We were early for our Central Park Conservancy tour "Iconic Views" so we did a bit of wandering on the southernmost section of the park.
The Conservancy uses all of the funds towards the $80M budget to keep the park beautiful.
Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted (also elected superintendent of the park) and Calvert Vaux, British architect, their was the last entry into the competition in the final hour before the deadline.
It opened to the public in 1858.
It covers 843 acres with more than 20,000 trees, 9000 benches, 36 bridges/arches, and 21 playgrounds.
But none of it was natural.
It was a giant swamp, with only a few giant rocks in the park now the original natural inhabitants. Everything else had to be brought in a designed to look as though it occurred naturally. It was the first Landscape Architecture job in America and actually gave rise to the profession.
It had seen decades of boom, when there was money enough to add and care for the property, and decades of bust, when it had to be run on a shoestring budget.
Before the Conservancy was able to get the City to agree to its stewardship, the park had fallen into disrepair. A few photos from the 1970s illustrate this pretty well. And New York in general as it teetered on bankruptcy is in this gallery. All I knew of NYC in the 1970s was Sesame Street, which I credit for my lifelong fascination with subterranean transportation.
Book directly through the Conservancy to be sure your dollars are funding the park itself.
When I was here last, automobile traffic was still cutting through the southern end park, although restrictions to cars had started almost fifty years prior. In June of this year, the final sections banned all but necessary personnel vehicles with permits from entering any of the roads through the parks. The four underground tunnels are the only way to cross from east to west between the more than fifty blocks that Central Park spans. At the turn of the century, when car drivers won their court cases that their vehicles were "pleasure carriages" this has been an ongoing battle. We just happened to visit on the year it was finally put to rest.
The southern end of the park was the first completed, while portions of the northern end came in the following decade.
The second bridge constructed, and oldest surviving, is the Gapstow Bridge, nearest our entrance into the park from the 5th Ave. subway over The Pond, one of seven bodies of water in the park.
from the Gapstow, looking south
The Wollman Skating Rink
The Playmates Arch, built in 1861, when this portion of the Park was known as The Children's District. It leads to the Carousel on the other side. Olmstead and Vaux has designated the southern end this way as it would be the first area reached by families traveling "up" from the city, which still largely lay below 38th street at the time.
The very imaginatively named "Chess & Checkers House" sits above. You can bring your own or borrow them from the Conservancy to play.
When I had scrambled up the rock (Marci is over at the Dairy visible in the background above) Mr. Squirrel came right up and posed for me. The Central Park squirrels apparently speak my dialect of squirrel clicks quite well, as they routinely sat and and considered whatever I was saying to them every time we encountered one another. They also wore very interesting coats of striped silver. Must be New York Squirrel Couture.
The building itself, designed by Vaux and erected in 1870, is a whimsical combination of architectural styles that has been characterized as Victorian Gothic. Half of the Dairy consists of a roofed open gallery, or loggia, made of wood with geometric gingerbread borders. The other half is a granite structure with window treatments and gambrel roof that resembles nothing so much as a country church. The loggia was designed to catch the cool summer breezes that blow across the Pond and to retain as much warmth from the winter sunlight as was possible.
Why a Dairy? The population of NYC had swelled from some 60,000 inhabitants to half a million between 1800 and 1850. The ability to provide milk was hampered by a variety of factors, not least among these the lack of space for people to keep a cow and the non-existence of refrigeration, meant people had to get creative. Distilleries got in on the business, feeding cows leftover grain after it had already been processed for alcohol, which made both the cows and the people drinking the milk quite ill. To add to the people part of the sickness, since the milk was thin and blue colored, all manner of ingredients were used to "whiten" up the milk before sale: flour and starch . . . and plaster of paris.
Each year in the 1850s an average of 8000 children died. Because disease was rampant and infant mortality far more common, it took awhile for people to connect the dots between this "swill milk" as it was known, and the deaths.
The Dairy was established by the City of New York so that families, for a nominal fee, could purchase milk guaranteed not to be of the "swill" variety until laws were passed prohibiting the adulteration of milk or the use of swill grain as feed for cattle.
