Q: Tell us about your organization.

Prospect Park Alliance is the non-profit organization that sustains, restores and advances Prospect Park, Brooklyn's Backyard, in partnership with the City of New York. The Alliance provides critical staff and resources that keep the park green and vibrant for the diverse communities that call Brooklyn home. The Alliance cares for the woodlands and natural areas; restores the park’s buildings and landscapes; creates innovative park destinations; and provides free or low-cost volunteer, education and recreation programs. Through the work of the Alliance, Prospect Park is an international model for the care of urban parks, and one of the premier green spaces in the United States.‍

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Q: Highlight one recent initiative, program, or exhibition.

Prospect Park Alliance has launched our strategic plan, A Thriving Park for a Thriving Brooklyn, which provides a road map for the Alliance and the park for the next five years. This plan embodies the Alliance’s essential role in a post-pandemic Brooklyn, amplifying our capacity to enrich neighboring communities, unlocking new avenues to ensure the financial future of the park, and strategically prioritizing resources to meet ever-evolving needs. The plan is a result of a yearlong process of intensive community engagement, from one-on-one stakeholder meetings to a public survey that provided feedback from nearly 4,500 community members. Through this work, the Alliance has identified key objectives and initiatives that we will undertake over the next five years.

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Q: What is something in your neighborhood/area near your organization that you would recommend doing/seeing/eating etc. if someone was to visit?

Prospect Park’s 585 acres are a welcoming beacon for all who call Brooklyn home. Explore the neighborhoods that make Brooklyn a beloved melting pot of cultures from around the world. The vibrant stretch known as “Little Bangladesh” is home to a tight-knit South Asian community and must-visit neighborhood for restaurants, shops and more. No trip to Prospect Park is complete without a visit to Little Caribbean—a hub of Caribbean-American-Latinx life. Explore some of the neighborhood’s key destinations to delve into Brooklyn history, including the Flatbush African Burial Ground and Weeksville Heritage Center, and get to know the area’s vibrant art, food and fashion. Plus, Sunset Park, Southwest of Prospect Park, is home to one of Brooklyn’s largest East Asian communities and Latino populations and a robust array of restaurants, businesses and more. Brooklyn’s Backyard also neighbors a robust Hasidic community in Crown Heights to the East of the park.

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Q: How does your organization’s mission intersect with Archtober’s mission?

Prospect Park Alliance provides critical staff and resources that keep the park green and vibrant for the diverse communities that call Brooklyn home. The Alliance cares for the woodlands and natural areas, restores the park’s buildings and landscapes, creates innovative park destinations, and provides free or low-cost volunteer, education and recreation programs. This work ensures that Prospect Park can remain a beloved green pace and historic landmark destination for generations to come. Similar to Archtober’s mission to celebrate architecture and design, deepening our community’s relationships with the places we inhabit, the Alliance is dedicated to engaging our community–and our team ranging from horticulturalists, maintenance workers, ecologists, educators, volunteer coordinators, visitor services representatives and more help make our park thrive and engage our community in all that we do.

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Q: What was the biggest change that your institution has witnessed in recent years?

Coming out of the global pandemic and other social upheavals of the past decade, Prospect Park has never been more essential to our Brooklyn community. As our community has grown and evolved, and we face the increasing impacts of climate change, the need for a vibrant, welcoming and resilient park has never been more important. In the decline of stable funding from the City, Prospect Park Alliance's role as park stewards is critical. The park has seen record visitation in recent years since the pandemic, making it all the more essential to continue amplifying our capacity to enrich neighboring communities, unlock new avenues to ensure the financial future of the park, and strategically prioritizing resources to meet our community’s ever-evolving needs.

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Q: What is a design object in your collection (or a building on your campus) that you would like to highlight?

To mark Prospect Park’s co-designer, Calvert Vaux’s 200th birthday year, this year for Archtober, Prospect Park Alliance and Turnstile Tours will examine Vaux's distinctive architectural style on display in Prospect Park, paying special attention to structures such as the Wellhouse, Concert Grove Pavilion, and the park’s many arches. We will also examine Vaux’s legacy of designing buildings and landscapes for the public good, including museums, parks and housing. Plus, we look forward to Archtober tours focused on the beloved Prospect Park Zoo and its one of a kind architecture, as well as the waterways of Brooklyn’s Backyard on a tour exploring Prospect Park as an engineering marvel, designed around an ingenious drainage system and a chain of manmade streams and ponds throughout Prospect Park’s watercourse.

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