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From our recording studio in Brooklyn, we make audio that celebrates human creativity, history and the spaces we live to learn about.

When Covid started, some aspects of our lives seemed to slow down. We began taking longer walks in the park, and noticing things around us more. We stopped to smell flowers, watch dogs play in the pond and read books on park benches. And we started to realize how lucky we were to live so close to such a magical park.

Saunter with us as we explore the interesting history and ecology of the park, and pay homage to this wonderful part of Brooklyn.

This walk was created in Summer 2020.

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Prospect Park

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New York

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“It is by all odds the loftiest of cities. It even managed to reach the highest point in the sky at the lowest moment of the depression.”
― E.B. White

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Still: The two feline sentries rising before you are known simply as The Panthers, though some prefer The Pumas. Take note of their stern expression, proud gazes taking in all who come to experience Prospect Park. This pair has stood atop these pedestals since the year 1898, guarding what was rapidly becoming Brooklyn’s crown jewel.The 1892 installation of the Arch in Grand Army Plaza triggered a new wave of additions to the Park. Folks thought the crown jewel could use a bit more embellishments, and statues, monuments, and sculptures started going up around the land’s edges. 

Mobile: Walk forward, between these bronze panthers, down the wide lane ahead. 
The two were cast by Alexander Phimister Proctor during his studies in Paris. Proctor was an animalier- or artist known for his realistic portrayals of animal life. He later went on to design bronze sculptures that would adorn buildings in both the Prospect Park and Bronx Zoos. They were briefly joined by a CitiBike charging station in 2016, but after public outcry the solar-paneled kiosk was pushed further down the lane, beneath the trees.

With your back to Prospect Park West, you are walking down what was once Edwin Litchfield’s driveway. Litchfield was a key player in the development of Park Slope after his success in the railroad industry in the mid 1800s. He contributed a number of acres to Prospect Park itself, including his family home, which lies on your right, through the trees. Third Street, behind you, was built wider than all of its numbered counterparts to better ac./commodate carriages (and convey wealth). 

Do you see where the white-lined lane splits up ahead? Follow the bike lane to the right. When you come to the curve, keep an eye out for the old marble gatehouse, tucked just behind the treeline on the right. It’s thought to date to the late 1800s, and its duplicates can be seen at other entrances by those who know to look.

Merge onto the lane, but be sure to watch out for cyclists, rollerbladers, and joggers. At that crosswalk up ahead, go left onto the paved path. 

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The Panthers at Third Street

Tour Item

Carry on this way through the first intersection, and you’ll notice the ground transform from paving stones to asphalt. 

Keep straight at this intersection between woodland and meadow, and walk until your path ends in a minute or two, framed by a triangle of three trees. 


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Keep Straight

Still: Do you see the trees, each the corner of a triangle? The bench that draws the eye off to the right? Good. Keep walking toward them. Look to your left, to your right. You stand near the center of the Long Meadow, the pinnacle of Olmsted and Vaux’s design principles.

Mobile:  Start heading to the right down the paver stone path in front of you, toward then past the bench. In the early years, colorful blankets of Brooklynites and Manhattan-dwellers alike dotted the grass when group picnics were still banned in Central Park. As the path splits, keep straight, letting the large tree with its accompanying bench stay on your left. Residents of all stripes, stations, and incomes would flock to the open spaces, though they were forced to share with  sheep and cattle (it took local farmers a while to adjust to their grazing lands becoming a public commons). Now, the grazers are gone, but the picnickers remain. 

Olmsted described the land around you as, “A broad stretch of slightly undulating meadow without defined edges, itself lost in a maze of shadows of scattered trees.” The edges can be seen- though undefined- but the ends are out of sight. Olmsted and Vaux used the landscape to their advantage to create this effect, that the meadow stretches on forever. 

Revel in the seemingly unending field ahead, the mysticism at play in this pastoral paradise tucked between bustling neighborhoods. Perhaps take a moment to peek at whose loved ones are memorialized on tiny plaques at the bench corners. 

As the path begins to slope downhill, look right. That brick building across the meadow is the Picnic House. A number of picnic shelters were built in the late 1800s as larger groups of 100 plus clamored to gather in the park. The one you see to your right was built in 1927 after its predecessor burnt down. Though many older park buildings were torn down during the era of Robert Moses, a city administrator and power broker from 1924 - 1968, the Picnic House survived. Today, with its sweeping and unobstructed views of the meadow, it serves as a popular wedding venue.

