Portrait of a park: Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, a witchy and whimsical masterpiece

This article is part of a guide to New York from FT Globetrotter

Late March 2020: not a time period many would like to revisit, so I’ll keep it short. Covid cases rose, hospitals bulged and cracked and New Yorkers — used to life densely stacked — were spooked. We closed our doors. We tried and failed to give each other space on narrow sidewalks, in tight grocery aisles, on shared stairwells.

Every Friday during these dark weeks, I walked a mile across Brooklyn from my apartment to my sister’s for a weekend of comfort and company. I’d strap on a mask and a backpack filled with provisions and step outside to face the obstacle course that was New York City. But to get there, I found that the shortest walking route took me through a wild and winding forest — open, fresh and free. A salve for my cramped reality.

I live on one side of Prospect Park, the second largest public park in Brooklyn, and my sister lives on the other. The forest is just one of several worlds that exist in the grand, mysterious, elegant, witchy, whimsical 526-acre green space that lies between us — a park that its creators deemed their masterpiece.

Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, Prospect Park officially opened in 1867 — nine years after they finished Central Park. While the latter was developed to help make New York City a world-class destination, built squarely within Manhattan’s grid, Prospect Park was meant to be a resident’s park, for the “common man”. Vaux and Olmsted envisioned it as a place where Brooklyn’s rapidly growing population of different races, cultures and wealth levels could come together and interact “unembarrassed by limitations that surround them at home.” 

Prospect Park is roughly diamond-shaped; its mouth opens at its northernmost point at Grand Army Plaza, a roundabout anchored by a Civil War memorial arch, with Brooklyn’s public library in striking view. The plaza serves as a local meeting ground, home of the Saturday farmer’s market. It’s the first place to go looking for an ice-cream truck on a hot day.

Last year, Grand Army Plaza took on added meaning as a hub for Black Lives Matter protests, Brooklyn’s Juneteenth celebration — and a spontaneous cheer when Joe Biden was elected president. These days you’ll often find a small crowd around Wayne Tucker & The Bad Motha’s, a jazz band led by brothers Wayne and Miles Tucker that showed up one summer day to play music while venues were closed. Now they’re a mainstay.

Entering Prospect Park from the plaza will bring you to the inner perimeter, called the Loop: a circular 3.2-mile path for runners, strollers, casual cyclists and Lance Armstrong wannabes. From there, the park opens up to a vast, rambling green, the largest unbroken meadow in any urban American park at more than a mile long.

Last summer, with strict restrictions in place on indoor socialising, the Long Meadow became one of New York’s hottest clubs. One day I counted a socially distanced wedding, two gender-reveal parties, six birthday parties, an anniversary, four crowds of dogs, a pop-up comedy show and approximately seven thousand dates. It was as if everything that would normally happen in the nearby bars, restaurants, hotels and apartments was taking place on a shared patch of grass. Weaving through the scene were notorious Brooklyn characters such as “SubwayDJ”, who wheeled his music equipment around on a cart, desperate to start a dance party. Leh-Boy cut through the park on his bicycle crying, “Uh OH!”, with a soccer ball balanced on his head.

For many, the loop and the Long Meadow are all they know of Prospect Park. The meadow sits on the west side of the park, up against the wealthy, predominantly white neighbourhood of Park Slope. But the east side, bordering the largely Caribbean-American neighbourhood of Prospect Lefferts Gardens, holds even more magic: the lake, the carousel, the roller rink — the life of the park.

East of the meadow is Brooklyn’s only natural forest, a tangle of more than 175 species of trees but also bridges, steep hills, stone steps and waterfalls. Private moments hide within it: a couple kissing, teens passing a joint, an older woman watching the birds. A lone saxophonist, playing his scales into the ravine. The nature here astounds: cardinals, raccoons, sycamore maples, vines that have pulled down trees. There is no hint of the city. It’s the place I feel most free.

Exiting the forest in the southern quarter of the park will bring you to the shores of its 60-acre lake, which is bulbous at its centre and trails into narrow waterways and pools. Along it are tiny sanctuaries to view, think, tell secrets, hide. Lakeside, a Rasta listens to reggae every day on the same bench, crocheting hats. On hot days he’s joined by piles of turtles, sunbathing on protruding rocks.

On the harshest lockdown days, the park was my commute. But as 2020 wore on, I began to wander. It's no surprise that we flock to shared public spaces in times of crisis: spaces that aren’t trying to sell us anything; spaces where we can escape, be simultaneously together and apart. My walks were alone and with others: walks that deepened friendships, walks that led to romance, to closure, walks that formed ideas, walks that cleared my anxious mind.

On my birthday, one Monday in October, it poured. I went for an aimless run in the park alone. With my socks soaked through, I stopped to watch the rain pucker the lake from the bridge adjacent to the Boathouse, one of the first buildings in New York City to be declared a historic landmark. 

South of the Boathouse sits an ancient Camperdown elm tree, one of the park’s most revered elders. Surrounded by a fence and held up by stilts, it has existed there for 149 years. They stand in contrast, an odd couple: the Boathouse is a majestic Beaux Arts wedding venue; the elm is a squat and spindly tree with weeping branches, one rotted through. They’ve seen the park through decay and revival and sit there, steadfast, like acts of resistance, safe and reliable against a threatening world.

That day I realised I’d never felt so at home in a space that wasn’t physically mine. The park had indeed become an extension of my home, ours and not ours, a resident’s park — and, surely, a masterpiece.

Photography by Landon Speers

Which is your favourite park in New York, and why? Tell us in the comments below

For more stories like this, visit ft.com/globetrotter, or follow FT Globetrotter on Instagram at @FTGlobetrotter