Back behind the zoo, in search of bathrooms, we came across the Arsenal building
by the Zoo's gift shop
all the tiny sparrows were enjoying the hay
By the time we'd found the bathrooms and gotten back to the Dairy it was time to check in and get our sound equipment for the tour. Everyone had a device and a fresh pack of earbuds, so our guide could talk without us all having to be standing right on top of him as we walked. This allowed us to wander off a bit to take photos while still being able to hear.
We headed north toward The Mall, and Literary Walk. Neither Olmstead nor Vaux was in favor of having statuary in the park, but they were not dictators of the park, so the City routinely installed gifts from patrons, the most famous of whom would be the first installation, William Shakespeare.
It is one of the last remaining stands of native American Elm trees, tens of millions of whom have died as a result of the Dutch Elm beetle, for which there is no known cure. (The native American Chesnut tree was wiped out by a similar invasion a few decades prior.)
The Mall, ending at Bethesda Terrace, was the central formal piece of the park's design, to be a gathering place for the public, "a grand promenade and an open air reception hall."
the benches were masterfully designed to keep people off sections of the ground that would protect the tree growth without looking like a fence.
At the north end of the Mall is Bethesda Terrace, with four pillars representing the four seasons, two grand staircases down either side to the Terrace, and a smaller staircase in the center, leading through the Arcade to the fountain.
The sandstone carvings were badly damaged across the years of neglect. The Conservancy, using historical photographs, was able to restore them to their original design.
On the Autumn pillar, if you look closely, you can spot where Mr. Owl, long gone, was fused into his original perch by the variation in color between his log perch and the darker rock underneath. Same for the bat's head.
and the witch's head on the adjacent side
On the staircase itself, every one of the ornate carvings depicts only natural elements, save a single spot on the left side (as you descend).
Cropped closer-up
the view from the second level above the Arcade
facing back south towards the Mall
the smaller central staircase leading to the Arcade
The Arcade features the restored Minton tiles, the only place in the world they are used on a ceiling.
Colored clays are inlaid and fired, once after each color is added, to create the effect, as opposed to merely glazing the surface. During the Victorian era they were called encaustic tiles, a name which stuck despite being a misnomer. They were called inlaid tiles for centuries prior.
The angel was originally looking north in the designs, facing toward the reservoirs of fresh water from upstate that saved the city from the cholera epidemic, but she was reoriented to face visitors approaching from the south Mall. The thick forest of The Ramble sits behind her in this photo, which Marci and I explored more on Tuesday.
The Loeb Boathouse was built in 1954 and replaced the 1873 version. It is also a cafe and prime viewing for birdwatchers.
Bow Bridge leads into The Ramble and is the longest of all the bridges in the park.
Looking west across the Lake
Cherry Hill Fountain, once a watering trough for horses, and commonly mistaken as the "Friends" fountain (which exists on a soundstage in LA)
From there we wandered back south towards the Sheep Meadow
Before the Great Lawn came onboard in 1935 (from a filled-in reservoir), Sheep Meadow was the original site for picnics and kite flying. And yes, it once hosted sheep (photo held above by our tour guide).
It was the most expensive part of the original park. Remember: this was swamp, not meadow. It had to be filled in, as well as a 16 foot ridge blasted out to create the space.
The Carousel opened in 1870, originally turned by a mule and horse in a basement area below, who would stop and start based on the stomps above.
back through the Playmates Arch toward the Dairy
The little silver plates on the 1600 lamp posts in the park are the 19th century equivalent of geolocation. The first two digits correspond to your street outside the park, and the last two tell you whether you are on the east or west side. Even numbers = East. 7702 is very close to the eastern park boundary at 77th street. 7766 is still on the east side at 77ths, but much further toward the center of the park. 7703 is very close to the West side at 77th. 7767, still west, but close to the center. Got it?
The Lombard Lamp was a gift from Germany, a replica of the ornate ones along the Lombard Bridge in Hamburg , Germany.
one last look at the pond from the top of the 5th Ave. subway entrance
back to the subway for a stop at our Hotel, and then back out and south to Washington Square and the Village for the afternoon!
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