Keep on down this way, down this slope. When the path levels out ahead and splits, go toward the center, go toward the bridge. 


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The Long Meadow

Triangle of Trees at the Long Meadow

Still: As you near the bridge, look down. See the plaque towards its center? It marks the beginning of this section of the park, known as the Ravine. 

Mobile: Walk forward, and cross the bridge. Can you hear the water trickling underfoot? Notice the way the trees seem to envelop you, separating you by both eye and ear from the rest of the park; a living tunnel. 

Olmstead and Vaux’s vision for the ravine was to recreate a walk through the woods upstate so that Brooklyn residents need never leave the city to experience the Adirondacks.

Listen, and see if birdsong wafts down from the trees. 

Prospect Park is home to nearly 300 species of birds, and is a vital stopping ground for many more during their migrations. Which ones will you hear today? Which ones can you see?

Up ahead where the way forks, go toward the right, but stop at the gate in the chain link, where you can see out over the watery alcove. When you get there, take a moment. What park residents can you spot? Perhaps a green heron, red-eared slider, or great egret? See if you can hear the songs of their smaller cousins, or spot them flitting through the trees and grass around the pond’s edges. 

When you’ve had your fill of the Lower Pool, turn around, and head down the opposite fork, the one you haven’t yet walked, the one that winds away into the trees to the right. 


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Bridge at the Ravine

Mobile: You are now walking through Brooklyn’s only forest, a look into what this part of the Lenapehoking, the “land of the Lenape,” might have looked like before the advent of colonization. The Lenape, a grouping of a number of distinct tribes, called this land home for hundreds of years before the arrival of the Europeans.

The Lenape existed here as small, inter-connected groups, living as seasonal nomads. Can you see any small trees from the path, some still springy with youth? The Lenape bent trees like these into arches, then covered them with bark to form longhouses. As many as twelve families would live in a single longhouse.

Lenapehoking once spanned from upstate New York down to Delaware, and included portions of Pennsylvania. But when the Dutch engineered the so-called “sale” of the land in the early 1600s, things went downhill fast, and the Dutch forced the Lenape off of their ancestral land.  

As you walk further into the Ravine, have you noticed that you’re going deeper as well, on a gentle slope? Have you noticed the large boulders on either side of your path? Take some time, peek among the rocks. Perhaps you catch a glance of a chipmunk, or a rabbit hopping back into hiding, or songbirds flitting through the underbrush.

Both the slope and the boulders alike are due to events at the end of the last Ice Age.

Sfx: Add a transformative music cue and/or cracking glaciers?

Millenia ago, you’d now be walking beneath 1,000 feet of ice, at the southernmost point of a glacier that stretched down from Canada. The scraping power of a glacier can scarcely be overstated. The weight of the ice razes the land’s surface as the glacier slides ever onward, shoving whatever was there before forward, clearing a path and taking the remnants along for the journey. 

When you see the three-arched bridge, continue straight. You are now at the center, the heart of Prospect Park. 

When Brooklyn began to thaw around 15,000 years ago, those scrapings, these boulders, were left behind. The rocks you see to either side originally hail from Manhattan and New Jersey, and are distinct from the bedrock beneath your feet. 

When you emerge and the path slopes uphill, go to the split tree at its end, held together with an iron rod.

Prospect Heights

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The Ravine

Mobile: Facing the double-sided tree, go left on the asphalt path. That tree is an Osage Orange. It is named for the color of its wood and for the Osage people, who often used that wood for bows in the Midwest, from where both the Osage people and the tree hail. Story goes this tree was planted by Olmsted himself, making it one of the longest-standing in the park. In the summer, keep an eye out for its green, softball-sized- but inedible- fruit. Folklore says placing the fruit, sometimes called hedge apples, around the home can help keep bugs at bay. 

Do you see the pond, emerging from the brush on your left? Take note of it, but don’t stop there yet- you’ll be back soon... 

Keep walking around the curve, pass those benches. 

Do you see that stone pagoda ahead, on the left? Its predecessor was built in 1887 as a concert and theater venue, but burnt down in 1968. The one you see here was built as an almost exact replica in 1971, though today it gets less use as concerts are largely held at the bandshell, near the baseball fields.

Take the path to the right of it, away from the wooden bridge. 

