Prospect Park Alliance, a nonprofit established in 1987, coordinates community involvement in Prospect Park, raises private funds for cultural programming, improved park management, and special projects, and operates the park's boat, skating, carousel, and cafe concessions to improve visitor services and support programming and landscape restoration. Its first capital project was the award-winning restoration of the 1912 Coney Island-style Carousel, and events at the Picnic House, the Boathouse, and the Concert Grove became local institutions; in 1993, Lefferts Homestead reopened as the country's first children's historic house museum, and with the Wildlife Center and the Carousel it completed Prospect Park's Children's Corner. As visitation approached record levels, the Alliance and the City of New York Parks and Recreation focused on the landscape, drawing on Historic Landscape Reports from the 1980s and later studies to develop a comprehensive plan for the park's next 25 years, centered in part on restoring Brooklyn's last woodlands as a model urban forest. The park's woodlands had suffered neglect and decay, including eroded hillsides, silted water courses, dying mature trees, and a severe lack of smaller trees and shrubs, as trampling compacted soils and stripped topsoil needed for plant life. Recovery called for additional annual funding, continued city capital improvements to paths, drainage, and infrastructure, and the long-term work laid out in the 1994 Landscape Management Plan for the Natural Areas of Prospect Park. Across nearly 250 acres of woodlands, slopes were being stabilized with log cribs planted with native wildflowers and young trees by the park's Natural Resources Crew, assisted by volunteers and youth programs coordinated by the Alliance, with stabilization expected to take 25 years and supported by public information efforts to encourage healthier use of the park. Prospect Park was designed in 1866 by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, constructed from 1866 to 1874 with later changes, occupies 526 acres, includes a 60-acre man-made lake, a 1-mile water course, a 1-mile Long Meadow, 250 acres of woodlands, and approximately 10,000 trees outside the woodlands; it was the site of the Battle of Long Island on August 27, 1776, became a New York City Scenic Landmark in 1975, and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
