The Finish Line: Tavern On The Green

Brian H.

The New York City Marathon is in full tow as teams are finally to the point of doing their last 10 miles of the race and ending up at no other place than the finish line in Central Park.

And where is this special spot?

Located on Central Park West between 66th and 67th Streets, Tavern on the Green has a rich and meaningful story as the venue that hosts the finish of our beloved marathon.

The History

The Sheep Meadow

The Sheep Meadow in Central Park got its name from the a flock of sheep that occupied its lawn during the first part of this century. A sheepfold, to house the flock, was constructed across the drive, at the western edge of the meadow. In 1934, Parks Commissioner Robert Moses shipped these sheep off to Prospect Park as a scheme for beautifying the city into a better place.

This sheepfold was then converted into the restaurant we now know, on the west side of Central Park. The first incarnation of Tavern on the Green -- the restaurant -- was launched on October 20, 1934, with a coachman in full regalia at the door. In the late 1930s the building was taken over by the Civilian Patrol Corps as its headquarters until 1943, when the management of the nearby Claremont Inn on Riverside Drive took it over and renovated it to become a year-round restaurant. Tavern on the Green was showing some signs of wear by the 1950s, and the designer Raymond Loewy was hired for renovations to the building. The result was the addition of the Elm Room (now the Park Room), named after the tree it wrapped around. In the seventies the restaurant was renovated again. Hand-hewn rafters re-emerged and the vast vaulted ceiling above them was reopened after being hidden for decades by ordinary plaster. The Elm, Rafters, and Chestnut Rooms were paneled in very rare wormy chestnut.

In the Crystal and Terrace Rooms, the rustic baroque styling was changed to rococo. Tavern on the Green became the most glamorous venue to eat in New York City. Celebrities would flock to the famed Crystal Room, known for fantastic glass walls and sparkling chandeliers. Dining there wasn't just a meal but an event.

Always a work in progress, Tavern on the Green underwent yet another renovation in 1988 to expand the Tavern Store, relocate the bar, and create the Park Room and Garden. Later, the Crystal Garden that overlooks the Sheep Meadow was remodeled to accommodate dancing during the summer months.

In 1993, a "Menagerie of Topiaries", created by the Hollywood artists who also contributed to the fantastic greenery for the hit film Edward Scissorhands, were located in the Tavern's gardens.

The original Tavern on the Green closed its doors on New Year's Eve after 75 years. About three years ago, it was still one of the world's top-grossing restaurants.

Today
Plans to reopen the restaurant failed when a restaurateur and labor unions couldn't agree on a contract. A visitors center and gift shop are now open at the former restaurant. Today, the Crystal Room is gone, replaced instead by four trucks that pull up each morning and serve, tacos, dumplings, ice cream and sandwiches to Central Park visitors willing to sit outside at nearby tables and benches. - Brian H.

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The Architecture Of Central Park, Part IV

This month I focus on another very special building on Central Park's west side:

The Beresford

West 81st Street at Central Park West

1929, Emery Roth

The Beresford, completed in 1929, is one of four Roth apartment blocks on Central Park West including the El Dorado, the San Remo, and the Ardsley. In the race to build bigger apartment houses in the Roaring Twenties, the Beresford ended the decade as the clear winner. Its façade faces both Central Park and the patch of green that was called Manhattan Square in those days, and its twenty-two stories are topped by three towers, while most of its neighbors settled for two. It was among the first with elevators whose doors opened directly into the apartments rather than into the central hallways. The massive block is open to the west, giving it a U-shape, wrapped round a central court unique in every way in New York City. The Beresford was one of the first buildings in the city to have glass-door showers with multiple shower heads

More about the Beresford at Wikipedia.com

 - Brian H.

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The Architecture of Central Park, Part III

Today's post about architecture near Central Park is focused on one building, folks. It's a short one, but no less important. I'm sure you know this building to see it. It is the majestic, the beautiful:

The Ansonia Hotel


2109 Broadway (between W. 73rd and W. 74th Streets)

1904, Paul E.M. Duboy

The Beaux-Arts style was the name given to the newest neoclassical architectural style, as taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. It became popular in the United States between 1880 through 1920. The Ansonia was a confection built for W.E.D Stokes, a finicky Upper West Side Developer, as an apartment hotel. Stokes had ambitious goals for the building - including a farm on the roof! He insisted on fireproof masonry construction and ordered that all of the apartments must be soundproof behind three-foot-thick walls, which made it attractive to such guests as singers Lauritz Melchior and Ezio Pinza, as well as conductor Arturo Toscanini and composer Igor Stravinsky. Showman Florenz Ziegfeld lived here, too, but a name not often mentioned in the Ansonia’s long and illustrious guest list is that of Babe Ruth. He was following a tradition already established by almost the entire New York Yankees baseball team. - Brian H.

Read more about the Ansonia Hotel at Wikipedia

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The Architecture of Central Park, Part II

What really gave me the idea to write these informative posts about New York architecture was the pure beauty you get whenever you look up at the sky on an evening run around Central Park. You really notice the lights from the nearby buildings as you go up and down the rolling hills along the Westside of Central Park.

So, I wondered…what are the stories behind all these buildings that surround this park? What makes these building so spectacular? How long have they been there for? Why were they built?

To my amazement, as an architect, we have a vast library to research such items of all the buildings in New York City. So I started off with the larger ones that may interest you on the west side of the park. So which ones did I pick? The ones with two towers, of course... with spires, art deco styling and featuring geometric ornament and pattern in their architecture.

San Remo Apartments
145-146 Central Park West (Between West 74th and West 75th Streets)
1930 Emery Roth

At the time the San Remo was built, the city’s building code allowed apartment buildings to rise to thirty stories as long as there was a base of at least 30,000 square feet and it had the prescribed setbacks, Emery Roth used the restrictions to his advantage by building two central towers instead of one, a pattern that was followed by three more Central Park West apartment buildings, the Century, the Majestic, and the El Dorado.

More info about the San Remo Apartments at Wikipedia

The Century Apartments

25 Central Park West (Between West 63rd and West 64th Streets)

1931, Irwin S. Chanin

In 1909, the New Theater, on Central Park West, was built. It was the most elegant theater the city had ever seen. The trouble was that the acoustics were terrible and even season ticket holders stayed away. Changing its name to the Century didn’t hide its defects and in 1930, the wreckers moved in to make way for this Art Deco masterpiece. Irwin Chanin, the developer, was so impressed that he moved here himself.

More info about the Century at Wikipedia

The Majestic Apartments
115 Central Park West (Between West 71st and West 72nd Streets)
1931, Irwin S. Chanin

When newscaster and newspaper columnist Walter Winchell wasn’t out chasing gangsters and gossip, this was where he called home. The Majestic was also home to gangster Frank Costello, the “Prime Minister of the Underworld,” who survived an assassination attempt in the lobby. The eleven-story hotel it replaced was home to such people as composer Gustav Mahler and novelist Edna Ferber. Its roof garden was the city’s most fashionable in the 1890’s.

More info about the Majestic Apartments at Wikipedia

The El Dorado

300 Central Park West (Between West 90th and West 91st Streets)

1930, Margon & Holder, with Emery Roth

When novelist Sinclair Lewis came to live in New York, he chose an apartment in the building because it had a view of all of the city’s bridges. It was also the fictional address of “Marjorie Morningstar,” the heroine of Hermon Wouk's popular 1955 novel.

More info about the El Dorado apartments at Wikipedia

Hope you enjoyed this! More to come next month! - Brian H.

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 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.

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