City Oasis

 

Central Park in Manhattan, well known throughout the world, overshadows another park, designed by the same architect, known only to the inhabitants of the NY metropolitan area. Frederick Olmstead also designed Prospect Park in Brooklyn. It has all the amenities of Central Park on a slightly smaller scale. I grew up two blocks from Prospect Park, and lived in a child’s paradise. I knew it well and reveled in its verdant summer glory as well as its stark winter whiteness. 

As a very young child, I rode the carousel in the sheep meadow and flew kites on a windy spring day. Kites, frequently home made from two pieces of balsa wood covered with newspaper, trailed a rag tail from its pointed lower end. The string that tied it all together and held it anchored to the earth, we never bought in a store but garnered it from the stash my parents kept in a kitchen drawer. We never threw string away whether it came from the bakery box that held pastries or from the brown paper packages of meat from the butcher. We saved it all. The carousel and sheep disappeared in the early 1940's but kites still fly in the spring.

Playgrounds with swings, slides, see saws, monkey bars and a sandbox dotted the park near their many entrances.  A street vendor stood outside each entrance and sold hot roasted peanuts served in a brown paper bag or shaved ices flavored with a variety of syrups and served in a cone shaped paper cup.

 A bicycle path gave us a safe and peaceful route to ride our bikes away from city traffic and noise. Bridle paths for horse lovers and a roller rink for skaters as well as basketball courts provided athletic diversions. A plethora of pigeons and squirrels inhabited the park in summer. I have no idea where they went in winter.

The rolling hills made for great fun to roll down in summer and sleigh down in winter. We took a running start, belly-flopped on our flexible flyer sleds and skidded down Monument Hill, the tallest in the park. It consisted of two dips and gave us a long ride. One day after a blizzard, I couldn’t wait to get to the park to try out my new sled. I patiently climbed Monument Hill in soft powdery snow, took my running start, belly-flopped on my sled, slid right off and landed face first in the snow. The sled got stuck in the soft snow and refused to budge. I had to wait another day for the snow to become packed before sleigh riding could resume. 

The park also had a large lake for rowboats and a smaller lake for paddle boats. The small lake froze in winter for ice skating.

Although I had fun in winter, summer showed the park in all her majesty; picnics under tall leafy trees, running through the sprinklers, visiting the botanical gardens with their cross of lilies at Easter and Cherry blossom trees in the Japanese Garden. During the war, they renamed it “Victory Garden” and the pagodas disappeared but the cherry blossoms remained.   

 

At a visit to the zoo, always entertaining, I loved to watch the seals climb on their graduated platforms to sun themselves and then dive off to the applause of the spectators. The monkey house held not only playful monkeys, but also a huge gorilla named Gargantuan. When he died, it became a major news item in the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper.

I spent part of every day in the park. As a teenager, we went to classical music concerts at the bandstand by the big lake. A large amphitheater at another location provided music for dancing under the stars on hot summer nights. Here, I first heard and learned the mambo brought by the influx of Puerto Ricans to NY after the war.

At the west end of the park stood the Brooklyn Public Library second only to the NYC Library in Manhattan. The Brooklyn Museum, two blocks north of the library, housed one of the finest Egyptian artifacts collections in the country.

 Yes I grew up in a very congested noisy city, but I had the best of both worlds; the cultural, social and shopping benefits of a big city plus the rural abundance of Prospect Park.