Prospect Park

History and Ecology of Prospect Park

Five hundred eighty-five acres in size, the so-called “Central Park of Brooklyn” lies in the heart of the city of New York’s most populated borough. Prospect Park is often compared to Central Park of Manhattan, as its designers and architects, Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmstead, are the same for both parks. “Brooklyn’s only forest is here, along with a complex water system, rolling meadows and shaded hillsides.¹ The park has nearly eight million visitors per year, and features its own zoo, an enormous 60-acre lake, and seasonal events including the “Celebrate Brooklyn! Performing Arts Festival,” as well as the nearby Brooklyn Botanical Garden. Similar to the Central Park Conservancy, the Prospect Park Alliance consists of countless dedicated members that help maintain the park and keep it clean and safe. Prospect Park, its rich history, background, and ecology, give the borough of Brooklyn something truly special to boast about.

After much research and hands-on field work, our group has composed a collection of data and organized it in form of web-presentation. Our Prospect Park section includes a history of the Park, stemming from the pre-colonial era and onward, as well as a thorough description of Olmsted’s vision of the park and how it was ultimately made. We further investigate the Park’s nature as we have devoted an entire sub-section to tree identification, which relates to and helps to characterize the ecology of the Park today. In another sub-section, we identify the “protectors of the Park” today, how it is preserved and kept clean, and what problems it may occur with nature, wildlife, or other factors. Prospect Park has been a treat to study, and we used an overwhelming amount of information on the Park from the many sources we had found into forming what is on this website today. We hope you enjoy looking through it as much as we did in producing it.

Prospect Park Picture Gallery

Flowers and Bumble Bee	Trees in Prospect Park	Flowers and Pollinators
Swans	Audubon Center	Ducks
Turtles	Ground	Squirrel
Fire Hydrant	Fungus	Prospect Park Lake

Prospect Park Investigation

Site Authors

Adam Hashemi
Fred Shabat
Yi Jun (James) Zhang

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