Prospect Park Pavilion Gets $2M Renovation

PROSPECT HEIGHTS — A much-beloved part of Prospect Park's original landscape is due for a long-overdue refurbishment and reopening.

The Concert Grove Pavilion, an elaborately decorated open-air bandstand on the Brooklyn park's east edge, will undergo $2 million of improvements this year. The renovations aim to restore the dilapidated pavilion, which has been closed since 2014.

Park and city officials kicked off the reconstruction with an event on Monday.

"We're so thrilled that finally this restoration is beginning," said city council member Brad Lander, who helped secure funding for the project.

Parkgoers took in concerts, held family gatherings and picnicked under the pavilion's canopy since it, and the park, opened in 1874. The park's designer Calvert Vaux drew up plans for the pavilion that called for eight cast-iron columns supporting metal-and-wood roof with Eastern-influenced motifs.

"It was a really beloved community amenity," said Deborah Kirschner, spokesperson for the Prospect Park Alliance.

But the pavilion barely survived past its centennial. In 1974, a fire ripped through the structure and left only its eight columns standing.

Kirschner said a restoration completed in 1988 reopened it to the public for decades, until something "quirky" happened. That restoration had a flaw which kept water pooling inside the roof, she said.

"Over 30 years time there was water damage," Kirschner said.

Park officials in 2014 closed the pavilion to the public because of structural damage. An effort to restore and reopen the pavilion started soon after.

Lander and other members of the city council's Brooklyn delegation lobbied for and secured money for the project. The money will fulfill an award-winning design by the Prospect Park Alliance which will repair the water damage and reconstruct historical details.

Vaux imbued the pavilion with motifs from Hindu, Chinese, Moorish and Egyptian architecture. Park officials want to keep and reinstate those designs, but have ditched the structure's original name — the Oriental Pavilion — which Lander called "racist."

"I’m glad we’re getting rid of that name," Lander said.

Officials hope the project finishes and the pavilion can reopen by the year's end, Lander said.

The project will also restore lighting and landscaping around the pavilion, Kirschner said. She said it will be one of several projects near Concert Grove and the park's Lakeside.

People interested in keeping track of Prospect Park projects can visit www.prospectpark.org/tracker.