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… Continue reading

The Sherman Monument

A major work by the American sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens, whose Farragut Memorial graces Madison Square Park more than a mile and a half to the south, the Sherman Monument commemorates the controversial Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman, infamous for “Sherman’s March,” one of the earliest “scorched earth” campaigns of modern warfare. As depicted… Continue reading

Grand Army Plaza

Grand Army Plaza is an open space carved partially out of the southeastern-most corner of Central Park and stretching from 58th Street to 60th Street and bisected by 59th Street.  Designed by Carrere & Hastings and completed in 1916, the park gives its name to both the Plaza District and the renowned Plaza Hotel that… Continue reading

Channel Gardens

Located between La Masion Francaise and The British Empire Building, the ironically named Channel Gardens are one of New York’s best small Privately Owned Public Spaces (or POPS).  Consisting of a 200-ft promenade that terminates with the sunken Lower Plaza before 30 Rockefeller Plaza, Channel Gardens are themselves bisected by a cascade of six pools… Continue reading

Just Off Fifth: Bryant Park

One of the best urban parks in the US and thought to be the most heavily used such park in the world, Bryant Park first opened to the public in 1847 as Reservoir Square, a public garden adjacent to the immense Croton Distributing Reservoir.  The site of the 1853 New York Crystal Palace Exhibition of… Continue reading