... Started out to the bank today. It's on the southern end of Prospect Park. I live on the north end. I took my bike and rode down there. It's just a few miles.
This park is too beautiful for words. It's a haven - a sanctuary - from the surrouding city and its hectic pace. Here, things move at Nature's pace. There's peace. And quiet. The designers of this park, Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux aspired to that: peace and quiet. The city was rapidly expanding in the 1860's and the park was created to serve that rapidly growing population. Beginning in 1858, the two same genetlemen had created 800-acre Central Park. It was the very first landscaped park in the United States.
Brooklyn was developing at the same time as people left crowded Manhattan for the "suburbs." A local businessman and real estate developer, James Stranahan, wanting to attract wealthy people to Brooklyn, urged the creation of a Central Park in Brooklyn. He became the first president of the Prospect Park Commission and hired the design team of Olmstead and Vaux based on the plan they submitted in 1866.
Frederick Law Olmstead was not only a great landscape architect. He was also, in essence, a social activist. His vision of a city park was a place of tranquility and quietude where people could escape the frenetic clip of city life. He had a much broader and more democratic view of society than the Stranahans of his day and felt that these grand parks should belong to all the people not just the wealthy class but especially Brooklyn's poor who could find a bit of the countryside right in their own neighborhood.
Indeed. Autumn in Prospect Park is as glorious as any ride one can take upstate to see the changing colors of the foliage. It has pastoral meadows, undulating hills, exotic trees and plants of so many varieties, eagles, hawks, geese, swans and ducks. Lakes, streams, ravines and so much more. And today it is truly a people's park as Olmstead and Vaux envisioned it so many years ago.
If you live in New York City, you can walk down
your sidewalk or you can walk HERE!
To live near the park is to be blessed. A three block ride on my bike and I'm there, coasting on its carriage roads - free from automobiles most of the time (and if Transportation Alternatives and other advocacy organizations have their way, it'll be car free all the time).
Today, it was so quiet I could hear the leaves softly falling and floating to the ground. Tap, tap, tap -- as each leaf softly landed on top of thousands of others that had already landed. I stopped and listened and just sighed.
I could also stop and admire a parade of Canada geese as their leader left the pond for shore and was followed, one by one by hundreds. It was as if they were flying in formation. But here they were waddling out of the water and across the path to peck for food in the grass. What a sight! The leader eyed me with curiosity and a little caution before he continued his pilgrimage.
This guy on the right was leading hundreds of Canadian Honkers on a parade from pond to lawn in search of food.
Two by two, up out of the water and onto shore, playing follow the leader. This went on until the lake seemed to be cleared of a hundred or so geese on some sort of pilgrimage.
This is also a park that is entwined with the history of our borough, city and country. Riding around the park roads I came across a statue of ---
Irving. Mind you this is not just "Irving" but Irving, period!
A little Googling tells me that this is J. Wilson McDonald's representation of American author Washington Irving (1871). I guessed it was him. The statue sits across the carriage road from the Concert Grove.
Still further along is a plaque commemorating Battle Pass. Part of the Battle Of Brooklyn transpired here. That fight was the first of the Revolutionary War and the largest in terms of casualties. The British won that one but went on to lose the war.
A plaque commemorating Battle Pass where the Battle Of Brooklyn was fought.
Biking along brings me more astounding views of the fleeting foliage. I'm back at the top of the park now, where I started an hour before. I've been through this park many times before but now that I'm living nearby it seems new all over again. I'm looking forward to exploring it in depth and discovering its hidden secrets and treasures. I've fallen in love with Prospect Park.
Many trees have given up their leaves by late November. This one is still ablaze.
Standing here, quietly, I could hear the leaves hit the ground as they floated to earth.
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