Prospect: A Year in the Park

Unforgotten Prospects

What happens when you take a "Forgotten New York" tour with time-lapsing historian Kevin Walsh?

Well, if you've been photographing and blogging about Prospect Park for 8 years, you still see stuff you never noticed before. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This bronze statue by Henry Kirke Brown, originally placed in Grand Army Plaza in 1869, was the first statue of Lincoln ever erected in the Union. (It was moved here to the Concert Grove in 1896.) I never knew that the "USN" and "USA" on the base stood for the army and navy.

Kevin agrees that Abe spent years looking vaguely disgusted at his view of the Zamboni for the ratty old Wollman skating rink. (At right: Construction several years ago, as the lake shore was reconfigured). The spiffy new rink sits south of here, and now Abe gazes on the recreated "Music Island" as part of the park's epic Lakeshore redevelopment.

 

 

Here's his view today, just as spring started smudging the trees with green. Today's offshore island is for wildlife, not concert bands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We covered too much ground to recount in detail, but I loved seeing these two details for the first time.

I pass the colonnaded shelter at the Coney Island Avenue traffic circle, right opposite the TD Bank, almost every day, but had never gone inside and looked up. If you do that, here's what you see. This pigeon parent has good taste in real estate: McKim, Mead and White, no less.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And if you peer closely at the dense detailing atop the Corinthian columns on the "Grecian Shelter," which I can see from my front porch, there are slender, scalloped mushrooms!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We ended up on the porch of the Crazy Stable, where refreshments came at a price: hearing the ripping yarn of how the StableMistress inadvertently convinced the New York Times that our Caton Park neighborhood on the park's southern edge was called NoProPaSo. For the full tale, minus cookies and lemonade, go here. Thanks to FNY's incredibly gifted photographer Shunsuke Takino for this lovely shot of the Stable!

Kevin gives several of these great tours every year; you will see the cityscape with a layer pulled back, with bygone times revealed, sometimes, by the faintest traces. Go here for a full schedule.

Who ya gonna call? Not these louts.

A local blog, Park Slope Stoop, reports on a new activity for the bored, boozy young: a "Brooklyn Paranormal Society" whose waggish stated mission is "finding ghosts while inebriated." Their recent eveing in Prospect Park apparently attracted a big crowd of Bluto-meets-Venkman wanna-bes, who headed off with some paraphernalia and a "psychic" to laff it up. Here's a shot of the merry-makers on a previous trip to Fort Greene Park last month.

 

Not to go all Sam the Eagle here, but behind these tippling ignorami is the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument, which marks the site of a crypt containing just some of the mortal remains of more than 11,500 patriots who died hideously of overcrowding, starvation, and disease after the Battle of Brooklyn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My husband is a big fan of "ghost tours," a staple of cute historic towns; I find them hokey and tedious, occasionally brightened by a talented out-of-work actor. Either way, they're a harmless diversion; I've even thought of leading one myself, to recount some of the haunting tales of the park's lost souls as I recounted here. But am I alone in finding the jokey pretext-for-drinking thing here a bit more off-putting? On their Prospect Park ramble, the tour-goers gamboled at the sites of five modern-day murders, some quite fresh in memory. I'm sure the victims' families would be thrilled to know their loved ones live on as post-frat fun fodder. Let's acknowledge them here with respect, so that their deaths in our beautiful park, this month of the dead, may be marked by something other than snickering and getting loaded:

Patricia Shea, a 40-year-old physician's assistant from Rockaway, found strangled in the park in 1982.

 

 

 

Allyn Winslow, a 42-year-old drama teacher from Brooklyn, shot to death while resisting a group of teen-agers trying to steal his bicycle on Quaker Hill in June, 1993

 

 

 

 

William Oliver, 61, a "peaceful soul" and avid walker stabbed to death while walking in the Vale of Cashmere in April, 2006

 

 

 

 

Mohammad Afzaf (photo unavailable), 41, reportedly suffering from mental illness and possibly homeless, beaten and left for dead in a wooded area near a jogging path in July, 2008

 

 

Julio Locarno, 23, shot near the Parade Grounds in 2011 while himself facing a homicide charge

 

 

Of course, this douchebaggery has drawn a little burst of media coverage, and the next outing--to Green-Wood Cemetery--will undoubtedly be a hit. (The trip, not listed on Green-Wood's official events calendar, promises, "We’ll stroll through the cemetery, visiting points of interest, while swiggin’, gigglin’ and taking pictures...pack a flask." Perhaps the cemetery's caretakers could follow the gang with a portable urinal.) Count me out.  

