Before there was a Prospect Park, there was a Mount Prospect, also called Prospect Hill, just on the eastern side of Flatbush Avenue.
One definition of the word “prospect” is a place offering a broad view, and Prospect Hill was surely that. It is the second-highest point in Brooklyn after Battle Hill in Green-Wood Cemetery, and it played a major role in the Revolutionary War Battle of Brooklyn when it was a lookout point for Continental Army troops.
Prospect Hill gave its name to Brooklyn’s famous park as well as the neighborhood it’s in: Prospect Heights.
Incidentally, Prospect Heights was one of several names first suggested for the neighborhood that is today Park Slope. It also once shared the name Gowanus Heights with Prospect Park, Greenwood and Bay Ridge.
Most of the neighborhood developed after Prospect Park was finished in 1873. By the 1890s, the neighborhood had the name Prospect Heights.
