Prospect Park Long Meadow

The Long Meadow is the signature landscape of Prospect Park, a 90-acre expanse of unbroken green that is the longest continuous meadow in any urban park in the United States, stretching nearly a mile from Grand Army Plaza to the Picnic House.

Olmsted and Vaux considered the Long Meadow their greatest achievement, more successful even than Central Park's Sheep Meadow. The meadow's gentle undulations, framing trees, and carefully managed sightlines create an illusion of infinite pastoral space.

On weekends, the Long Meadow hosts an extraordinary cross-section of Brooklyn life: Dominican families grilling, Orthodox Jewish groups picnicking, hipsters playing frisbee, West Indian cricket matches, and dogs chasing tennis balls across the grass.

The meadow's design conceals the surrounding city almost completely, using berms and tree plantings to block views of the apartment buildings beyond the park. The result is a landscape where visitors can forget they are in one of the most densely populated cities on Earth.

The Long Meadow is the purest expression of Olmsted's democratic pastoral vision: a vast, open landscape available to all, where the simple act of lying on the grass and looking at the sky becomes a radical rejection of the urban intensity beyond the trees.