page_title: Prospect Park (Brooklyn)
section_title: Lake
hierarchical_section_title: Prospect Park (Brooklyn) / Landscape features / Watercourse / Lake
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 mouth of Prospect Park's watercourse is the artificial, 60-acre Prospect Lake (also known as Prospect Park Lake). Prospect Lake includes several islands and is home to over 20 species of fish. Every year, the lake hosts the R.H. Macy's Fishing Contest, a tradition that dates to 1947. Though NYC Parks generally allows licensed anglers to fish, it maintains a catch and release policy to prevent depletion of the fish population. In addition, visitors may explore the lake in kayaks and pedal boats, available at the LeFrak Center at Lakeside, or the Independence, a replica of the original electric launch which took day-trippers around the lake in the 20th century. On the shore of the lake, there are several "rustic shelters" that provide scenic views of the water.
  Ice skating, popularized in Central Park, was a key reason for including Prospect Lake in the design of the park's watercourse. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, red balls raised on the fronts of trolley cars signified that the ice was at least four inches thick. Red flags were also placed at Grand Army Plaza to indicate the ice's sufficient thickness. Later, green flags were used to indicate that the ice was thick enough, and red flags indicated that the ice was too thin. Since then, safety concerns have ended skating on the lake; as a result of climate change, winters have become warmer in the 21st century compared to the 19th century, the ice on the lake has become too thin to accommodate skaters. Ice skating moved to the Kate Wollman Rink in 1960, and again to the Lakeside Center in 2012.
caption: Prospect Park's lake
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