It’s hiding in plain sight in the middle of the park. But it’s lovely and worth looking out for.
At Concert Grove there is a long low wall—built in 1874 as a place where carriages could be fastened.
(Today it’s known as Harry’s Wall, after Harry Murphy, a co-founder of the Prospect Park Track Club—which designated the wall as a starting or ending point for races.)
At the end of the wall is a stone entryway carved with images of leaves, branches, and flowers—as well as a couple of birds, one who is currently in the sights of a cat, ready to pounce.
(Is that a cat? Not the kind prowling the park these days, at least)
It’s a lot like the stone carvings of Central Park’s Bethesda Terrace. No wonder: Both parks were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux.
Central Park came first, but supposedly Olmsted and Vaux considered Prospect Park the better one.
