Central Park turns 150

[Merry]

Who Owns Central Park?

How Frederick Law Olmsted’s 843 acres of civilizing wilderness became a type-A battleground.

By Gabriel Sherman
Published Jun 22, 2008



It’s shortly before six on a recent morning in Central Park. Dogs frolic, off-leash, through meadows. Joggers breeze along the roadways. In the half-lit hours just past dawn, the park is the urban idyll that its founders, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, envisioned at the park’s birth, 150 years ago.

But then you hear it, approaching in the distance, a stiff wind rustling leaves. The presence grows louder and crescendos until—whooooosh—they’re upon you: a teeming pack of cyclists bursting around the corner in a flash of neon spandex. Runners brandish their fists—or middle finger. Dogs and their owners scramble across the road, lest they be run down by the onrushing horde. It is every biker, runner, or canine for him, her, or itself. Before many New Yorkers have even had their first cup of coffee, the ongoing battle for Central Park is in full swing. “People think the park is a refuge, when you’re actually going into a cage match,” says Chris Yerkes, a Citi staffer who races on an amateur cycling team in the park. “You can liken it to an area which has no local government, no rules,” Manhattan Borough president Scott Stringer told me. The current situation is a New York City case study of the economic phenomenon known as the tragedy of the commons, whereby a shared resource is, inevitably, overexploited. Although interspersed with the tragedy are moments of high comedy.

The struggle for Central Park is, in its essence, like any other New York neighborhood conflict, with the same kinds of seething antagonisms and the same immutable stereotypes. There are the old-timers (I was here first!), the colonizers (The park is ours!), and the new-money arrivistes (Who do you think you are?). Cyclists see runners as a domineering mass that has controlled the park since the jogging boom of the late seventies. “You’re not going to do a ride without having someone beam at you some feeling of resentment,” says Ken Harris, the president of the Century Road Club, the largest bike-racing club in the country. Runners, in cyclists’ view, shuffle along the road and are prone to swerve erratically in an iPod-induced trance. “Most of the runners have the headphones on so loud that they don’t have a clue where they’re going,” adds Thomas Kempner Jr., chairman of the Central Park Conservancy and a frequent cyclist. “There is a lot of hate,” nationally ranked cyclist Sarah Chubb, the president of Condé Nast’s CondéNet, tells me. “The Road Runners club can take over the entire park, and they get pissed at us if our races go past 8 a.m. The runners don’t stay where they’re supposed to stay, they’re wearing headphones, and they’ll scream at you if you ask them to get out of the way!”

Even cyclists’ efforts to communicate with pedestrians can trigger physical resistance. Yerkes recalls one ride when a pedestrian attempted to clothesline him as he called out that he was passing by. “That made me think that I’m going to stop communicating and just speed past people if I’m going to get coldcocked by some guy,” he says.

Runners, not surprisingly, see cyclists as out-of-control maniacs orbiting the park at terminal velocity. And the cyclists’ vivid, skintight plumage doesn’t help, to say the least. On a recent Saturday morning, Jerry Macari, a running coach and the owner of Urban Athletics on Madison Avenue, had a dustup with a cyclist on the west side of the park near 79th Street, as he stood on the sidelines of a running race. “He’s whizzing by me and screams, ‘You’re an asshole for being in the lane!’ ” Macari recalls. Not to be outdone, Macari lobbed an expletive back. “The reality is, the bikers feel safe because they’re riding away when they yell something at you.”

The conflict between bikers and dog owners is, if anything, even more fraught. In 2006, a coalition of about 50 citywide dog groups won a lawsuit that protected their right to keep dogs off-leash before 9 a.m. and after 9 p.m. in designated areas, and they vigilantly guard their canines’ freedom. Recently, accidents between bikers and dogs have left relations raw. “Several times, while crossing with the signal, I and other dog owners have had close calls with cyclists bombing through the light,” one commenter rails on the Website Urbanhound.com. “Our dogs—and ourselves—have nearly been hit by the arrogant idiots. We’ve taken it upon ourselves to yell at them: ‘Red light! You have a red light!’ Most ignore us. One guy had the gall to shout back that dogs aren’t allowed off-leash in crosswalks (huh????). I yelled, as he kept going, that I was a pedestrian, in the crosswalk, under a walk signal [expletive deleted].”



