page_title: Prospect Park (Brooklyn)
section_title: Former structures
hierarchical_section_title: Prospect Park (Brooklyn) / Landmarks and structures / Former structures
caption_attribution_description: The Dairy Farmhouse, Prospect Park, Brooklyn. Designed by Calvert Vaux.
context_page_description: Prospect Park is an urban park in Brooklyn, New York City. The park is situated between the neighborhoods of Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Flatbush, and Windsor Terrace, and is adjacent to the Brooklyn Museum, Grand Army Plaza, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. With an area of 526 acres, Prospect Park is the second largest public park in Brooklyn, behind Marine Park.
  First proposed in legislation passed in 1859, Prospect Park was laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, who also helped design Manhattan's Central Park, following various changes to its design. Prospect Park opened in 1867, though it was not substantially complete until 1873. The park subsequently underwent numerous modifications and expansions to its facilities. Several additions to the park were completed in the 1890s, in the City Beautiful architectural movement. In the early 20th century, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation commissioner Robert Moses started a program to clean up Prospect Park. A period of decline in the late 20th century spurred the creation of the Prospect Park Alliance, which refurbished many parts of the park starting in the late 1980s.
context_section_description: The Dairy Cottage, or "the Dairy", was located near Boulder Bridge west of the zoo. It was a two-story stone cottage with two gabled wings; a public room and women's quarters on the first floor; and a single residence on the second floor. The Dairy was built in 1869 or 1871 to sell fresh milk and other light refreshments to the public; a similar building was also built in Central Park. At the time, sheep and cows were allowed to pasture on the meadows of Prospect Park, and seven cows were purchased specifically to provide milk. However, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, news articles after 1879 do not make a mention of the Dairy providing milk. The cottage later became part of the Menagerie, the precursor to the modern-day zoo, and was encircled by several other zoo buildings to its north and east. All of these buildings were demolished in 1935 when the zoo was built.
  There were two unusual structures built in Prospect Park in its early years. The first was a camera obscura booth located on Breeze Hill's western slope, at the east end of the park, built in the early 1880s. The second was the Circular Yacht or Rotary Yacht, a floating carousel with yacht-shaped vehicles. Located near the Long Meadow, the Circular Yacht was constructed by inventor David Smith in 1878 and could hold up to 220 people at once. These structures were both demolished before the 1900s, and the camera obscura later became the site of the now-demolished Old Fashioned Flower Garden.
  The park contained a Music Island near the east shore of the Lake. The island was used by musicians who were performing for audiences in the nearby Concert Grove. It was demolished in 1960 to make way for the Wollman Rink. Following the rink's demolition in the early 2010s, a replica of the island was constructed, and it opened in 2012. Across the Lake, two structures were built on the peninsula in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Model Yacht Club House, built on the south side of the peninsula in 1900, was an octagonal wood-frame clubhouse that burned down in a fire in 1956. On the opposite or northern side of the peninsula, there was another shelter, similar in design to the Concert Grove Pavilion, which lasted from 1915 to around the 1940s.
  On the west side of Prospect Park, there was a conservatory on the Long Meadow. It consisted of sixteen greenhouses located near Seventh Street and Prospect Park West. Though it was a popular visitor attraction, it was supplanted by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden past the park's eastern edge. The conservatory's greenhouses were renovated in 1929–1930, but the cost of upkeep soon became exorbitant. In 1955, the greenhouses were considered redundant and were demolished. At that point, the conservatory's main attraction was an annual Easter flower show.
caption: The Dairy, c. 1870
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