Exploring Brooklyn's Prospect Park and Victorian Flatbush

This tour is free with an optional donation to your guide (pay what you wish).  Meeting place: In front of the main library at Grand Army Plaza. Be sure to bring a picnic lunch and water to drink. Restrooms: Inside the library.

Required: Proof of full vaccination.

Frederick Law Olmstead, who had previously designed Central Park with his colleague, Calvert Vaux, called Prospect Park his masterpiece. We'll visit both the unique natural and human-made features of the park, including The Ravine woodlands, Brooklyn's only forest, along with meadows and waterways, the historic, Audubon Boathouse, and the recently restored Concert Grove Pavilion. There is also a battle site from the American Revolution (Battle of Brooklyn August 27, 1776).

After lunch in the park we'll visit downtown Flatbush and see where Barbara Streisand, Neil Diamond and other famous Brooklynites attended High School. Victorian Flatbush, truly one of New York's hidden gems, which began as a Dutch farming village in 1652 and began to develop as a residential suburb in the late 1800's. Today this group of neighborhoods makes up one of the largest collection of Victorian-era wood frame architecture in the U.S. Many of the homes contains distinctive ornamental features and thrive on lovely-tree-lined streets. You won't believe you are in the middle of Brooklyn!

We will end on walk in the Ditmas Park neighborhood, near the Q train at Cortelyou Road for a reasonably quick ride back to Manhattan or Atlantic Avenue for other train connections.