Grand Army Plaza Brooklyn

Brooklyn, New York is an oval plaza that forms the main entrance to Prospect Park. It was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux in 1867. It consists of concentric rings arranged as streets, with the outer ring being named Plaza Street. The inner ring was originally intended to be a circle, but it actually was arranged as a main street – Flatbush Avenue – with eight radial roads connecting: Vanderbilt Avenue; Butler Place; Saint John’s Place (twice); Lincoln Place; Eastern Parkway; Prospect Park West; Union Street; and Berkeley Place. As completed, the only streets that penetrate to the inner ring are Flatbush Avenue, Vanderbilt Avenue, Prospect Park West, Eastern Parkway, and Union Street.

Originally known as Prospect Park Plaza, but renamed in 1926, it is perhaps best known for the Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch, Brooklyn’s version of the Arc de Triomphe. It is also the site of the Bailey Fountain, and a monument to John F. Kennedy, as well as statues of Civil War generals Gouverneur Kemble Warren and Henry Warner Slocum, along with busts of notable Brooklyn citizens Henry W. Maxwell and Alexander J.C. Skene.

The Arch

Prospect Park Plaza (as it was originally known) was conceived by its designers, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, simply as a grand entrance to the Park. It was meant as a gateway, to separate the noisy city from the calm nature of the Park. Olmsted and Vaux's design included only a single-spout fountain surrounded by berms (earth embankments) covered in heavy plantings. They still shield the local apartment buildings and the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library from the noisy traffic circle that has developed.

On 1889-08-06, A blind jury of two experts, appointed by the Soldiers and Sailors Monument Commission, selected the design of John H. Duncan from a field of thirty six entries that had been submitted the previous year. [4] Duncan, who would go on to design Grants Tomb in the following decade, proposed a free-standing memorial arch of a classical style similar to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. After two and a half months of site preparation, William Tecumseh Sherman laid the cornerstone of the arch on 1889-10-30. After almost three years of construction, President Grover Cleveland presided over the unveiling on 1892-10-21.

Statuary and fountain

The Arch gained its monumental statues nine years later. They were first suggested by the architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White as part of a plan to formalize the plaza in the spirit of the City Beautiful movement. Park Commissioner Frank Squire liked the proposal and in 1894 engaged Frederick MacMonnies to design three sculptural groupings for the Arch, the Quadriga, The Spirit of the Army, and The Spirit of the Navy.

The Quadriga resides at the top and depicts the lady Columbia, an allegorical representation of the United States, riding in a chariot drawn by two horses. Two winged Victory figures, each leading a horse, trumpets Columbia's arrival. The lower pedestals facing the park hold the Spirit of the Army group and the Spirit of the Navy group. Installation of the groups began four years later, starting with the Quadriga on December 4, 1898, and finishing with the Navy group on April 13, 1901. The work took nearly seven years to complete, about twice as long as the construction of the arch itself.

Just north of the Arch, and away from Prospect Park, stands Bailey Fountain, the fourth fountain to occupy the site. The original fountain, featuring a lone jet of water, was replaced in 1873 by Calvert Vaux's Plaza Fountain which had gas-lit colored horizontal and vertical water jets. The Electric Fountain, designed by electrical engineer F.W. Darlington in 1897, featured 19 automatic focusing electric lights with a dancing display of water jets controlled by a conductor. The Electric Fountain was removed during the 1915 construction of the IRT subway under the Plaza.

The Bailey Fountain was built in 1932 by architect Edgerton Swarthout and sculptor Eugene Savage. Named after Brooklyn-based financier and philanthropist Frank Bailey (1865-1953), he funded it as a memorial to his wife Mary Louise. It features an elaborate grouping of allegorical and mythical figures that includes the god of water Neptune and a pair of female nudes representing Wisdom and Felicity.

Current use

The Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument received landmark designation in 1973; in 1975, all of Grand Army Plaza became a New York City historic landmark. In 1976 the Lady Columbia figure on the Quadriga fell out of its chariot, underscoring the need for restoration of the then seventy eight year old installation. The Arch was restored in 1980 and again in 2000.

The interior of the Arch is usually closed to visitors, but is sometimes opened for art shows and performances held inside. Only the eastern end is ever open to the public, with a staircase leading to a platform at the top by the Quadriga. The symmetrical western end, with its degraded stairway, is only used for storage.

The area around the Arch forms the largest and busiest traffic circle in Brooklyn; this point is the convergence of Flatbush Avenue, Vanderbilt Avenue, Eastern Parkway, Prospect Park West, and Union Street. In decades past, the circle hosted Brooklyn's "Death-O-Meter", a sign admonishing drivers to "Slow Up" and with a continually updated tally of traffic accident deaths in the borough.

For the past several years a Green Market, referred to as the 'Farmer's Market' by residents, is held on the Plaza in front of Prospect Park every Saturday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.. On weekends a free tourist trolley service runs between noon and 6 p.m. from Grand Army Plaza with stops at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the Boathouse, the Wollman Rink and the Brooklyn Museum. The Grand Army Plaza subway station is on the north end of the Plaza and furnishes transportation to the site and the nearby park.