Brooklyn now rivals Manhattan as a great place to live, work and visit—and its city park is at least the equal of the famous Central Park
n the heart of Brooklyn, you can walk a country mile. During the pandemic, denizens of New York’s most populous borough escaped to the Long Meadow, visited a woodland called the Vale of Cashmere, and looked upon the rugged cataract known as Ambergill Falls.
Vaux made a crude sketch that he shared with Olmsted. Rough as it was, it indicated a “Hilly Region,” a “Proposed Pond of say 40 Acres,” and the “Principal natural Entrance from Brooklyn.” As a sometime Brooklyn resident, Olmsted himself had witnessed much of Brooklyn’s transformation, and he understood that the city needed its own set of lungs.
The area, which was roughly a mile wide and a mile and a half north-to-south, remained undeveloped. Some rugged terrain on the eastern edge had been the site of Revolutionary War skirmishes, where American colonists had fought British regulars at Redoubt Hill and Battle Pass during the Battle of Brooklyn. Olmsted walked country roads that ambled through farmland, past harvested fields and cattle grazing on nearby slopes.
To leaven the lesson, he resorted to an anecdote credited to the fabulist Aesop. One day a fellow Athenian upbraided Aesop for engaging in childish games with a group of boys. In response, Aesop laid an unstrung bow before his critic. “Tell us what the unstrained bow implies,” he asked. After a pause, the man admitted he had no idea.
The designers planned a scheme of traffic separation like that in Central Park, with five miles of carriage roads, largely at the perimeter; four miles of bridle paths; and almost 20 miles of pedestrian walks. They anticipated all seasons. Since their park in Manhattan had made ice-skating a popular pastime, their lake would accommodate large Brooklyn crowds in winter. The earth beneath park carriageways would be properly prepared so the snowmelt and spring rains wouldn’t render them impassable.
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