Grand Army Plaza
Grand Army Plaza in 1894, sans sculptures. Photo via Wikipedia

The dignified entrance to both Prospect Park and Eastern Parkway, Grand Army Plaza remains a central landmark in Brooklyn more than 100 years since its creation. 

One of the park’s first completed features, the plaza today is known for its weekly hosting of the borough’s largest farmers market. But forgotten are some of the pivotal historical moments in its creation, as well as some of the details of its architecture.

Grand Army Plaza
The Central Library building under construction. Photo via Ephemeral New York

1. The Plaza proper refers to the concentric rings that form a traffic circle around the central Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Arch, a triumphal monument that was dedicated to the Union Army in 1892.

2. The four Doric Columns around the circle’s perimeter were added in the mid 1890s. The fountain in the small green space directly behind the arch is not the original. A rusted 1870s fountain was replaced in August 1897. The fountain that sits there today, the Bailey Fountain, was completed in 1932.

Grand Army Plaza
Photo by Mary Hautman

3. The columns, arch and new fountain came after work on the Plaza was stalled for years following the economic panic of 1873. In 1888, the Parks Commission called the Plaza “devoid of all life and a stony waste” in its annual report, after which architecture firm McKim, Mead and White began transforming the space into what it is today.

4. The Arch was landmarked in 1975, with the Commission taking care to note that the park entrance is “an excellent example of the influence of the ‘City Beautiful’ movement.”

Grand Army Plaza
Circa 1880. Photo via the Brooklyn Historical Society

5. The Victory figure — a part of the crowning arch sculpture designed by Frederick MacMonnies — fell from its chariot in 1976, helping to prompt a restoration effort completed in 1980.

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What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. I love Grand Army Plaza, it’s an absolute gem, but the utilization of space is just awful:

    • The arch forms a beautiful entrance to Prospect Park, and even has a pathway running below it toward the park – but that ‘entrance’ is cut off by lanes of busy traffic.
    • The area around the arch could be a gathering space with seating areas and plantings, but instead is a flat, boring landscape of brown gravel.
    • The whole area is ringed with large ugly concrete blocks that look like they were just dumped there. Which they probably were.

    In an ideal world the traffic would be placed underground and the whole area made into a pedestrian space and connected to the park proper. If that’s too ‘visionary’ for the city perhaps at least area around the arch could be spruced up a bit?

    • There’s a whole bunch of subway lines directly under Grand Army Plaza. Come back to reality. The blocks are there because of idiot car drivers who come down the hill and have careened into the plaza, plus the usual post-9/11 security theater. More junk because of the idiocy of the few.

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