Scholar’s Gate, Central Park

The southernmost entrance to Central Park on Fifth Avenue, Scholar’s Gate was created in opposition to then-prevailing trends for highly ornate and monumental entrances to parks.  Instead it is a low sandstone opening intended by park designers Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmstead to represent a great civic park open to all classes.

The name of the gate, one of 20 similar, symbolizes the mix of people who were anticipated as visitors; other planned gates included “Warrior’s Gate”, “Minor’s Gate,” and “Women’s Gate”- the last fairly revolutionary for its times in its suggestion than respectable women might visit a public park without a male chaperone.

Despite being marked on park maps by name, many of the gates’ names were only chiseled into the sandstone in the 1990s.

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