Just who is at fault, of course, is a subjective matter. “No one ever tickets the bicycle people!” says Susan Buckley, president of the dog group Central Park Paws. “They should.”

On a recent morning in the park, I stood with a group of about a dozen dog owners as their dogs romped near the Great Lawn. The mention of the word biker triggered an angry Pavlovian response. “We want to ram a stick through their spokes!” one dog walker said. “Or string up some trip wire across the road!” another chimed in, apparently pleased with the joke.
Over on the west side of the park, I found similar anti-bike sentiments. Standing with a group of dog owners, Kelly Deadmon, a flaxen-haired actress, with her six-year-old basset hound, Barney George, stiffened when I asked about the state of dog-bike relations. “They all think it’s the Tour de France,” she said, recalling how a bike had clipped Barney George a couple of years ago. “When you try to cross the road, that’s when they speed up like a bunch of Lance Armstrong wannabes!”

For a cyclist, however, loose dogs can be a mortal threat. Caryl Gale, an accomplished cyclist and creative director at a fashion company, slammed into an unleashed dog that darted into the middle of a bike race last summer. “It was like going into a brick wall,” Gale told me. “It’s ridiculous,” she said, that dogs are allowed to run off-leash near the roads, and it was lucky that she walked away with only a fractured shoulder and a broken bike. Characteristically, she didn’t mention what happened to the dog.
And a bicycle traveling at upwards of 40 mph is no longer a toy but a potentially deadly projectile. In August 2005, David “Tiger” Williams, a former Yale hockey star who founded the hedge-fund-trading firm Williams Trading, accidentally rode his bike into a homeless man who was crossing the road along the east side of the park during an early-morning bike race. Williams suffered compression fractures in his back. The unidentified man was killed. (Williams was not charged with any wrongdoing.)

To begin to understand the pressures that have been building in Central Park in the last few years, a good place to start is about 60 blocks downtown. The Cadence Cycling & Multisport Center, set on a windswept block hard against the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, occupies a sparsely furnished 11,000-square-foot loft. The place looks like a gym dropped into the middle of an art gallery. Sober black-and-white photographs of New York sporting events adorn the walls alongside racing bikes—some costing as much as $30,000—hanging like sculptures from racks. The cavernous training room can hold two-dozen riders spinning in place on their own bikes, and projectors hanging from the ceiling can display virtually any racecourse in the world onto three giant flat-screens set against exposed brick walls. Cadence opened its doors last year. Its founder, Jay Snider, son of the Philadelphia sports mogul Ed Snider (chairman of the Flyers and 76ers), seeks to tap a market of Wall Street clients who desire scientific training methods previously reserved for professional athletes. “It’s the kind of person who does a spreadsheet for their dating life,” says Alex Ostroy, the founder of the local cycling Website nyvelocity.com. “You can slice and dice the numbers all day long. It’s addictive, and you can see yourself making progress.”

“The type of personality who is attracted to cycling or triathlon is an addictive personality,” Karim Pine, Cadence’s marketing director, tells me. “I always say there is very little difference between an endurance athlete and a heroin addict. It’s the same type of person who has to hit that button again to get that buzz.”

Inside New York’s tightly woven bike-racing community, there’s a rift between the old-school riders and what they see as the new-money poseurs who have imported the aggression and boorishness of the trading floor. Another group of poster boys for this new breed of cyclist is a cycling club called Foundation. Founded in 2000, the team has a large contingent of Ivy League and finance types. Established teams were exclusive, with strict admissions tests based on performance, and cliquey. But Foundation’s admissions policies were looser, and Central Park soon became dotted with bankers and lawyers sporting Foundation’s signature fire-red jerseys. Not everyone was pleased with the upstarts. “They had a reputation for being squirrelly riders,” says Alex Ostroy, a coach of the NY Velocity team.