The Accidental Archivist

Check out a cool interview here with Prospect Park's very own historian and archivist, Amy Peck, on the blog of StoryKeep, a firm that creates tribute videos and books. I've had the pleasure of meeting Amy a few times; her enthusiasm is infectious, the very opposite of the notion of an archivist as a curator of dusty memories. Did you know that the park may be the repository of two lost time capsules?

And if you're parky enough to follow this blog, you may be interested in

AMY'S ARCHIVEY GOODNESS FACEBOOK FOLLOWS

* The Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site (it's a national park in Brookline, Massachusetts).

* The Calvert Vaux Preservation Alliance.

* The New York City Transit Museum.

* The Brooklyn Historical Society.

* The Library of American Landscape History.

and the digitized photo collections of the New York Public Library and the Museum of the City of New York.

Amy, let me add one indispensable gem to that list: Forgotten New York!

Skyscapers

Guest park today: Central Park, that other Vaux and Olmsted masterpiece. But from the inside, looking out...and damn, has the view changed since I last hung out near Columbus Circle.

 

Back in my college days in the grim 1970s, this was my neck of the woods; Broadway was studded with shabby, atmospheric old dance studios, where I sweated and stretched between taking classes at the ugly new Fordham campus and standing in line for SRO ballet tickets at Lincoln Center. I didn't spend much time in Central Park, however; nobody did. It was more punchline than tourist magnet. But Central Park South held onto its dignity, a phalanx of elegant hotels gazing down on the green rectangle that sheltered the muggers.

These days, the park is safe and choked with tourists, all looking as if they are trying hard to enjoy their overpriced rides in sketchy pedicabs and horse carriages. The environs of Columbus Circle are a glossy bastion of retail, with the stunning Time Warner Center a welcome replacement for the long-rotting hulk that was the old New York Coliseum.

 

But it seems as if the skyline south of the park has gone a bit mad, like an athlete bulking up on steroids and menacing anyone in his path. The lush sculptures that gazed down on Columbus Circle in its sleazier days now seem to push back against the crushing volumes around them. Christopher himself seems taken aback...

 

 

 

 

 

 

...while the marble figures around the monument to the battleship Maine monument remain oblivious, even to perching pigeons and tired tourists, as they have since their unveiling in 1913.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With so much glass rising around them, creatures of stone can seem ancient and weary...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...or surprisingly spunky.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, other eyes in the sky keep watch over the brave new world of safer streets, richer rich and ever less welcome poor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But nothing prepared me for my first look at "One57," the middle finger of New York's new Billionaire's Row pointing skyward at 90 stories. The gilded "Columbia Triumphant" is no match for greed triumphant.

 

This shot gives some sense of its grotesque scale, as it dwarfs the iconic Essex House sign. The atrocity looms like an invading "War of the Worlds" ship over all it surveys. I am told that most of its multi-million-dollar condos are bought solely as investments, or "pied-a-terres"; perhaps the Russian, Chinese, and Brazilian oligarchs can hire someone to turn on the lights so that it will look lived-in. No, never mind. It will never look lived-in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At right, another pair of architectural masterpieces visible from the park. One thing I love so much more about Prospect Park than Central Park is the sense you can get of being "lost in the country" within its borders. The rectilinear Central Park has always been visibly ringed with luxury buildings; this Singapore-like forest of newcomers will soon be "the new normal." But Prospect Park, too, is following suit, with shiny condo buildings springing up around its perimeter, encroaching on Olmsted's beloved illusion of escape from the city within. Maybe when all the rents are $5,000 a month and up, we can pitch tents in the parks for the working class, and they can look up at the skyboxes of our overlords. Me, bitter?

As we shambled around the park, I was consoled by this fellow, who was cleverly whacking away at an acorn. No billionaire will ever be as at home in the sky as he is.

Our collective propensity to forget

The day before yesterday, August 27, was the 238th anniversary of the Battle of Brooklyn, which raged right through Prospect Park. I've written about it here and here, but for a rich and thought-provoking account that asks a key question—"Why the hell is there almost no sign of such a historic battle right in the middle of Brooklyn?"—go here.