Beyond that bridge lie narrower paths, allowing visitors to wind away onto tree-lined trails. Olmstead and Vaux hoped to provide another opportunity for Brooklynites to get lost in the woods without ever leaving the city.

……..

The route you walk now soon splits again. You will go to the left. 

…..

As you take the left turn, look for the stump rising like a spire in the trees, off to the right. Note the bridge drawing you forward, but don’t go there yet. 

Do you see those benches on the right? Just past the benches, a narrow path winds down into the trees. Turn right on that asphalt path, and walk until you reach the water. Pause when you reach it, and linger beneath the trees.


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Osage Orange on Nethermead

Still: You are now walking toward the shore of what is known as the Lullwater, where the waterway of Prospect Park slows and deepens before joining Prospect Park Lake. 

Do you see the wooden platform over the pond? The low stone wall holding back the water, alongside a dirt path? Pause by the stone. 

Can you see any fish, nosing around the stones near your feet? Perhaps instead you notice the tiny green leaves of duckweed, spread across some of the pond’s surface.

The white, terra-cotta encrusted building across the water is known simply as the Boathouse. 

Built in 1905, the structure before you is the second of its kind. The first boathouse was finished in 1876, and had a simpler, south-facing design. The Boathouse of today faces west, to soak in sunsets over the water, its tiled steps providing a place for park visitors to take in the bucolic view.

In 1964, the Boathouse was scheduled for demolition, to make way for the bigger, better, and newer. But as public outcry and outrage mounted, the demolition plans were halted. In 1968 the Boathouse became one of the first buildings in New York to be declared a historical landmark, even before the park itself. 

Mobile (to CDE): Walk back up to the path you came from, where you came in by the benches, and turn right to begin crossing the bridge. 


The Path before the bridge to the boathouse

Mobile: As you walk over the bridge, be sure to look out over the pond. Can you hear the water streaming down the falls below? 

Summertime will find children splashing around the edges of these falls, hopping from rock to rock to get closer to the water. Birdsong floats on the breeze, buoyed by the summer humidity. Trees on the slope to your left are in full leaf, and the grass seems to threaten to burst from confinement behind concrete paths. Picnic blankets are sprawled wherever there’s space and a hint of shade to be found among the greenery.

Follow the curve of the path to the right, toward the water. 

Fall: As summer waxes on, leaves begin to change. Waterfowl taking a break during migration crowd the water, and their calls fill the air. By the time autumn has fully set in, you find yourself walking beneath clouds of fiery oranges, reds, and yellows, while leaves crunch underfoot. The park is just as full as the season before, but host to a few more sweaters and scarves.  

Winter: A few more steps forward, and a few more months have passed. A thin coat of snow lies easy on the ground, bare branches rising up, clicking together in the wind. Follow the curve of the path to the right, where it leads behind the boathouse. 

Looking toward the pond, maybe you notice a thin sheet of ice has begun to take hold. The park is less crowded in the cold weather, but you feel revitalized by the brisk cold, and the seclusion only heightens the beauty of the Lullwater. 

Spring: As winter comes to an end, the pond thaws. Birds arrive, and trees begin to bud into bloom. Before long the bright green of new growth surrounds you, covering the entire slope behind the boathouse on the left. The picnickers have made their return, and that same slope is dotted with color from the blankets of winter-weary Brooklynites soaking in the sun. 

Look up, toward the cornice of the Boathouse. Can you see the embellishments that wrap around the wall? Ship’s wheels, floating swans, and compass roses? 

Keep walking forward. As you pass the end of the Boathouse, look right. Do you see that bridge? Take note of it- you’ll be there soon. At the fork in the path, stay left. 

Up ahead on the left, can you see that large tree, a Japanese Pagodatree, standing alone on the slope? During the Chou (Jo) Dynasty in China, roughly 1,000 B.C., this tree was often planted on the graves of scholars and high officials. 

Do you see the weeping branches of another tree beside it? A tree surrounded by a wrought iron fence? Walk up to the plaque on the fence’s side, and stay; idle beneath its draping branches. 


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Binnen Bridge

Walk through the Seasons to Camperdown Elm

Still: You stand before the Camperdown Elm, a tree with a storied past. In the 1830s, David Taylor, a forester on the estate of the Earl of Camperdown in Scotland discovered a strange mutant elm. Its branches draped down, rather than reaching toward the sky. He grafted a branch from the oddity onto a healthy tree, and so the Camperdown Elm was born. 