At first, Foundation floundered. Two years ago, it finished dead last in the local rankings. The team’s official mission is to raise money for charity, but its members also harbored competitive ambitions, so they went out to assemble a winning squad. “They did what the Yankees do: They got a couple of big guys from other teams,” David Wagener, who has his own private-equity firm, says. Last year, some of the team’s wealthy patrons kicked in money, in part to recruit new talent. The team’s endowment grew significantly, and this season, Foundation lured star Colombian rider Lisbon Quintero from another New York team. Since he arrived earlier this season, Quintero has already won three races, and the team is now No. 1 in New York.

Rivals gossip that Foundation pays bonuses to Quintero for each victory. “If it’s a club event, there’s no reason to pay a bonus,” Mike Sherry, the director of the Empire team, tells me. Racers have been known to hiss “Ka-ching” when Quintero crosses the finish line. Foundation’s founder, Inson Wood, denies that the team pays riders to win. “There’s no bonus policy,” he tells me, saying that the team only buys cycling gear for its top riders, just like other competitive teams. “Cash bonuses are not what we’re about.”

Last summer, Ken Harris, the CRCA president, received an irate e-mail from Mark Albertson, who is with advertising-and-design firm the Concept Farm, after an altercation erupted with a Foundation rider in Central Park. “At 6 a.m. one of these guys started an exchange with me that led to a two-mile dialogue which resulted in the guy hitting me on the back repeatedly, trying to take me down. Fortunately for me, his riding skill left him on the ground,” Albertson wrote. “Something has to be done about these animals … Retaliation on the part of these guys will not be tolerated.”

There’s one issue about which runners, cyclists, and dog owners are in full agreement: cars. For years, Transportation Alternatives, the bicycle-advocacy organization, has been waging a campaign to banish cars from the park. “We’re incredulous that we don’t have a car-free Central Park already,” Transportation Alternatives executive director Paul White tells me. “The anger you see in the park is similar to the ire you see in Park Slope with the double-wide strollers. Our view is, Don’t get mad at the stroller moms. Get mad at the city for providing such limited car-free space.”

In this effort, having business titans on your side is an advantage. Last April, about two dozen executives signed a letter delivered to the mayor’s office arguing that the administration’s car policy is hurting the city’s ability to prevent hedge funds from decamping to Greenwich, or Wall Street jobs’ being shipped overseas. “The talent pool we seek to draw from is increasingly focused upon maintaining personal fitness. They are disproportionately triathletes, marathoners, and the highly fit. Cycling in particular is a key interest, and has become a key business-related networking activity,” the group wrote. “What about the loss of yet another team of financial professionals, formerly based on Wall Street, who decide to move to Connecticut to start a hedge fund, because life is just too difficult in New York City?”

While many in the city might view this as a desirable outcome, last summer, as a concession, New York’s Department of Transportation expanded the car-free policy in Central Park by an hour per day. But White and his coalition aren’t satisfied. “This debate is very emblematic of the challenge all of New York faces: It’s about the politics of public space. Who gets that space? And how is it apportioned?” White says.

With the death of congestion pricing, many are hoping progressive traffic policy in the park will rise on Bloomberg’s agenda. In May, Scott Stringer sent a letter to the Bloomberg administration asking for a three-month car-free trial in the park this summer. “The car should not take precedence in the transportation hierarchy in the borough,” Stringer told me.

For now, though, the park’s users must make do with the park they have, not the one they want. “Everybody knows they’re a little bit wrong here. This stuff can be fixed pretty easily if people put their heads together,” Douglas Blonsky, president of the Central Park Conservancy, says.
Already, the precinct in the park is doling out tickets to bikers who ignore red lights. On a recent morning, I saw a half-dozen cyclists pulled over in the span of twenty minutes and served with $50 tickets. Their reactions ranged from surprise to indignation.

