File:James S T Stranahan Statue ProspectPark.jpg
James S. T. Stranahan was a well-known and influential resident of Brooklyn, New York who significantly shaped the growth of the City of Brooklyn in the second half of the nineteenth century. He made a substantial part of his fortune developing the Atlantic Docks of Brooklyn. Following the American Civil War, he was a significant promoter of the Brooklyn Bridge, serving as one of the trustees, and the moving political force behind the development of Prospect Park, Brooklyn, in connection to which he served as President of the Parks Commission from 1860 to 1882. When, in 1865, Calvert Vaux convinced Stranahan that, to best take advantage of the lay of the land for a ravine and a lake, Prospect Park needed to move west and south, shifting part of the park into the neighboring town of Flatbush, it befell Stranahan to convince the City of Brooklyn and the New York State legislature to commit to a new series of purchases, for land had already been acquired according to the 1860 plan prepared by Egbert Viele. That he succeeded in this, and additionally engineered the purchase of even more acerage than what the 1860 plan had called for, was characteristically why Brooklyn contemporaries often called him — and not necessarily as a complement — "The Magician."
The statue was unveiled June 6th, 1891, in the presence of then 83 year old Stranahan. He died September 3, 1898. The bronze sculpture was created by Frederick MacMonnies. It is situated near the Grand Army Plaza entrance to the park, east of the main entry road.
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