Prospect Park was largely an artificial landscape created between the mid-19th and late-20th centuries to bring the calming effects of nature to Brooklyn's citizens, after city leaders, alarmed by urban poverty, unrest, poor sanitation, and epidemics, embraced the new idea of a public park. Although the site contained a small forest, a rocky ridge, and a low plain left by a glacier, the park itself did not exist until 1866. Interest in such a park grew as Manhattan's Central Park gained popularity, and land near Brooklyn's reservoir at Mount Prospect was set aside in 1858. An initial formal garden plan by Egbert L. Viele was abandoned when Parks Commission President James S.T. Stranahan turned to Calvert Vaux, who proposed a much larger park in a natural English landscape style and persuaded Frederick Law Olmsted to join him. Together they shaped features such as the Long Meadow, the Ravine, Prospect Lake, and the Concert Grove to embody the Beautiful, Picturesque, Sublime, and Gardenesque principles of 18th-century landscape design, while also providing bridges, shelters, benches, fountains, and other amenities. Construction began in 1866, drew large crowds, and over eight years transformed 526 acres with shovels, horse-drawn wagons, a reservoir, and an artificial water system at a cost of nearly $10 million. After 1880, Brooklyn's rising civic ambitions brought a shift from Olmsted and Vaux's naturalistic style to grand classical architecture and monuments, including the Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch, redesigned entrances by McKim, Mead and White, the Peristyle, the Boathouse, the Tennis House, and the Willink Comfort Station. In the 20th century, politics, the automobile, expanded recreation, and Robert Moses's modernization campaigns reshaped the park with playgrounds, ballfields, a bandshell, a zoo, and Wollman Ice Skating Rink, while some original vistas, structures, and landscape elements were lost. Brooklyn's postwar decline hurt attendance and maintenance, but grassroots preservation efforts beginning with the park's centennial, National Historic Landmark designation in 1980, administrative reforms, restoration projects, volunteer work, and the reopening of features such as the zoo and Oriental Pavilion helped revive Prospect Park, increasing annual visits from a low of 1.7 million in 1979 to more than 5 million by 1994.