If tensions continue to rise, the Parks Department might be forced to step in with more-drastic measures. One proposal would set up barriers at congested intersections to slow bikers and runners, a move that Parks commissioner Adrian Benepe hopes doesn’t happen. “The best thing to do is to expect people to behave like adults and be respectful that your liberties aren’t infringing on the rights of others,” Benepe tells me. “People need to behave more like members of a shared society and less narcissistically.”
Benepe’s dream is as beautiful as Olmsted’s park. And if you believe it’s going to happen anytime in the near future, you might be interested in purchasing—cheap—a large parcel of heavily wooded real estate in the center of Manhattan.

http://nymag.com/guides/summer/2008/47976/

[brianac]

August 4, 2008, 4:34 pm

In Central Park, Happy Birthday to Zoo

By Sewell Chan


Sea lions took part in a celebration to mark the 20th anniversary of the new Central Park Zoo, which the Wildlife Conservation Society manages. (Photo: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times)

A menagerie of officials, baseball players, children and sea lions marked the 20th anniversary today of the reopening of the Central Park Zoo. After a five-year, $35 million renovation, the zoo reopened on Aug. 8, 1988, under new management. The Wildlife Conservation Society, which also runs the Bronx, Queens and Prospect Park Zoos and the New York Aquarium, took over the completely new 5.5-acre zoo, which had become known by the early 1980s as a decrepit and depressing habitat for animals.

Although the new zoo — designed by Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo Associates, the architectural firm that also has designed most of the additions to the Metropolitan Museum of Art — is 20 years old, animals have been housed at the zoo even before the earliest part of the park opened to the public, in the winter of 1859. Months earlier, in 1858, a bear cub was donated to the city and placed in a “pound” behind the Arsenal, which was completed in 1851.

Known as the Central Park Menagerie since its official founding in 1864, the site was remodeled and renamed the Central Park Zoo in 1934, under the leadership of Robert Moses, the parks commissioner and development czar. Aymar Embury II, the bridge designer who collaborated with Moses on projects like the Triborough Bridge, designed neo-Georgian brick and limestone zoo buildings in the form of a quadrangle around a sea-lion pool, designed by Charles Schmieder.

After decades of neglect, the city agreed in 1980 to renovate the zoo, with the Wildlife Conservation Society managing it. The demolition of the old zoo buildings continued until 1984, and the new zoo began to be built in 1985, but cost overruns delayed the project. The zoo is now a popular tourist attraction, recording a million visits a year. Next June, the zoo is scheduled to open a new snow leopard exhibit that will replicate the evergreen forests in the mountainous region of Central Asia.

The authoritative history of Central Park, Sara Cedar Miller’s “Central Park: An American Masterpiece” (Harry N. Abrams, 2003), contains an interesting story about plans for a dinosaur exhibition at the Central Park Menagerie.

In 1869, the British sculptor and artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins set up a studio near the Arsenal to build life-size models of dinosaurs. The effort was inspired by discovery of the Hadrosaurus — the “first-known complete skeleton of a dinosaur on the North American continent” — in Haddonfield, N.J., in 1858.

Hawkins hoped to circumvent the corrupt administration of Mayor William M. Tweed (known as “The Boss”) by creating a separate museum for the dinosaur models, but his plans were wrecked in 1871 when Tammany Hall henchmen entered Hawkins’s studio with sledgehammers, destroying the concrete and iron dinosaur models and then carting them away for burial. Months later, The New York Times published an explosive series of articles about embezzlement and corruption at City Hall.

The management of Central Park became much less politicized, but the remnants of Hawkins’s dinosaurs were never found. A Brooklyn College Web site about this little-known chapter of New York City history states:

They still rest somewhere under the sod of Central Park, probably not far from Umpire Rock and the Heckscher ballfields (see picture and Central Park map at left). Could one of the pitchers’ mounds really be a small embankment covering the severed head of Megalosaurus? Who knows, maybe so.

Among those attending the celebration ceremony on Monday were Adrian Benepe, commissioner of the Department of Parks and Recreation; relief pitcher Scott Schoeneweis and catcher Brian Schneider of the Mets; and Jeff Sailer, director of the Central Park Zoo.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...rthday-to-zoo/

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[brianac]

The City Visible

Crisp Whites, and the Crack of the Mallet

Andrew Henderson/The New York Times
More Photos >

By ANDREW HENDERSON
Published: August 3, 2008

IN a 0.69-acre patch of pristine grass in Central Park, slightly northeast of the bustling Tavern on the Green, sits a tranquil world that seems a decorous holdover from the 19th century.
Multimedia

Slide Show Wickets on the Green

Spectators gazing over the chain-link fence that encloses two meticulously maintained 15,000-square-foot fields see an unexpected sight: men and women, dressed entirely in white, hitting colored balls with a heavy wooden mallet through strategically placed metal wickets.