This Camperdown Elm was planted here in 1872, only five years after Prospect Park had opened. The tree, much like the park, has experienced ups and downs. By the 1960s, enthusiasm- and funding- for the park was running low. The tree had fallen on hard times as well. Its warped nature requires more maintenance and support than might a garden variety elm, and a series of botched repairs had left the Camperdown Elm in a sorry state, on the verge of destruction. 

Then, in 1967, Poet Marianne Moore wrote an homage to the Camperdown Elm, evoking the wonder viewers might feel, “their rapture, had they come on the Camperdown Elm’s/ massiveness and the ‘intricate pattern of its branches,’/ arching high, curving low, in its mist of fine twigs.”

Moore’s work was successful, and the Friends of Prospect Park were rallied to bring the tree back from the brink. Perhaps the poem’s success was due to the admonishment at its end, true then and today: “It is still leafing; still there. Mortal though. We must save it. It is our crowning curio.”

Mobile: With the elm on your left, begin to head down the path to the right, toward the water, putting the stone archway behind you.

This part of the park can feel like its own world, separate and distinct from the rest. The Beaux Arts Boathouse seems as if it leapt free of a painting, gleaming alongside the water. In the warmer months folks can be seen fly fishing along the Lullwater’s banks.

…… 

Look up as you wander under the sinewy limbs of the American Hornbeam on your right, the bark of its many-branched trunk weathered and twisted by time. The hornbeam is known for its toughness, often called ironwood. Its grain is tight enough that colonists and pioneers were known to use its wood to fashion hammers. This tree escaped that fate, but what history might its winding branches have seen?

Continue on toward, then onto the bridge in front of you. Constructed of cast iron and stone, it is known as the Lullwater Bridge. When the Boathouse was rebuilt in 1905, so too was this bridge. The original structure was built of oak, in keeping with Olmsted and Vaux’s affinity for the rustic, and dated back to 1866. 

Pause toward the middle of the bridge.

From the Lullwater’s center, it takes effort to remember you’re in the Brooklyn of the 21st century. Condos and skyscrapers are just out of view, rather than rolling estates, grazed by sheep. But for now, take in the pond’s sweeping edges on either side, a wondrous sight in any season. Continue off the bridge when you’ve soaked in all you can.

BREAK

Coming off of the bridge, look back toward the Boathouse as you walk. From this vantage point, it’s easy to imagine the carefree park-goers of the late 19th century, drifting across the water in narrow canoes, red and white striped canopies rippling in the breeze while the fashionable lay a hand on their tophats and fascinators to keep them from the water below. 

When the path forks ahead, follow its curve to the right, where the land opens once more. You’ll emerge back into the grasses, passing scattered London Planetrees with their smooth-barked trunks, and broad-leafed Norway Maples on your left. Many of the trees in the park- these here, the Camperdown Elm, the American Hornbeam, the Osage Orange- were planted here not as saplings, but as full sized trees. 

Heavy machinery hadn’t yet hit the world stage, so engineer John Y. Culyer had to innovate. In 1869 he designed a “tree-moving machine”- a horse-drawn cart with wheels nearly the size of a man with a sunken platform at its center to hold the root ball of the trees. The machine was responsible for moving 600 trees in a three year span, some weighing as much as 15 tons. 

Look up ahead. There’s the stone pagoda you passed not long ago. Follow the path to the left at the pagoda, and walk back the way you came. Take in the trees, the open grass, dawdle near the pond. When you reach the two-sided tree, the Osage Orange joined by iron rods, turn left, and walk down the paver stone path.


Camperdown Elm

Coming off of the bridge, look back toward the Boathouse as you walk. From this vantage point, it’s easy to imagine the carefree park-goers of the late 19th century, drifting across the water in narrow canoes, red and white striped canopies rippling in the breeze while the fashionable lay a hand on their tophats and fascinators to keep them from the water below. 

When the path forks ahead, follow its curve to the right, where the land opens once more. You’ll emerge back into the grasses, passing scattered London Planetrees with their smooth-barked trunks, and broad-leafed Norway Maples on your left. Many of the trees in the park- these here, the Camperdown Elm, the American Hornbeam, the Osage Orange- were planted here not as saplings, but as full sized trees. 

Heavy machinery hadn’t yet hit the world stage, so engineer John Y. Culyer had to innovate. In 1869 he designed a “tree-moving machine”- a horse-drawn cart with wheels nearly the size of a man with a sunken platform at its center to hold the root ball of the trees. The machine was responsible for moving 600 trees in a three year span, some weighing as much as 15 tons. 


