explorer of both the
outdoors and of information by his nature. But he wasn't
terribly disciplined, and that's one of the reasons probably that
he opted not to attend Yale when he was accepted there,
but that outgoing free spirit of his would later serve

(08:56):
as the perfect balance to Voxes English propriety and reserve.
He drifted from job to job as a young man,
working as a surveyor, a farmer, and a journalist, among
other things, while his father, a dry goods merchant, supplemented
his income. He had no intention of ever designing parks,
and even after he and Vox design Central Park, he

(09:16):
left New York and eventually became a manager of the
Mariposa Mining estate in California. Yeah. I find it so
interesting that even after creating Central Park, he wasn't like,
this is my job now. He was like, well, next,
what's next. He had married Mary Perkins O Instead in
eighteen fifty nine, who was his brother John's widow, taking
on parenthood of John and Mary's three children in the process,

(09:40):
and Mary and Frederick would go on to have four
children of their own together, although two of them died
in childhood. Once Vox had been approved for the Prospect
Park project, he insisted that Olmstead joined, but Olmstead, who
was busy with his California job, wasn't particularly eager to
take on the task. He had taken a few landscape
jobs while he was in California, including chairing a commission

(10:02):
to oversee Yosemite State Park. But Vox, who would not
take Olmsted's no for an answer, continued to work on
persuading his friend to join him. Eventually, Vox's promise that
the Prospect Park project would give them a chance to
create a park for all of the people of Brooklyn,
cutting across social strata and with the freedom to do

(10:24):
as they wish, convinced Olmsted to take the job. And
an added factor was the fact that the mining operation
was failing. In eighteen sixty six, Olmsted made his way
back across the country and he and Vox started work
in earnest On Prospect Park. And before we get into
the hard work that Olmsted, Vox and their team put
into turning a blank slate into a park for all people,

(10:47):
we're first going to pause and have a quick word
from one of our sponsors. Vox's initial plan for the
park augment the plan that Vla had created by adding
several hundred acres. He was quick to point out that
he had found Vlay's design clumsy and inelegant, so clearly

(11:08):
those two did like to snipe at each other. Uh
Voxes proposed layout is more or less how the park
is today, with a large meadow, a wooded ravine, and
a lake on the southern end of the property. The lake,
vox promised Stranahan would be twice the size of Central
Parks Lake. For inspiration, as they developed their vision, Fox
and Olmsted turned to eighteenth and early nineteenth century British landscapes.

(11:32):
Fox had grown up among them, and Olmsted had visited
and interviewed landscapers in Britain. Birkenhead Park in Merseyside, England,
was of particular interest to them. Like the Prospect Park project,
it had started out on an undeveloped plot that basically
was considered wasteland. In a report to the Brooklyn Park
Commission written in eighteen sixty six, Olmsted wrote quote, although

(11:56):
we cannot have wild mountain gorges, for instance, on the park,
we may have rugged ravines shaded with trees and made
picturesque with shrubs, the forms and arrangement of which remind
us of mountain scenery. We may perhaps even secure some
slight approach to the mystery, variety and luxuriance of tropical
scenery by an assemblage of certain forms of vegetation, Gay

(12:18):
with flowers and intricate and Maizie with vines and creepers, ferns,
rushes and broad leaved plants. As the pair worked on
their design, they focused on the visual. The park was
intended to offer both beautiful views of the surrounding city
as well as pastoral tableau within the park itself. Every feature,
from footbridges, to artists, to their to the placement of

(12:40):
shrubbery was considered with how visitors would see it. There
was also a very very conscious effort to make the
park a place that transcended social convention. It was intended
that the rich and the poor would enjoy this space
together and find commonality as a community. Drives, walkways, and
paths were designed to bring people together and create a

(13:01):
democratized experience for one and all. There had been a
section included in Let's park designs called the east Side Lands.
This area sat on Flatbush Avenue. Ohmstead and Box did
not include this in their design, but instead suggested that
the city set aside that property for things like libraries
and museums. Instead, Stranahan saw us as an opportunity to

