Prospect Park is a 526-acre park in the heart of Brooklyn, New York which opened in 1867. The park was commissioned by James S. T. Stranahan, then President of the Brooklyn Board of Park Commissioners. Stranahan believed that a park in Brooklyn "would become a favorite resort for all classes of our community.” He enlisted Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the masterminds behind Manhattan’s Central Park, to build this park for the people of Brooklyn. 

The 30-year project created a functional greenspace that incorporated a waterfall, a 60-acre lake, and maintained the majority of Brooklyn’s remaining indigenous forest. Over the last 150 years or so, Prospect Park has changed some. In the early twentieth century the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch at Grand Army Plaza was erected, the Prospect Park Zoo opened in the 1930s, new playgrounds were added, among other additions to the park. NYPL’s Digital Collections contains hundreds of images of the park throughout the decades.