#458 Parkways and the Transformation of Brooklyn

<p><strong>When </strong><a href="https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2009/06/prospect-park-and-return-of-olmsted-and.html"><strong>Prospect Park</strong></a><strong> was first opened to the public in the late 1860s, the City of Brooklyn was proud to claim a landmark as beautiful and as peaceful as New York’s Central Park. But the superstar landscape designers — </strong><a href="https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2022/04/frederick-law-olmsted-and-the-plan-for-central-park.html"><strong>Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux </strong></a><strong>— weren’t finished.</strong></p><p>This park came with two grand pleasure drives, wide boulevards that emanated from the north and south ends of the park. <strong>Eastern Parkway</strong>, the first parkway in the United States, is the home of the <strong>Brooklyn Museum</strong> and the <strong>Brooklyn Botanic Garden</strong>, its leafy pedestrian malls running through the neighborhood of <strong>Crown Heights</strong>. </p><p>But it’s Ocean Par...