The game, of course, is croquet, a sport that was first played in the 14th century by French peasants, and one that has been played in Central Park since 1972.

“It is a game that makes you forget all your troubles in life,” said Chuck Loving, a plastic surgeon who has been a member of the New York Croquet Club, one of the major users of the fields, since 1990.

The club was founded in 1967 by Jack Osborn, who established the American rules for croquet, and S. Joseph Tankoos, whose holdings included the Delmonico Hotel at Park Avenue and 59th Street. Members range from 19 to 86 years old, and they include college students and investment bankers.

Although some of the newer members discovered the sport by searching the Internet, many began to play after watching games with their faces pressed up against the fence. And many nonplayers are delighted by the opportunity simply to watch.

“I like that you can walk through the park and find gems like this,” said Deven Stephens, a graphic designer from the Upper East Side who was observing a game one recent afternoon. His wife, Michelle Stephens, added, “I appreciate that something so quiet can be in New York City

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/ny...ty/03croq.html

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[brianac]

September 23, 2008, 12:38 pm

What Spider-Man and David Blaine Have in Common

By Jennifer 8. Lee


David Blaine hanging upside down on Monday for his 60-hour stunt at Wollman Rink in Central Park. (Photo: John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times)

The team behind David Blaine’s 60-hour upside-down stunt at Wollman Rink this week is the same team that helped Spider-Man soar through New York City in the recent movies.

Randy Beckman, an 18-year veteran of film stunts, runs a 40-person company based in Valencia, Calif., and is part of David Blaine’s “flying team.” (Mr. Blaine started hanging upside down Monday morning at 8 a.m. in Central Park’s Wollman Rink, and he will end it with a “dive of death” at 10:45 p.m. Wednesday on a live ABC special that starts at 9 p.m.)


Randy Beckman, a stunt coordinator and a member of the Blaine “flying team.” (Photo: John Marshal Mantel for The New York Times)

Among the stunts Mr. Beckman has coordinated is a 250-plunge from a building in SoHo for Spider-Man 2, when the superhero reclaims his powers. For the plunge, the camera and the stuntman were mounted on separate rigs that were computerized to move in sync.

“Before we would go 10 feet a second, and now with the computer, we can go 43 feet a second,” he said. When they did everything by hand, they had to slow down the filming speed so it would be real time when it was shown on the screen. They are suspended using tech-12 cord, a Kevlar-based fiber commonly used for stunts.

His projects, which generally have six-figure price tags, often take a day to set up. For the launch of the Spider-Man 2 DVD in November 2004, Mr. Beckman was called upon to help Spider-Man, stunt man Chris Daniels, ring the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange (pdf).

“We had to rig up in the attic of the New York Stock Exchange,” he said. “Before the bell, we took him up, clipped him upside down.”

They then had Spider-Man swoop down to ring the bell, flanked by with Sony executives. Mr. Beckman said, “They rung it as he was upside down, coming down.”

It was, he believes, the first time in the 212-year history of the stock exchange that anyone had rung the bell upside down.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...ave-in-common/

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[brianac]

Giddyup! New Stable Returns Parks Department Horse Housing to Central Park

by Dana Rubinstein
October 7, 2008

This article was published in the October 13, 2008, edition of The New York Observer.

Malcolm Pinckney/ New York City Parks Department

Civilian horse-lovers were not the only New Yorkers to mourn the departure of the more-than-100-year-old Claremont Stables from the Upper West Side in 2007. The longest continuously operating stables in the city, at 89th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, Claremont had also been home to a handful of the Parks Department’s Mounted Patrol horses, which carried enforcement officers through Central Park, frightening would-be muggers and posing for pictures with tourists.

