PRESS RELEASE: State Historic Preservation Office Determines Mount Prospect Park Eligible for National Register of Historic Places

“Mount Prospect Park is part of the necklace of historic scenic and cultural resources at the heart of Brooklyn.”

Brooklyn, New York (July 18, 2024)  New York's State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO), which “helps communities identify, evaluate, preserve, and revitalize their historic, archeological, and cultural resources,” has found Mount Prospect Park eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. 

The Brooklyn neighborhood park’s fate lies at the center of controversy that erupted earlier this year, when Mayor Eric Adams suddenly announced a plan to use 40,000 square feet of the historic urban green park space to build a custom, poured-concrete skate facility that would rank as one of the largest such complexes on the East Coast. The “fast-tracked” construction plan relies on funding from the mayor; New York City Council Member Crystal Hudson, who recently published a survey showing her constituents rank access to green space as a top local concern; New York City Council Member Shahana Hanif; and Borough President Antonio Reynoso, who last fall published his 200-page Comprehensive Plan for Brooklyn, emphasizing thoughtful urban planning that prioritizes green park spaces, environmental justice, and climate resiliency.

The SHPO determined Mount Prospect Park significant in the area of Landscape Architecture, as a “largely intact public park” designed by New York City Department of Parks landscape architect Stuart Constable. According to the eligibility finding, Mount Prospect Park “maintains a high degree of integrity in its layout, design, and setting,” with “many mature trees, including enormous pin oaks.” Opened in 1939, the park was created as “a park for quiet recreational purposes” between the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the Central Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. It was constructed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the New Deal public works arm of the federal government. 

“It was clear that Mount Prospect Park is historically significant,” said preservationist and architectural historian Patrick W. Ciccone, who prepared the eligibility submission to SHPO. “It is perhaps the only major park in Brooklyn entirely built by the WPA, and is effectively intact as originally designed,” said Ciccone, who is vice chair of the board of the Preservation League of New York State and co-author of Bricks and Brownstone: The New York Row House. 

A neighborhood resident, Ciccone was surprised by Mayor Eric Adams’ announcement earlier this year that Mount Prospect Park was the planned location for constructing a regional-scale skateboard complex. “And I was even more surprised that the park’s historic eligibility and integrity had never been considered,” Ciccone said. “Today’s park – with mature plantings – is effectively intact from the 1930s design, including the central lawn.” 

Other highlights from the Mount Prospect Park eligibility finding include the following: 

  • “The park's interior design, largely unchanged since its opening, is a gently rolling platform of green and play spaces. Its heart is the large central lawn, which is surrounded by looping pathways that frame two long other smaller sloping elongated lawns and a playground, set in a slightly more formal ellipse.”

  • “It contains the second-highest point in the borough of Brooklyn and is built on the site of the Mount Prospect Reservoir, once a key component of Brooklyn’s water system as an independent city.”

  • At its dedication on May 27, 1939, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia called Mount Prospect Park “our monument to the City of New York,” marking “a new era of civic leadership and a beacon of progressive government,” made possible by WPA spending

  • “Mount Prospect Park is part of the necklace of historic scenic and cultural resources at the heart of Brooklyn,” including the Central Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the Brooklyn Museum.

The historic eligibility determination for Mount Prospect Park follows on the heels of a 25-point resolution passed in late June by Brooklyn’s Community Board 9, “to preserve green space in Mount Prospect Park and oppose building a paved skate complex on urban green park space.” The Community Board assessed constructing a paved skate facility on green urban park space in Mount Prospect Park to be “bad public policy,” and urged officials to assess already paved local space for skateboard facility construction that would be welcomed “with open arms.”

Friends of Mount Prospect Park, the Cultural Row Block Association, and thousands of neighbors oppose the plan to spend over $11M of public money to build the regional-scale, 40,000-square-foot, poured-concrete skate complex over historic public green park space. (California skateboarder Tony Hawk’s foundation is donating design assistance.) The other Brooklyn location in the “citywide initiative,” Brower Park, is already paved, and directly adjacent to Prospect Heights – in Crown Heights. In early July, days after moving ahead with tens of millions of dollars of hotly contested cuts to services and personnel throughout the Parks Department, the City opened a new $4.3M skateboarding and action sports facility in Red Hook, Brooklyn. There are also several fully paved skate spaces near Mount Prospect Park that skaters complain have few features and little upkeep. 

Additional resources: 

  • Community Board 9 resolution “to preserve green space in Mount Prospect Park and oppose building a paved skate complex on urban green park space”

  • Community Comments submitted to NYC Parks Department

https://www.friendsofmountprospectpark.org/community-comments-submitted-to-parks-department

  • Samples of elected officials’ “green climate pledges,” surveys, reports, etc.

https://www.friendsofmountprospectpark.org/officials-green-climate-pledges

Contact: Friends of Mount Prospect Park

FriendsofMountProspectPark@gmail.com

(347) 683-5512

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