Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Brooklyn Botanic Garden is a botanical garden in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City. The botanical garden occupies in central Brooklyn, close to Mount Prospect Park, Prospect Park, and the Brooklyn Museum. Designed by the Olmsted Brothers, BBG holds over 14,000 taxa of plants and has over 800,000 visitors each year. It includes a number of specialty gardens, plant collections, and structures. BBG hosts numerous educational programs, plant-science and conservation, and community horticulture initiatives, in addition to a herbarium collection.
The site of Brooklyn Botanic Garden was first designated in 1897, following three proposals for botanic gardens in Brooklyn in the 19th century. BBG opened in May 1911, on the site of an ash dump, and was initially operated by the Brooklyn Institute. Most of BBG's expansions were carried out over the next three decades under the tenure of its first director, C. Stuart Gager. BBG began operating three additional sites in the New York metropolitan area in the 1950s and 1960s, while its main garden in Brooklyn fell into decline. The original Brooklyn Botanic Garden was expanded and restored substantially starting in the 1980s, and additional structures were built through the 2010s.
BBG's landscape includes many specialty gardens and a group of buildings on its eastern boundary, accessed from three entrances. A brook flows from the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden in the north to the Water Garden in the south. BBG's other specialty gardens include rose, native flora, Shakespeare, fragrance, and children's gardens. There are also more formal landscape features such as an overlook, a celebrity path, the Osborne Garden, and a cherry esplanade. The structures include the 1980s-era Steinhardt Conservatory, the Laboratory Administration Building, and a palm house dating from the 1910s.
History
Early proposals
Prior to the construction of the present Brooklyn Botanic Garden, there had been three proposals for botanic gardens in the then-independent city of Brooklyn in the 19th century, though only one of these botanic gardens was ever built. André Parmentier had created the Horticultural and Botanic Garden of Brooklyn in October 1825 within Prospect Heights, on a plot bounded by Sixth, Atlantic, and Carleton Avenues and Bergen Street; this garden only lasted until about 1830. Brooklyn resident Thomas Hunt granted $50,000 in 1855 for the establishment of a botanic garden in Sunset Park. The Hunt Horticultural and Botanical Garden sought to raise $150,000, but the garden was never built at that location.The third plan for a botanical garden in Brooklyn was included in the plans for Prospect Park, which was approved in 1859. In February 1860, a group of fifteen commissioners submitted suggestions for park locations in Brooklyn, including a plot centered on present-day Mount Prospect Park and bounded by Warren Street to the north; Vanderbilt, Ninth, and Tenth Avenues to the west; Third and Ninth Streets to the south; and Washington Avenue to the east. Egbert Viele began drawing plans for the park, which was to straddle Flatbush Avenue and include Prospect Hill and the land now occupied by the Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the Brooklyn Museum. The botanical garden was initially planned to be located along the shores of the park's lake. The onset of the Civil War stopped further activity; following the war, the triangle of land to the east of Flatbush Avenue was excluded from the park. The botanical garden within Prospect Park was not built. The northeast portion of the triangle served as an ash dump until just before Brooklyn Botanic Garden was established.
Creation
Legislation and funding
On May 18, 1897, as the city moved toward consolidation, the New York State Legislature reserved 39 acres for a botanic garden. The site became part of Institute Park in 1902. The garden was to be run under the auspices of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, which until the 1970s included Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Children's Museum, and Brooklyn Academy of Music. By 1901, the institute sought to acquire a site on the eastern side of Flatbush Avenue for the botanical garden. This site had also been proposed as the location of a proposed Brooklyn university, but the institute wanted to establish a botanical garden on the site. Several of the institute's donors proposed in 1905 to give $25,000 for the upkeep of a "scientific botanic garden" next to the Brooklyn Museum. The next year, the donors doubled this award to $50,000. City officials endorsed the creation of the botanical garden in 1907, and supporters of the institute donated thousands of dollars toward the botanical garden. Alfred Tredway White, a trustee of the Brooklyn Institute, leased a site behind the Brooklyn Museum from the city.Although the New York City Board of Estimate approved Brooklyn Botanic Garden's creation in June 1909, it did not approve another agreement that would allow the Brooklyn Institute to maintain the botanical garden. By the end of that year, the Olmsted Brothers had been hired as landscape designers, while McKim, Mead & White had been hired as architects for the botanical garden's buildings. The Board of Estimate voted on December 10, 1909, to allow the city and the Brooklyn Institute to sign a maintenance agreement for the botanical garden. New York City government and the Brooklyn Institute signed the maintenance agreement on December 28, and an endowment fund for BBG was created three days later. C. Stuart Gager was hired as BBG's first director in March 1910. At this point, BBG was authorized to spend between $2,000 and $2,500 annually on plantings. That June, the city government appropriated $25,000 for Brooklyn Botanic Garden's plant houses.
