from-a-to-p-park.

In the 1970s, Prospect Park in Brooklyn looked more like a crime scene than the pastoral refuge imagined a century earlier by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux.

As if to advertise the woeful state of the park, in 1976 Columbia, the figure driving atop the arch at Grand Army Plaza, fell over in her chariot, a victim of disrepair.
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Three decades later, Ms. Thomas, who plans to announce her retirement on Tuesday, has become a Brooklyn institution and is widely seen as the park’s indefatigable savior.

Her fans credit her with turning Prospect Park into a worthy rival to Central Park, and for handing a lost treasure of wilderness and recreation back to the people of Brooklyn. (via)