 

Detail, 1776 map of Battle of Brooklyn, NY Public Library

 

My easy answer is, because we got our butts kicked (although, as historians remind us, thanks to a magnificently executed retreat, the patriots "lived to fight another day." Well, some of them did, who weren't cut to pieces by the British and Hessians.) The piece, by Ben Nadler and Oksana Mironova of Urban Omnibus ("an online publication dedicated to defining and enriching the culture of citymaking") goes deeper, and examines why Prospect Park boasts just three obscure monuments to its blood-soaked Revolutionary past, all clustered in the leafy glade of Battle Pass (better known as "the East Drive sort of behind the Zoo"). The answers pull in a whole bunch of issues around how we memorialize violence and war, how we pay for parks, and what is demanded by human bones beneath our feet. They wrap it up beautifully, thus:

Olmsted and Vaux’s intention for Battle Pass — topographical preservation, without an ornate memorial — contrasts with commemorations of wars fought beyond the borders of Brooklyn, like the Civil War memorial arch in Grand Army Plaza or the WWI memorial at Lakeside. The Battle Pass approach allows for more open-ended interpretations of history than these nationalistic monuments, but the simplicity of Battle Pass dissatisfied future generations, and more visible memorials were added to supplement Olmsted and Vaux’s memorialization by preservation. Their intention, to imbue an active public space with historical memory, is perhaps too understated to confront our collective propensity to forget. Still, Battle Pass can serve as a prompt to consider how to keep sites of historical memory in the public sphere. If we seek to remember through monumentality, yet fear entrusting our monuments to the private or commercial sphere, we must consider what it means to preserve and act as stewards for our collective history.

 

Distracted but never forgotten

Shaking off the torpor of this endless winter, I tagged along with Kevin Walsh yesterday on his 77th "Forgotten New York" walking tour; when Kevin does my park, I've got to be there to kibbitz and learn something new. We began at Grand Army Plaza, where the cherry blossoms frame the Quadriga if you look just right. I thought "Quadriga" meant something about the shape of the monument; Kevin said it's the type of chariot. That's why he wrote the book.

We emerged from the Meadowport Arch to the vast expanse of the Long Meadow--the longest unbroken greensward in New York City, which I had not known. (Kevin, however, learned from me that the official shepherd of the meadow's Victorian-era flock of sheep was criticized in the New York Times for drunkenness.)

Kevin's tours are full of fascinating facts; I get distracted easily, though, by the movie montages that swirl past:

Some "Inside Llewyn Davis" by the meadow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A bit of "Gleaming the Cube" near the Marylanders' monument.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And in the Nethermead, a Waldorf school outing "Far from the Madding Crowd."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We visited the Third Street panthers...but I was drawn in by the heartbreaking memorial to this youngster killed by a car.

 

Further down Prospect Park West, at the Ninth Street entrance, we admired Lafayette, but I was intrigued by the fine polish on his sword, courtesy of untold numbers of fingertips.

 

We marveled at the Camperdown Elm...while I was thrilled to capture a Common Yellowthroat among its contorted branches.

 

Through the fence, we peered into the hidden Quaker Cemetery, where Montgomery Clift is buried...and I puzzled over some ambitious stick structures just outside its confines. (No one seemed to be in residence, neither earthwork artist nor homeless person nor beaver.)

 

Many thanks to our intrepid tour guide, who generously shares his encyclopedic knowledge of New York's mysteries with his fortunate Forgotten Fans. 

Lakeside's languishing treasure

Pass the sprawling construction site on Prospect Park's East Drive, where the lavish new Lakeside skating complex draws closer to its public unveiling, and climb a slight hill. There, in the old Concert Grove, is a fading but magical structure, empty except for the scuttling of fallen leaves. It's called the Oriental Pavilion, a name from another age when "oriental" was a signifier of all things exotic. 

It's a delightful folly, with an amazing history. Built in 1874, according to the Parks Department's site, it is "made of eight cast-iron posts modeled after Hindu columns of the medieval period (8th to 12th centuries), and supporting an elaborately painted hipped roof with stained-glass cupola."  Here it is in 1908; the structure to its right was the Dairy, a restaurant demolished in the 1930s.

 

Originally serving as a tea house and shelter for patrons of the concerts in the grove and on Music Island (now restored), the pavilion suffered a series of indignities in later decades. With hallmark sensitivity, Robert Moses installed a brick snack bar in it, which caught fire; apparently, little remained for years but the columns. (I can find no pictures from this dark age.)

The whole was restored in 1987, but 26 years later, that restoration has sadly gone unmaintained. Hey, I get it; we bought our house about then, and it's infuriating to discover that "renovation 1.0" is now as blighted as the original blight it replaced.