Construction and opening
Gager wanted to create "an animated textbook in botany", with a Palm House and laboratories facing Washington Avenue, as well as a landscape with valleys, hills, a pond, and rocks. In contrast to older botanical gardens, Brooklyn Botanic Garden was not arranged based solely on taxonomic classifications; the Olmsted Brothers sought to make the garden aesthetically pleasing as well. McKim, Mead & White began drawing up plans in late 1910 for a laboratory and administration building with a 480-seat lecture hall, laboratories, and classrooms. The New York City government turned over to the Brooklyn Institute in February 1911, and the institute's director Franklin W. Hooper requested the same month that more land be allocated to BBG. McKim, Mead & White had completed plans for two wings of the Palm House and the first part of the Laboratory Administration Building that March. The next month, the institute decided to build only one part of the Palm House, as the botanical garden only had a $50,000 budget.The first section of BBG, the Native Flora Garden, opened on May 13, 1911; the date was chosen to coincide with the birthday of the naturalist Carl Linnaeus. At the time, the plants had temporary labels, and work on the Palm House and laboratory had not started. By late 1911, the Brooklyn Institute was planting shrubs and trees and were curating BBG's lawn. The plantings included between 150 and 200 species of shrubs that grew within of Brooklyn. BBG staff used a temporary headquarters in the Brooklyn Museum while BBG was being completed. Harold Caparn was appointed as the landscape architect in 1912, serving in that position until 1945. BBG hired Cockerill & Little Co. to build the Laboratory Administration Building in January 1912 and began constructing the structure three months later. That September, the city government gave BBG an additional of land, abutting the museum and reservoir.
Workers began constructing the second section of the Palm House and landscaping the northern section of the botanical garden in early 1913. The completion of the Laboratory Administration Building was postponed because of difficulties in obtaining roof tiles and structural steel. The first portions of the Laboratory Administration Building and the Palm House were being completed by mid-1913, and these structures opened in December 1913. At the time, the Palm House had about 250 specimens from 140 species. Dirt from the Brooklyn Botanical Garden was used to flatten land in Prospect Park, and workers also landscaped BBG's watercourses and laid out paths. The ongoing work forced officials to close off about two-thirds of the botanical garden's area to the public. BBG launched a children's garden in 1914, which was one of the first of its kind in the world. By the end of that year, workers were constructing a Japanese garden and a rock garden.
BBG's Japanese garden opened on the northeastern corner of the grounds in June 1915, next to the lake. At that time, BBG started admitting visitors every day of the week; the grounds had been closed during the previous year because workers were regrading the paths. McKim, Mead & White filed plans for expansions of the Palm House and the Laboratory Administration Building in August 1915 at a projected cost of $150,000. The Board of Estimate approved the rock garden in March 1916, and the Laboratory Administration Building's cornerstone was laid at a groundbreaking ceremony that April. The rock garden was completed in May 1916. The same year, the third section of the Palm House was built, and contracts for the Palm House's fourth section were awarded. The Laboratory Administration Building and Palm House were nearly complete in early 1917 and were dedicated on April 19–21, 1917. The children's building was finished the same year.