Following the stables’ funereal closure that April, those horses, including a sweet-tempered chocolate-brown equine named Monty, were relocated to less glamorous environs in places like the Bronx and Staten Island. In order to walk their stomping grounds of yore, they have to endure an uncomfortable road trip in a trailer.

Come 2009, Parks Department horse housing will return to Central Park. On Oct. 3, the Central Park Conservancy, which administers the park on behalf of the Parks Department, filed plans with the Department of Buildings to erect a stable in Central Park, at the so-called Zoo Garage, the cobblestone parking lot shared by Central Park Zoo and Parks Department staff, near the Fifth Avenue and 65th Street entrance.

The $200,000-plus,747-square-foot stables will house as many as five horses by early 2009.

Parks spokeswoman Cristina DeLuca said that four or five horses will rotate through the stables, to give them “a change of scenery every now and then,” and that Monty will be among the first guests, along with horses named Pete, Joc and Apollo.

“When Claremont Stables closed up, we lost the opportunity for public riding, and for Parks Enforcement Patrol horses,” said Doug Blonsky, president of the Central Park Conservancy. “This gives us an opportunity to keep them in the park.”

drubinstein@observer.com

http://www.observer.com/2008/real-es...g-central-park

© 2008 Observer Media Group

[brianac]

October 8, 2008, 4:14 pm

Does Central Park Need Any More Praise?

By Sewell Chan


Central Park was named one of 10 “Great Public Spaces” of America. (Photo: Michael Kamber for The New York Times)

The American Planning Association on Wednesday announced that it had designated Central Park as one of the 10 great public spaces in the United States. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Greensward Plan of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the 1858 document that established the aesthetic vision for the park.

The designation is part of a new program, Great Places in America, which the association hopes will highlight the role of careful planning in developing streets, neighborhoods and public places that matter.

Last year, in the first year of the Great Places program, the planning association named 125th Street in Manhattan as one of 10 great streets and Park Slope in Brooklyn as one of 10 great neighborhoods. This year, “great public spaces” was added as a third category.

What do these annual lists really accomplish?

The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s yearly list of the 11 most endangered historic places tends to prompt hand-wringing, letter-writing and even changes in public policy.

But by all accounts Central Park is in as good shape as ever. Calling it “the gold standard for U.S. city parks,” the planning association noted that Central Park has gone through periods of decline and revitalization.

In the 1920s, the park was home to “worn carriage drives from increased automobile traffic, muddy paths, overgrown or dead trees and shrubs, unrepaired bridges, and littering and vandalism.” Robert Moses, the regional development czar, revitalized the park during his tenure as parks commissioner, from 1934 to 1960.

In the ’60s through the ’70s, Central Park again fell into decline, until the Central Park Conservancy was founded in 1980 to restore and manage the park.

In a phone interview, William R. Klein, director of research and advisory services at the American Planning Association, said the Great Places program was “intended to make the point that we know a good place when we see it.”

He added:

These places didn’t just happen by accident. These places were the result of inspiration and action taken over a long period of time, and the cumulative effect of that inspiration and action results in what you see today. We’re trying to single out places that are great — not places that are threatened or in decline.

Mr. Klein, who lives in Chicago, waxed a bit about his own memories of Central Park:

I was a user back in the bad old days of decline in the ’70s, when I heard Duke Ellington and others play at the skating rink. I was a 17-year-old kid from Syosset, a suburban kid experiencing Central Park for the first time. It was a wonderful experience.
My wife was born and brought up in Manhattan and lived a couple of blocks from the park. She always told me stories from her formative years, of what an important place Central Park was to her. It was really the only connection they had to nature and open space and recreation.

The other great public spaces named by the planning association are:

• Yavapai County Courthouse Plaza, Prescott, Ariz.
• Santa Monica Beach, Santa Monica, Calif.
• Union Station, Washington, D.C.
• West Side Market, Cleveland
• Pioneer Courthouse Square, Portland, Ore.
• Mellon Square, Pittsburgh, Pa.
• Waterplace Park, Providence, R.I.
• Waterfront Park, Charleston, S.C.
• Church Street Marketplace, Burlington, Vt.

