Prospect Park (Troy, New York)

rdf:langString Prospect Park (Troy, New York)

rdf:langString Prospect Park is an 80-acre (32 ha) city park in Troy, New York. The park is situated between Congress and Hill Street on top of Mount Ida. Prospect Park was originally designed in 1903 by local landscape engineer Garnet Douglass Baltimore, the first African-American graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). He had also designed the 200-acre Forest Park Cemetery on Pinewood Avenue in Troy in 1897, which is now neglected and far from its picturesque days. The park started to fall into disrepair in the 1950s, and relatively little of Baltimore's work is still evident in the park today. The park today includes the following recreational areas: 14 tennis courts, 4 handball courts, 2 basketball courts, playground, picnic areas, soccer field, comfort station, spray pool, nature trail, a roadway which surrounds the park with eight parking areas, and finally uncle sam memorial pavilion which overlooks the city of Troy below. The Uncle Sam Memorial commemorates Samuel Wilson, who owned this land. It was an open gazebo overlooking the city and the Hudson River. Inside the gazebo were panels with patriotic words inscribed ~ Honesty, Justice, Republic, Independence, Freedom, and Faith. There are three empty places where panels had been. They either fell down or were stolen. It’s likely that Honor was one of them and maybe Patriotism and Loyalty was the other two.