(13:23):
pay for the additional acreage that was included in Fox's
initial layout. They could sell that tract of land and
use the money for additional land acquisition. But this was
not a universally accepted plan. There were arguments that it
should be included in the park, and some of the
landowners who had given up that land for the park
wanted it back if it if it wasn't going to

(13:44):
be used for this big green space for the community.
That battle over the tract of land went on actually
for more than two decades, but finally in that flat
Bush parcel was sold. Prospect Parks construction started on July one,
eighteen sixty six. It was a chadic times as there
were so many workmen on the grounds. They were up

(14:04):
to workers there on any given day, along with mules
and horses. They worked a ten hour day and made
a dollar and seventy cents per day for their labor. Additionally,
one of the early challenges was rounding up the wandering
livestock from neighboring properties and returning them to their home
turf so that the work could be done without these obstacles,

(14:27):
these little living, wandering obstacles. Um. Yeah, there was a
thing that I read in in one of my sources
that said that Stranahan was particularly pleased with himself because
the workmen at Prospect Park, we're working a longer day
for less than what Manhattan had paid for Central Parks workers.

(14:49):
I think they paid two dollars a day for eight
hours of labor. So he was he was very pleased
that they had managed to make this budgetary move, even
though from the from this standpoint of the workman, that
kind of sucks. Kind of not a bragging point. They're right. Uh.
One of the major efforts in those early days of
the construction was the development of a drainage system under

(15:11):
the meadow. Olmstead was in charge of the installation of
the park system of specially treated clay drain pipes, which
was designed to handle as much as two inches of
rain per hour, taking runoff through a series of pipes
to drain into the waterways. This system, designed to run
into existing bodies of water rather than a sewer system,
was considered way ahead of its time. The meadow was

(15:33):
cleared of peat and replaced with a mixture of soils
designed to create a fertile bed. Carriageways and a walking
path along the meadow were given the best possible sight
lines through careful placement, often routing them too raised up ground.
Dead trees were removed and surviving trees were pruned, and
thousands and thousands of trees were brought in. More than

(15:55):
forty thousand trees, for example, were planted in the park
in eighteen sixty nine at and at that time there
were more than a hundred thousand more in the nursery
that were being prepared for future placement. The lake was
the biggest construction challenge, had to be excavated, and as
it reached to depth of seven feet which is a
little more than two meters in some places, a temporary

(16:16):
rail track for horse carriages had to be developed to
carry away the mass amounts of earth that the workers
were removing. And the lake had some problems initially, so
the liner of the lake, which was made of this
clay paste, was too porous and it leaked. And the solution,
it turned out, was silt which was settled into the
clay liner and created a seal. And that liner, repaired

(16:37):
with silt, is actually still there. The other issue of
the lake was that even though the drainage design fed
into it, there was still too much water evaporation, as
much as five thousand gallons a day and warm weather.
To address this issue, an impressive well was built. It
was fifty four feet or sixteen point four meters in diameter,
and its descent into the ground was carefully controlled, dropping

(17:00):
an inch at a time as workers dug out the
ground beneath it, until it reached a depth of seventy feet,
which is twenty one point three meters. Vox designed the
well and boiler house for the well, and that house
actually still stands. The well itself provided water to the
park until nineteen eleven, when the increasing demands of the
park catalyzed a switch to city provided water. While the

(17:23):
well and boiler house remains, some of the structures designed
by Box, such as the thatched shelters, no longer exist.
But consistent throughout the buildings that he designed was their
integration into the natural landscape. In some cases, such as
the concert grove, the landscape and architecture came together to
create one cohesive design. The park commissioners opened the park

(17:45):
to the public on October nineteenth of eighteen sixty seven
while it was still under construction. It took several more
years for most of the structures to be completed, but
by eighteen seventy three, the majority of the buildings were finished.
But in that year, the banking firm of J. Cook
and Company, which was heavily invested in the U. S.
Railroad industry, closed due to bankruptcy. The collapse of such

(18:07):
a giant in the finance room caused a panic and
catalyzed a decade long depression that meant that some of
the elements of Prospect Parks architectural design were shelved indefinitely.
Fox had designed a restaurant, a stone observation tower, and
a carriage concourse that would never come to fruition because
of the panic of eighteen seventy three. Yeah, they basically

