What You Didn’t Know About Prospect Park

By Ari Kellen

It was a popular spot for farm animals

• After Prospect Park first opened in 1867, it was a popular hangout spot for local livestock

• Dozens of stray farm animals were regularly found on the park

• While they weren’t allowed on the land, it was a tough law to enforce

It was built on !a battle site

• During the American Revolution, it played a part in the Battle of Brooklyn

• Soldiers of the 1st Maryland Regiment fought off a vastly superior British force to cover for the rest of American soldiers so they could retreat

It used to have a full replica of Mt Vernon

• It was built to honor Washington’s 200th birthday

• It was torn down after just two years

It used to be part of an Indian trail

• The Lenape Indians used a well-worn trail that later became the best route of travel between the Dutch towns of Brooklyn and Flatbush

• When Prospect Park was established, part of the road became East Drive

It’s the final resting place of around

2,000 people

• Prospect Park was originally a Quaker cemetery

• Since Quakers rejected headstones, most of their graves were unmarked

It was made by people paid $1.70 a day

• The construction workers who helped build the park were paid on a daily salary that today couldn’t even buy a Starbucks coffee

• The exact value is hard to calculate because of inflation, but it wasn’t much

It used to host “ice baseball”

• In the 19th century, the frozen lake hosted “ice baseball” • It attracted thousands

of spectators and players from as far away at Baltimore

• Basically baseball with ice skates

It has an historic statue of Abraham

Lincoln• After Lincoln’s

assassination, Henry Kirke Brown created a series of large bronze statues

• The one in Prospect Park was the first one to be dedicated

• It’s the Union’s first Abraham Lincoln statue