POTW: Prospect Park

[Lake +Wellhouse, Prospect Park], 1896, V1973.5.1528, Brooklyn photograph and illustration collection, ARC.202; Brooklyn Historical Society.

Prospect Park is a Brooklyn treasure providing 526 acres of green space, wetlands, forested areas, and trails for all to enjoy. According to NYC Parks, eight million visitors a year enjoy the park and its many facilities and public spaces. The park was constructed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux and opened to the public in 1867. The photo of the week depicts a view of the park in 1896.

This photograph comes from the Brooklyn photograph and illustration collection comprised of roughly 7,000 items dating from 1900 to 1950. The collection provides a comprehensive documentation of the borough of Brooklyn with images of neighborhoods, homes, buildings, and infrastructure. To see more photographs from this collection, check out this gallery. We recently digitized about 7,000 photographs from this collection and will make more available on the online image gallery soon.

To learn more about the history of prospect Park and to see more BHS collections on display, check out the BHS Pierrepont exhibition The Means of a Ready Escape: Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. The exhibition features over 100 artifacts and documents that tell the story of Prospect Park.

Interested in seeing more photos from BHS’s collection? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images. Interested in seeing even more historic Brooklyn images? Visit our Brooklyn Visual Heritage website here. To search BHS’s entire collection of images, archives, maps, and special collections visit BHS’s Othmer Library Wed-Sat, 1:00-5:00 p.m. library@brooklynhistory.org