Central Park

Just as a change from the deer park I blogged about yesterday.

We visited CP twice, for a short hour on the first afternoon, and then we went back for a decent visit the next morning (before heading south to lunch at the Oyster Bar). Even so, we looked round less than half of it.

You can see that it's a nice symmetrical piece of land if you look at the view from the top of the Empire State Building.

So you're seeing a rectangle bounded by Avenues (5th on the RHS and Central Park West on the LHS) and streets going across (110th above, 59th below).  There are also a few streets that cross the path - the only roads in Manhattan that aren't straight lines - apart from Broadway of course, which runs up diagonally; it was an old Indian trail and the city planners weren't allowed to do away with it.  If you look with the tall black/white  building and the slightly shorter brown one next to it you'll see a large building just inside the park - that's the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which we visited on our final morning.

In 1850 the land was cleared of all the residents - free blacks & Irish families, in small villages and farms - approximately 1600 people.  It took nearly 25 years to completely clear then construct the park, with more than 14100 cubic metres of topsoil being brought in from New Jersey - the ground wasn't fertile enough for all the trees etc they wanted to grow in the park.

Our wanders took us almost as far north as the Museum (although we didn't actually see it until we went up 5th Avenue to it on the final day).  So here are some of the bits we did get to see.

A carriage ride round the park is one of "the" things to do in NY - but at around £45 (according to the internet) we decided to pass on this one!

American robin

If only I were younger.... or had had a bit more time!

1st visit was the late afternoon as the sun got low

 

 

The "Literary Walk" - statue erected by Scots

Apart from the 2 Scots, the only other statue in the Walk is of Fitz-Greene Halleck (never heard of him!). Hans Christian Anderson, Alice in Wonderland & Shakespeare also have statues elsewhere in the park

The Navy or Bethesda Terrace & the Bethesda Fountain

Same building, different location - March 2006! (And different sunglasses!)

Remember Terry?

March 2006 again - same position, slightly different angle. Building with angled roof is just to left out of shot in above photo, can just be seen in one with Sarah above that

The photo I was taking from the top of the rock - the angled roof is there to the left of the very tall thin building

The Falconer

There wasn't even a notice about this one, but I tracked it down online.  It's an Indian Hunter, and was the first work by an American sculptor actually installed in the Park