Grand army Plaza – the Central area of Brooklyn, making the Northern entrance to Prospect Park. Here comes the main street Brooklyn Flatbush Avenue, seething with traffic flows. It makes sense to learn it is a huge oval space: an area full of monuments of history.

Architects Frederick olmstead and Calvert Vaux created the area in 1867 as the main entrance to the Park. It is so named: Prospect Park Plaza. However, in 1926, was sixty years of the Grand Army of the Republic, the organization of veterans of the Civil war, and the area was renamed to Grand army Plaza. In new York, in Manhattan, there is another square with the same name, but it is given in honor of army Civil war hero General Sherman.

Brooklyn Grand army Plaza is the main transport interchange area, his nervous knot. The traffic here is that to get to the monuments is not easy, especially in the center of the square leads to a single transition. But there is something to see.

Since the advent of its Central square is a fountain, continuously changing over the decades. In 1867 he had only one jet, in 1873 it was replaced by a water dome with colored lights. In 1897, the backlight did electric, the people willingly admiring the spectacle, but in 1915, the construction of the metro "electric fountain" was liquidated. In 1932've set my multi Bailey fountain, named for the philanthropist who gave money for it.

The visual center of the square is now, without doubt, a triumphal arch, erected in memory of soldiers and sailors who defended the North during the Civil war. Installed it in 1892 by architect John Hemingway Duncan. The inner surface of the arch is decorated with bas-reliefs of presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant (work of the sculptor Rudolf William O'donovan), in 1895, the building was crowned with the winged goddess of victory, and the next there's sculptural groups symbolizing the army and Navy (they were sculpted by Frederick MacManus).

On the square you can see many monuments: the Brooklyn banker and philanthropist Henry Maxwell, the generals of the Civil war the Governer Kemble Warren and Henry Warner the Slocum, the gynecologist Alexander Johnston Skene, Builder James Stranahan (one of the founders of the nearby Propekte Park). And nearby in 1965 was set a modest bust of John F. Kennedy is the only official monument to the deceased President in new York.

At Grand army Plaza, the brooklynites celebrate Christmas and New year, arranging a huge firework. And in the days of Hanukkah here you put one of the world's largest menorahs (menorahs) – 2, 5 meters tall.