 

 

 

 

 

 

But blight there is. Birds are nesting in the elaborate woodwork, which in many spots has simply rotted away. Graffiti mars the colorful columns.  A forlorn basketball is lodged on the fanciful roof.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the only thing that looks okay is the lovely skylight. As I stood looking up at it, the sound of saws and hammers floated over from Lakeside, where the multi-million-dollar new LEED-certified showplace is getting its finishing touches. My heart ached for the pavilion, soon to be overshadowed forever by the glitzy spaceship that has landed next door. How I wish I were filthy rich, and could endow another restoration--of a folly so Victorian, quaint, and obsolete that its very name is politically incorrect.

And the pavilion, by the way, has still "got it"; it was used as the location for an al fresco wedding luncheon in the movie "Julie and Julia" (thanks to the Lawrence/Julie&Julia Project for the only picture I could find of that scene on the entire web). I would hold catered luncheons in it, with recipes of Ms. Child's.

 

 

One year since the mayhem

 

Hard to believe a year has passed since Sandy swept away so many lives, and homes, and places of gathering. And trees. The park was butchered, on a scale that dwarfed its previous recent ravages by Hurricane Irene. Days later, it snowed, and more fell.

In a world of instant gratification, it was a harsh reminder that trees can't be replaced with CGI. The "prospect" of Prospect Park is changed, in some places, for the rest of my lifetime. (Not for nothing that Tolkien had his Ents, the wise walking trees, distinguished by their agonizing deliberation in thought, speech, and action.) From Prospect Park Southwest, for example, where the tree above was impaled, you can now see clear from one side to the other; before, there was a mysterious wall of branches and trunks that shielded the park's heart even in winter.

The park's staff have done an incomprehensible amount of work to clear deadfall, prune damaged but salvageable trees, and plant new ones. The work is still ongoing, every day. Not a bad day to make a donation to, or join as a member of, the Prospect Park Alliance in memory of the lost Ents. 

Island time

To celebrate the formal opening of the resurrected Music Island and gorgeously restored Esplanade, Prospect Park has put together a very nice video tribute. If you can't get over to the park on this gloomy October morning, you can follow the project's progress below in 6 minutes (and get background here):

Here are my three favorite things about the video:

1. It gives plenty of credit to Tupper Thomas, the park's chief for 3 decades, who had the vision and energy to get the project off the ground.

2. This image of a little girl sitting atop a section of the original decorative iron fencing, whose sole remaining section (the fence, not the girl) was excavated from the mud and replicated for the Esplanade.

3. The photo of the now-demolished little old Robert Moses-era rink, which is by me. Whether I will totally love its replacement, which is rising near the lake like...a really big, new skating rink...remains to be seen, but it will have to be better than its shabby predecessor. Scroll down to the previous entry for my impressions, and misgivings.

Mr. Olmsted Would Be Gobsmacked: A Blink at the Rink

 

 

Today: A Sneak Peak at Lakeside, Part II. Yesterday, I shared a look at the ravishingly restored original shoreline in Prospect Park's Concert Grove. Now for the rest of the tour:  Turn on your heel, and there, looming over the bucolic scene, is an unfinished pavilion so large, it brought to mind those spaceships in "War of the Worlds." (Or maybe I'm just traumatized by the grim landing of the Barclay's Arena downtown.)

Our guide, Christian Zimmerman, the park's VP for Design and Construction, gestured to the insulation-wrapped slice that cut the horizon in two. "This," he stated, "allowed us to do this," pointing toward the verdant lake shore. It seems as if the architects have put much effort into trying to camoflauge the staggering scale of this project, through "green roofs," sweeping berms, and other tricks. The sketches (like this one of the main entry) make the finished product look like a post-modern, eco-conscious utopia. Perhaps it shall be so.

 

We clomped across what would be a green roof. How you grow trees on a flat roof without disaster I'll never know, but it's all the rage, as at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's new entry pavilion. (The cynical renovator in me wonders, in 20 years, if we'll be sitting around LEED-certified buildings amid buckets full of rainwater, saying, "Remember the green roof craze?")

 

Looking down at the two rinks, the project's enormity hits you. The old Wollman rink was a pocket-sized affair (and set on a noticeable slant, requiring one to skate uphill), open only in winter. These rinks will offer two vast ice kingdoms in winter (linked by an "ice bridge"), and in summer the outdoor one (above, at left) will be a water playground while the sheltered one (now a dirt field, right) will provide Brooklyn with a roller rink (its only one after the lamented closing of a rink on Empire Boulevard some years ago).

