Carroll Park is one of Brooklyn's oldest public squares. It sits on a flat city block in Carroll Gardens, bordered by Carroll Street to the north, President to the south, Court to the west and Smith to the east. The block was set aside as a private garden in 1846 and given to the city seven years later, which makes it older than Prospect, older than most of the brownstones around it, older than the borough's bridge.
A bronze soldier has stood at the eastern entrance since 1895, a quiet memorial to the volunteer infantry of the Civil War. The London Planes that ring the lawn were planted, by best account, in the early 1920s. The Little League fence went up in 1953. The water-spray feature, the one the kids run through in July, opened in 1998.
None of this is grand. That's the point.