Concert Grove

The story

The audience was meant to stroll during intermissions, promenade-style, listening to musicians play from a bandstand on Music Island — an island that no longer exists. Olmsted and Vaux completed this northeast corner of Prospect Park in 1874, with Jacob Wrey Mould and Thomas Wisedell helping shape its terraced garden above the esplanade. It became the park's self-declared artistic center, drawing German choral groups through the nineteenth century. Bad acoustics eventually ended the concerts, but the grove remains a sculpture garden, its busts of musical figures placed largely by German American Sängerfest participants, with Lincoln facing the lake nearby.