Editor’s note: Most People in the Flyers know Brian H., our 2009 Flyer of the year, Former Secretary, and current club Vice President, as a very accomplished runner. But did you know he’s also an architect? Brian graduated in 2004 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and now works for a well-respected architecture firm in Greenwich Village, NYC. Here he is:

There are two different passions in my life: running and architecture.  Each month I hope to educate you with my other passion in life, as both can be simultaneously intermingled in a vast city like New York.

Introduction: A Little History of Central Park 

America’s largest urban park is Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, at 3,845 acres. In New York City, the record-holder in the five boroughs is Pelham Bay Park in The Bronx, with over 2,700 acres.  The one we all love to run in, Central Park, Manhattan’s biggest park, is 843 acres.

The idea for Central Park started in 1844, when William Cullen Bryant, a poet and newspaper editor, first called for a large, public pleasure ground in the city.  Landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing further appealed for a park in 1848, and both mayoralty contestants finally made it a promise in the 1850 campaign.  The winner of the mayoralty, Ambrose C. Kingsland took action and land was acquired in 1856 for $5.5 million and surveyed. 

In 1857, the first Board of Park Commissioners decided that an open competition should determine the park’s design. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s “Greensward Plan", the last of 33 entries, won the competition.  It was a simple, uncluttered plan, calling for a picturesque landscape, and including the revolutionary design of the four sunken transverse roads for cross-town traffic. 

The Greensward Plan, 1857

The task was massive: millions of wagonloads of soil were hauled in, land was sculpted and rearranged, and tens of thousands of trees and shrubs were planted.  Streams, ponds, and lakes were created, and even glacial rocks were moved to more picturesque places than those Mother Nature had chosen. Even though Central Park was opened in 1859, construction wasn’t completed until 1873.

Many of us are familiar with this history of the Central Park landscape, where most of us spend most of our time doing long runs and daily group runs. But how much do you know about the architecture in and around Central Park?

The Architecture Of Central Park

New York is a very unique city as it stands as testament to what the hand of man can accomplish. Fine architecture is everywhere in New York City, including around Central Park. I hope to work my way through various buildings in and around our beloved park, showcase various districts, and formulate group tours around some of these districts.

Here, I begin with Architecture below the 65^th Street Transverse, which includes three different buildings: the Friedsam Memorial Carousel, the Dairy, and the Arsenal.

Friedsam Memorial Carousel

Location: Southeast Central Park (near the 65^th St. Transverse and Center Drive)

There has been a carousel in Central Park for more than a century, but the original was virtually destroyed by a fire in 1950.  The existing one was donated by the Michael Friedsam Foundation a year later, and the remains of the original were reassembled at Bronx Beach Playland.  The Foundation also rebuilt the carousel in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park the following year.  Both merry-go-rounds have horses that were recycled from Coney Island, when they’d outlived their usefulness there.  They represent a proud tradition dating back to the 1870’s, when animal carvers created the first-and the best- carousel horses in what was known as the “Coney Island Style.” The Central Park horses were hand-carved by Harry Goldstein, a master of the style.

The Dairy

Location: Southeast Central Park at 65^th St.

1870, Calvert Vaux

The entire southern end of Central Park was originally intended as the province of mothers and their children.  There were no playgrounds in any other part of the park.  The Dairy was used as a refreshment center for them back at a time where fresh milk was prohibitively expensive and of poor quality.  A heard of cows, which grazed in the nearby meadows and added to the park’s bucolic atmosphere, provided the milk.  It has now been transformed into the park’s information center.  The hilltop immediately to the west was originally called the Kinderberg, or “children’s mountain.”  In 1952, a small version of the carousel pavilion was built as a shelter, so that park visitors could enjoy games of chess and checkers out of reach of the noonday sun.

The Arsenal

Location: 5th Avenue at East 64^th St.
1848, Martin E. Thompson

This is the headquarters of the city’s Parks Department, which moved here in 1934.  Prior to that, it was served as a police precinct, and the office of the weather bureau.  For a time it was the home of the American Museum of Natural History, as well as the menagerie that later became the Central Park Zoo.  In the beginning, though, it was an ammunition dump for the city’s militia.  Reminders of those glorious days live on in the central stairway, whose newell post resemble cannons.  The balusters on the railings represent rifles, and the artillery theme continues with cannonballs guarded by a carving of an eagle.  Its eight crenellated towers complete the image.  Despite all that, this is a peaceful place within the city’s greatest sanctuary.

All information researched from:

One Thousand New York Buildings By: Bill Harris

AIA Guide to New York City By Norval White and Elliot Willensky

http://www.centralpark.com

-Brian H.