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Lullwater Bridge to Stone Pagoda

Lullwater Bridge to Osage Orange


Look up ahead. There’s the stone pagoda you passed not long ago. Follow the path to the left at the pagoda, and walk back the way you came. Take in the trees, the open grass, dawdle near the pond. When you reach the two-sided tree, the Osage Orange joined by iron rods, turn left, and walk down the paver stone path.


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Stone Pagoda to Osage Orange

11. Stone Pagoda to Osage Orange

Mobile: With the path to the ravine behind you, the iron-braced tree to your left, walk down this path. Continue straight down this way, you’ll pass benches ahead as you walk. The rolling hillocks surrounding you are Nethermead Meadow. The grasses spill out to either side, a smaller, more secluded cousin of the Long Meadow. 

Look around- can you see any buildings peeking above the treetops? Is there any sign you’re at the center of a bustling city? What does walking through this space, seemingly as opposite of the Big Apple as you can get, evoke?

As you continue down this way, take note of the slant of the land, and remember the gentle incline you came down from the Ravine. The meadow gets its name from the combination of two old english words- nether, for below, and mead for meadow. The dip of the land lends itself to the meadow’s illusion of isolation, giving park visitors a respite from the clamor of Brooklyn. 

Break here for some kind of sound design of city noise to nature? 

As the path winds further right, and the Nethermead begins to move to only your left, and the ground goes from pavers back to asphalt, keep to the right at the fork- but look toward the network of paths through the meadow leading further into the park. The winding layout of the sidewalks and trails in Prospect Park is no accident. Olmstead and Vaux hoped to heighten the sense of boundless land to be wandered in, and sought to stay away from straight lines. 

Do you see that rise in the road ahead, where the meadow ends and the trees take hold again? Where the lane curves to the left, leaving the Nethermead behind? Join the main thoroughfare to your right when your path draws near. You’ll walk a minute or two in silence- perhaps take a headphone out, and listen to the sounds Prospect Park has to offer. When you reach the top of the rise, look for a break in the trees on your right, a driveway that dead-ends at a wrought iron gate.

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The Nethermead

Still: Keep an eye out for the break in the trees on your right, the narrow driveway into the greenery. Turn right onto it. Go toward the wrought iron gate at its end, and stand in front of the sign on the right. The one that says Friends’ Cemetery. Look through the iron bars, toward the left, past bushes, trees and underbrush, and see if you can catch a glimpse of a gravestone. Close your eyes, and sink back through time.

It’s a few days after Christmas, December of 1920. You pull your coat tighter about your shoulders, shuffling your feet to get feeling back in your toes.

Cold sunlight soaks down between branches swaying above you, a ceiling over the Quaker Friends Cemetery. It should be a somber day, but the light playing about the gently swaying limbs lends itself to a joy of the purest kind. A resolute quietude envelopes the mourners, a mixture of grief and calm dignity. A feeling not unlike your Quaker meetings, where one does not speak except for when divine inspiration strikes. 

Now that fresh earth is mounded over the new grave, the headstone of smooth white marble recently laid in place has a new finality. Anna M. Jackson, 1847 - 1920, reads the simple marker. 

The stone bears no mention of a life well lived, though you knew Mrs. Jackson. She was a staunch supporter of prison reform and the women's suffrage movement, never one to turn away a friend. But as is Quaker custom, in death all are equal in the eyes of the Lord, and graves’ markers- or lack thereof- reflect that. Nearly 2,000 of your brothers and sisters are interred here, and only recently have customs shifted for names, and lengths of lives to be noted in stone.

You take comfort in the thought that Quakers have been laid to rest in this glade since even before Prospect Park called this land home, and will be far into the future. 

Here beneath the arcing trees these scattered tombstones clustered in a grassy nook seem far from the rest of the park. 



End: The guided section of this walk is now done, but you’ve touched on only a portion of the park. If you like, wander deeper, down some of the winding paths you passed before. The views from Lookout Hill lie across the main thoroughfare, into the trees. If not, take the road to the right, and it will soon lead to an exit.

Whichever way you choose, know that many have trod the ways you walk before. Whether a mighty glacier, members of the Lenape Tribe, park-goers of the 1800s, or Brooklyn natives of today- you now join the shared history of those who have come to bask in all this land has to offer. 

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