(18:28):
finished any projects that were in process already when that
panic happened, but nothing else got added to the roster.
And coming up, we're gonna get into how this new
space was actually used in its early years and what
happened to its creators after they moved on to other projects.
But first we are going to take a quick little
sponsor break. So before the break, we were talking about

(18:53):
the panic of eighteen seventy three and how it stopped
construction on the remaining buildings that have been planned for
Prospect Park. But even with that new construction halted, the
park really was still a fully realized public space that
had been open for several years at that point and
was drawing crowds. Anyone could enjoy the spectacular landscape and
the lovely walking paths, or any of the other amenities

(19:14):
of Prospect Park without spending any money at all. New
Hampshire and Southbound sheep wandered in the long meadow. Archery
and croquet were also popular there. The dairy offered sandwiches
and fresh milk for purchase and was situated in a
spot where no cares lanes approached it, so the area
immediately surrounding it became a popular place for families to

(19:35):
relax the let children play out of the way of danger.
Picnics in the park or of course particularly popular, but
that was in part because Central Park didn't allow picnicking,
so some New Yorkers from Manhattan would go over to
Brooklyn to enjoy a meal while relaxing outdoors, and this
actually caused some issues as some of Brooklyn's residents were

(19:56):
not super enthused to have their park used by the
Manhattan crowd, laiming that they often dressed too casually and
they left behind trash from their meals and with people
who had the finances to put toward park diversions. Carriage
rides around the park were immensely popular, particularly in the
evenings the sun as the sun went down and the
gas lamps came on too light the lanes. A carousel

(20:19):
powered by an elderly blind horse was installed in eighteen
seventy four. Yeah, that carousel was so popular that they
were like, we need another one of those. The park's
parade ground, which had been added to the south end
of the park in eighteen sixty seven, was put to
use from military parades, which drew crowds of spectators, but
with increasing frequency in the park's early years, the parade

(20:41):
ground also became a popular spot for sporting events such
as baseball, rugby, and even polo. Throughout the eighteen seventies,
there were concerts in the park on Saturday afternoons at
the Concert Grove on the Music Island stage, although the
acoustics combined with breezes on the lake's water We're Not
are a good They made for kind of a mediocre

(21:02):
listening experience. Eventually, musical performances were moved to a temporary venue,
and then a dedicated music pagoda was built in the
eighteen eighties with much better sound. Olmsted and Box dissolved
their partnership in eighteen seventy three, but they remained friends
and they did occasionally collaborate on special projects together. Their

(21:22):
last endeavor as a team, which also included their sons John,
Charles Olmstead and Downing Vox, was the Andrew Jackson Downing Park,
located in Newburgh, New York. After Prospect Park went on
to become an incredibly sought after and famous landscape designer.
He worked on parks throughout the United States and Canada.
Vox designed estates and their surrounding grounds, and eventually became

(21:45):
the chief architect of the New York City Park Commission.
Vox died in eight at the age of seventy, and
his cause of death was not determined. It's kind of
one of those sort of weird situations. After he had
gone for a shoreline and walk at Gravesend Bay while
he was visiting his son, his body was found by
a peer with a bruise on his head and a

(22:06):
cut over one eye. He was also missing a shoe,
his hat, and his glasses. And while it's entirely probable
that Vox, who was not intremendously good health at this point,
might have tripped or fainted and had an accidental drowning situation,
there were sort of gossipy theories that started circulating at
the time that he might have committed suicide. As Olmsted's

(22:26):
aide advanced, the fame landscape designer developed dementia. He was
confined at the McLean Asylum in Massachusetts in at the
request of his wife, and he died there in nineteen
o three. The landscape of the McLean Asylum had been
designed by none other than Olmsted himself when he was
a younger man. Author David P. Collie wrote of the

(22:48):
creative relationship of Olmsted and Box quote, one could imagine
Prospect Park is the product of a perfect collaboration between
two partners at the peak of their abilities, an alliance
so effective that Knee their man was ever as creative
as when they worked together. Here it was Prospect Parks
champion on the park commissioned James Stranahan, who had perhaps

