The Brooklyn Botanic Garden was founded at a time when the towering buildings and winding streets of New York City were developing. Although it turned out that New York City would eventually become one of the largest and busiest cities in the world, New York law wanted to ensure that the landscape wasn’t limited to just skyscrapers and cobbled streets and that some flora and fauna would be preserved stay. In 1897, New York State legislation cleared 39 hectares of land for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
