Grand Army Plaza
Grand Army Plaza is an oval-shaped public space, ribbed with city streets, at the northwest corner of Prospect Park in Brooklyn. It is not to be confused with the plaza of the same name in Manhattan, at the southeast corner of Central Park.
The Bailey Fountain.
The dominant feature is a monumental arch, pictured above, festooned with heroic allegorical statuary that sits on the lower, eastern end of the plaza. The mythic figures on the top and the front of the arch are by the renowned sculptor Frederick William MacMonnies. At the center of the plaza, northwest of the arch, is a large sculpture, depicting various allegorical and mythological figures, and fountain named for the Brooklyn philanthropist Frank Bailey.
Statue of Lincoln under the arch.
There are five historical statues inside the plaza. Under the arch, set in the walls on either side, are relief statues of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. At the upper, western end is a monumental bust of the renowned gynecologist Alexander Skene. On the west side of the arch is a statue of the Civil War general Gouverneur Kemble Warren, and on the east side is a statue of another Civil War general, Henry Warner Slocum.
Statue of Grant under the arch.
Nearby, across from the arch inside the park, is the comparatively serene statue of J. S. T. Stranahan, the longtime president of the Prospect Park Commission.
Farther inside the park, there are eight more monuments:
IN THE PARK’S CONCERT GROVE
- Ludwig van Beethoven, composer
- Edvard Grieg, composer
- Washington Irving, author
- Abraham Lincoln, uh, president
- Thomas Moore, composer
- Amadeus Mozart, composer
- Carl Maria von Weber, composer
ELSEWHERE
- Marquis de Lafayette, Revolutionary War hero, 9th Street and Park West
Grand Army Plaza was designed 1867 by Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux, the men who designed Central Park and Prospect Park. You can see some interesting historical pictures of the plaza here.
