Prospect Park

The Daily Plant : Thursday, November 29, 2001

MANHATTAN PARKIES: PLEASE GIVE BLOOD ON DECEMBER 11 AND 12

The Manhattan blood drive will be held Tuesday, December 11 and Wednesday, December 12 from 8:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. in the Arsenal Gallery. Our last blood drive was scheduled for September 12 and 13, but was canceled because the New York Blood Center was inundated with donors and needed its mobile crew at the disaster site. Once their blood storage facilities were full, the New York Blood Center stopped receiving donations. But because blood has a shelf life of only 45 days, more blood is needed right now! Please observe the three-month anniversary of September 11 by giving the gift of life. Many Parkies signed up in September. Now is the time to make good on your pledge.

If you work at the Arsenal or if you wish to volunteer, please call Hedi (Headlight) Piel at 360-3442. If you work at Arsenal North with the Urban Park Service, please call Sydney Goldstein at 360-2774. If you work with the Natural Resources Group, please call Michele (Raven) Pittman at 360-1405. For the Manhattan Borough Office please call Veronica (Faerydust) Llanos at 830-7814, and for all other Parkies at Arsenal West, please call Tarice (Mystique) Harris at 830-7814. If you cannot donate for any reason, please sign up to volunteer, during the two-day drive. We need people at the sign-in and food tables.

Last year, Parks received the gold award for outstanding participation from the New York Blood Center. No other City agency won the gold. Let’s hang on to it!

And keep in mind: your blood donation will save lives and also earn you three hours of comp time. Sign up today!

Lily Brown was born in Washington Heights on August 7, 1913. She attended George Washington High School. Brown spent 35 years of her adulthood educating children and, in her free time, agitating for neighborhood improvements to benefit them. She founded the St. Nicholas Terrace Improvement Association, the River Terrace Neighborhood Committee, and the Neighborhood Action Coalition to stage clean-ups and green-ups, to remove highway billboards and add bus shelters, and to renovate parks and playgrounds. She successfully lobbied the formidable Parks Commissioner Robert Moses to rebuild her local playground. Decades later, Brown formed a committee to study Fort Washington Playground. Their recommendations resulted in significant improvements there. For her commitment to Washington Heights—its people and public spaces—Parks dedicated the playground to Lily Brown on November 16, 2001. Also that day, Parks began a reconstruction of the facility.

Mayor Rudolph (Eagle) Giuliani and Council Member Stanley (Falcon) Michels are funding a $1.6 million reconstruction to upgrade the entire play area. This money will enable Parks to fix the electricity and plumbing in the comfort station, repair the fences and retaining wall, and add state-of-the-art, colorful climbing equipment as well as new swings, games tables, painted games, a spray shower for kids, and benches for visitors for all ages. Council Member Michels, Commissioner Henry J. (StarQuest) Stern, and Ms. Brown’s husband, Lloyd, were among those who spoke at the dedication and groundbreaking ceremony.

Read the original press release.

Like the Brooklyn Museum and the Brooklyn Public Library, Prospect Park—Brooklyn’s last forest—is a rich cultural resource. The hundreds of teachers who assembled in the park for an Education Expo on Sunday, November 18 agreed. Arrayed before them in the Prospect Park Picnic House they found representatives of dozens of educational organizations, each of which has created curriculum focused on Prospect Park. The organizations included the Urban Park Rangers, the Prospect Park Alliance, Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment, the City Parks Foundation’s Urban Forest & Education Program, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. All of these are valuable institutions in themselves; the linking of their programs offered educators a network of unprecedented scope.

(Thursday, December 8, 1988)

The Alley Pond Environmental Center (APEC), a non-profit environmental organization founded in 1972 and funded with State, City, and private money, has made its headquarters in a Parks-owned building in Queens’ Alley Pond Park for the past 12 years. In addition to offering educational courses, tours, and exhibits, APEC helps Parks maintain the 625-acre park and its nature trails, and serves as an advocate of environmental and parks-related issues.

G.W. Curtis defines the book:

the ever-burning lamp of preserved wisdom.