‘New Year’s Surprise’: Prospect Park gets two new entrances

By Brooklyn Magazine Staff

Prospect Park has gotten two new entrances along the stretch of Flatbush Ave extending southeast from Grand Army Plaza, which until now had been a desolate mile-long swath with no easy access to the park.

In what the Prospect Park Alliance called a “New Year’s Surprise,” the park announced its first new entrances to the park since the 1940s: A major entrance to the northeast section of the park near the former Rose Garden, and a smaller entrance just north of the Prospect Park Zoo.

(Prospect Park Alliance)

Completed through the Parks Without Borders initiative, a $3.2 million project, is part of a comprehensive restoration of the Flatbush Avenue perimeter of Prospect Park.

“When I was in high school, my brother and I would run around the park along Flatbush Avenue, and it always struck me that there needed to be an easier way to get into the park from there,” said NYC Parks Commissioner Mitchell J. Silver. “Later on, this experience became my inspiration for creating the Parks Without Borders initiative to make green spaces all over the city more welcoming and easier to access.”

A ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held in the coming weeks, according to the Alliance.