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BROOKLYN WEEKLY, MARCH 24, 2019
WELL DONE: Local landmarking advocates awarded the Prospect Park Alliance with a prestigious
preservation honor for its restoration of a historic wellhouse in the meadow.
New York Landmarks Conservancy
Preservationists
honor park’s loo
Prospect Park bathroom wins award
BY COLIN MIXSON
It’s a win for this number-two building!
A group of local landmarking advocates
honored Prospect Park’s caretakers with a
prestigious award for their restoration of
a 150-year-old building located within the
sprawling green space. The group’s leader
praised park keepers’ decision to transform
the historic structure into a high-tech
outhouse, which she called a prime example
of preservation done right.
“It’s the fi rst time we’ve given the award
for a bathroom,” said New York Landmarks
Conservancy President Peg Breen. “We always
say that historic buildings can be repurposed
for modern uses and here is one
more good example!”
The Prospect Park Alliance beat out
a few dozen competitors to net one of the
Conservancy’s Lucy G. Moses Awards for
its restoration of the Prospect Park Wellhouse,
a historic structure workers recently
equipped with a high-tech green latrine that
uses 97-percent less water than standard toilets,
and converts human waste into plant
food.
The wellhouse, built in 1869, is the only
building within Prospect Park that was
designed by meadow architects Frederick
Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. So the
structure not only has considerable historic
value, but it looks snazzy too, with
lively Gothic embellishments and a vibrant
paint job, according to Breen.
“We think it’s a very important building,
and it’s really quite elaborate, with all
kinds of Gothic and stylistic details,” she
said.
The building was used to pump fresh
water into Prospect Park Lake until sometime
after 1914, when the park began drawing
water from municipal aquifers. Workers
would eventually fi ll in the building’s
namesake well, and over the next century
the structure suffered considerable damage
and deterioration.
As part of the Alliance’s $2.34-million
renovation project, workers dug exploratory
holes that revealed a large void beneath
the building. Further excavation
unearthed the Wellhouse’s original cellar,
along with a tunnel and a bluestone stairwell
linking the newly uncovered lower
level to the surface.
All that additional space made the wellhouse
the perfect spot for a high-tech loo,
which requires a living ecosystem of bacteria
and other organisms to break human
poop down into usable compost. The new
lavatory also features an irrigation system
that takes undrinkable waste water from
the bathroom and sprinkles it over nearby
plants — which will save the park a whopping
250,000 gallons of water per year.
The Landmarks Conservancy will present
the honor to the Prospect Park Alliance
and four other Lucy G. Moses Award winners
— all of which are located in Brooklyn
— at a snazzy gala in Manhattan on April
23.