(23:08):
the most point for farewell to the project. After he
died in his summer home in Saratoga Springs, New York,
Stranahan was laid to rest in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
His funeral procession passed through the park on route to
the cemetery, and his friends and employees of the park
lined the road. And while Stranahan isn't mentioned in association

(23:29):
with the park the way Olm staid in box usually are,
there is a statue of him at the Grand Army
Plaza entrance with a Latin inscription that reads translated reader,
if you want my monument, look around you. And that
is incidentally a copy of part of the epitaph of
seventeenth and eighteenth century architect Christopher Wrenten. Like his his
Christopher Wren's son wrote that and then it was copied

(23:51):
on Stranahan's uh statue in the park. So that's the
early years of Prospect Park. Okay, yeah, what are we
doing next time? Holly? So next time, as I mentioned
at the top of the episode, we're going to talk
about some of the more modern stuff that went on
that's gone on in Prospect Parking and sort of how
it it has been a part of Brooklyn's uh community

(24:14):
and cultural identity. UH. And we'll have some guests on
the show from the Prospect Park Alliance UH as well
as another guest. We're going to have some people talking
with expertise about Prospect Park and what it's what it's
meant for Brooklyn over the year. So join us for that.
That's in part two. UH. And I will say now

(24:35):
and I will say again then thank you to the
Prospect Park Alliance for helping us put this episode together. UH.
So yeah, join us for that and close out this episode.
I also have a little Bettle listener mail. It's a
short one and it's a correction. Uh. It is from
our listener Kristen, and it is about our John Kidwell
Pineapple episode. She writes a Dear Tracy and Holly, I
just want to say how much I love your podcast
and thank my daughter for introducing me to it a

(24:56):
year ago. I have one small issue with the kid
Well Pineapple episode. Minoa Valley which is very near Wakiki.
It is the valley directly above It is, however, not
near the north shore. Waikiki is on the central leeward
side of Oahu. In the north shore is on the
windward side and about as far apart as you can
get running north to south on the island. After living
in Minoa Valley for four point five years, I was

(25:17):
really thrilled to hear a podcast about Hawaii. This is
one of those times one that's my fault and I'm sorry,
But it is also one of those times where, um,
I realize how much near is a relative term, because, ohaha,
who is very small in the big picture lake if
you live somewhere you know, for example, like I live
just outside the main city of Atlanta. I'm laughing because

(25:42):
I know where you live to Atlanta, so it takes me,
you know, thirty minutes to get to work, which I
would say is near, right, But I met other people
would not. So that's some of it is that when
I look at Oahu, it all looks kind of near
to each other to me. So that's my fault for
not really thinking about them the relative distance. If you

(26:07):
are on Owahoo, of what is near and far apart,
it all looks near to each other. So I'm so sorry. Yeah,
it's funny to me how people who live in different
places frame the distance that things are from one another.
Like the folks I know who live in Texas will
just drive an hour and a half to get somewhere
because Texas is big, things are spread out, and that's

(26:29):
that's near. It's sure, it's near. One of the first
trips that I made to Massachusetts before moving here, we
were going to go to a water park uh, and
my now husband was asking me to put in the
directions into his his car GPS uh and he said, okay,
start with the state. It's in New Hampshire And I
was like, what, we're going to New Hampshire today. That's

(26:49):
a whole other state that's forever away, not in New England. Yeah, yeah,
uh yeah, it's a We had a discussion with one
of our our drivers while we were in a wah
who in December, where he was saying, um, we were
asking how long it would take to drive around the
whole island and he said something like two and a
half three hours, and my husband said, that's how long
it takes to drive around the perimeter in Atlanta. So

(27:12):
that's why my near and far is is very skew.
I'm thinking about Grover because it's all right, who I mean,
I'm always thinking about Grover a little. But but thank you,
thank you, thank you. I'm so sorry that I framed
that in a way that made it sound completely inaccurate,
and thank you Kristen for fixing that for me. UH.
If you would like to write to us, you can

(27:33):
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(28:15):
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(28:40):
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