Here's the dream rendering for winter...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...and summer, with (as Letterman says) "Prancing Fluids." (What artist gets the job of concocting these visions of sugarplums to dangle before donors and planning boards? I wish life would look like that.)

 

 

 

 

 

    

Freezing that much water with eco-correctness is an engineering challenge par excellence. I found the shiny, factory-fresh mechanicals pretty cool...like big Tonka toys.

 

The architectural details are classy, like elegantly joined granite blocks and a rink ceiling in starry-night blue and silver that suggests the swoosh of skate blades.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

According to the park's plans, the two new rinks will cover 30,000 square feet, enough room to keep wobbly learners away from speeding hot-doggers. Also promised are a roomy cafe overlooking the ice (which we toured in raw-Sheetrock state) plus changing facilities, parking (on Breeze Hill nearby), and a new dock for pedal-boat rentals and electric boat tours. Lakeside clearly will tip the balance of park-power towards "my" side of the park, the often-neglected southern and eastern side; the Park Slopers will be heading our way with hockey gear in tow.

FUTURAMA, OR VAMPIRE SIBLING?

Lakeside will be dazzling, certainly in its first blush of youth. But recent events cast a shadow over those glowing renderings. Every donor and politician loves a ribbon-cutting, but this $74 million project is rising even as the rest of the park cuts staff and programming to the bone, with education—supposedly one of the park's big missions—taking it on the chin. School programs have already been suspended, as I wrote here, hoping that someone would protest. (No one did.)

The latest round of cutbacks are detailed here. Does anyone remember the fuss over the dramatically rescued-and-rehabbed Boathouse, a brief walk away? It opened with a flourish in 2002 as America's first and only urban Audubon Center, an environmental educational powerhouse for city kids. Now, says the park, the Center is cutting back public programs on-site to just two days a week, and renting the historic Boathouse out on weekends for badly needed "revenue."

 

 

The eco-friendly electric boat Independence may have a new dock, but it won't be plying the lake until a private operator steps up, due to more budget cuts.

 

 

 

 

 

And we're not done: The Lefferts Historic House has cut one member of its already tiny staff and cut programming and hours, as well as charging a modest admission fee that will still discourage many casual walk-in visitors.

Yes, I know: It's not like you could take dollars earmarked for Lakeside and give them to other players within the park. But there are only so many tax and philanthropy bucks to go around...and only so much public attention span.

 

 

 

BARRIER-FREE...FOR THE WALLET?

When the rink does open, it will be painstakingly compliant with ADA regs. But will it be economically accessible? The shabby Wollman Rink was at least fairly cheap, and non-affluent kids and families could rent skates and still afford hot dogs and cocoa. When I hear terms like "hockey" and "LEED-certified," my red-alert goes off: Will it cost $20 per-person to skate there, with a farm-to-table menu of $15 panini for refreshment afterwards? If so, I'll be watching from the sidelines, and eating a tote-bag banana, sulking.

I wonder what Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted would have made of it all. His and Calvert Vaux's original plans made little provision for sporting types of recreation. Brooklynites simply waited until Prospect Park Lake froze over, and showed up to skate. (That won't fly with legal these days, and just as well.) When Robert Moses built the first rink, active recreation for families was a towering priority (think Jones Beach). Today, our intentions are even nobler: not just fun, but eco-friendly, handicapped-accssible, organic and post-consumer-recycled fun. But if the cost keeps many of us far from that "access," it will torpedo Olmsted's high Victorian intentions of making the park a paradise for the common man. He foresaw how changing fashions would alter the park's sense of mission (and allocation of resources). I'll give him the last word:

 

Frederick Law Olmsted, by John Singer Sargent

“Suppose that you had been commissioned to build a really grand opera house; that after the construction work had nearly been completed and your scheme of decoration fully designed you should be instructed that the building was to be used on Sundays as a Baptist Tabernacle, and that suitable place must be made for a huge organ, a pulpit, and a dipping pool. Then at intervals afterward, you should be advised that it must be so refitted and furnished that parts of it could be used for a court room, a jail, a concert hall, hotel, skating rink, for surgical cliniques, for a circus, dog show, drill room, ball room, railway station and shot tower? That is what is nearly always going on with public parks. Pardon me if I overwhelm you: it is a matter of chronic anger with me.”   —Frederick Law Olmsted, 1891