The 10 great streets, 10 great neighborhoods, and 10 great public spaces will be celebrated as part of the planning association’s National Community Planning Month this month.

Mr. Klein said additional categories might be added to the Great Places program next year.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...y-more-praise/

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[brianac]

Preparations are nearly complete for the opening of Chanel's Mobile Art in Central Park, a pavilion designed by Zaha Hadid to display art inspired by a Chanel purse.
Photo: Michael Falco for The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/200...1024WIP_3.html

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[brianac]

Shake Shack Update: Central Park a No-go

3/30/09 at 3:14 PM

Earlier this morning, it seemed likely that Shake Shack would be a leading contender for Central Park. But we just talked to Union Square Hospitality Group president David Swinghamer (regarding other matters — stay tuned for a Citi Field report), and while we were chatting, Danny Meyer's business partner dropped this bomb on us: "We think [the Sheep Meadow café] is an amazing site, but we elected not to respond to the RFP [request for proposal]. It could be an incredible place and someone is going to have a nice little business there. But it won't be us." This bodes well for Dovetail, which did respond to the city's call.

http://nymag.com/daily/food/2009/03/..._no_shake.html

Copyright © 2009, New York Media LLC.

[Bronxbombers]

The birth of Central Park was during 1859.

[RandySavage]

Here's a quick design I put together for The Reservoir in-fill. Mostly a natural (wooded) area with a cafe/restroom area.

[stache]

That's our emergency water supply.

[dtolman]

Limited vision. I salute the bold plan to pave over Central Park and put in a regional airport.

[stache]

And please tear down any towers that would interfere with the flight paths!

[Merry]

Right in the Middle of the City, a Place to Get Away From It

By PATRICIA COHEN


Among the pleasures of a Central Park getaway: a gondola ride where Andrés García-Peña rows and sings.

More Photos >

The downside of catch-and-release fishing at the Harlem Meer in Central Park is that it is very difficult to actually catch a fish.

The upside — at least for me — is that it is very difficult to actually catch a fish, which means that there is no need to squeeze its gut, remove the hook and throw it back in the water.

Either way, both the squeezers and the squeamish will find fishing at the park’s picture postcard northeastern border a tranquil way to start a Labor Day weekend vacation. That’s right, vacation. If you can’t get to the mountains or the shore on this last big weekend of the summer, a Central Park getaway can provide city habitués with nearly everything they might want for a weekend away at a fraction of the cost.

Pining for European charm? Visit Belvedere Castle and take a gondola ride. Athletes can play tennis and basketball or rent bicycles and boats. Families who skip expensive theme parks can find a bite-size amusement park and a zoo, a vintage carousel, marionettes and a pool, while romantics can spy a garden wedding and dine lakeside at sunset.

The place to start planning a park vacation is the Central Park Conservancy’s Web site (centralparknyc.org). This nonprofit organization manages the park in conjunction with the city, and the site details all the park’s features, activities and history, along with giving printable maps and lists of restrooms, playgrounds and eating concessions. Arrange your days by geography, theme or whimsy.

So where to start? One spot is Ferrara’s outdoor cafe just inside the park at 60th Street and Central Park West. You can relax with cappuccinos and croissants at tiny metal tables while watching the pedicabs line up around Columbus Circle. (Stop first at Whole Foods in the basement of the Time Warner Center if you’d like to picnic later.)

The key to a successful family vacation is to limit ambitions. Don’t try to crowd everything in a single morning. Choose, for example, the Central Park Zoo or Victorian Gardens, the collection of whirling rides, games and shows that set up camp from May to mid-September in Wollman Rink.

For a more peaceful activity, stop by the Hans Christian Andersen statue at 72nd Street and Fifth Avenue, near the Conservatory Water, better known as the boat pond, where, from 11 a.m. to noon on summer Saturdays, storytellers hold court. This weekend, listeners can hear “The Emperor’s New Clothes” and excerpts from a Chinese epic, “Journey to the West.”

Kids can then run off their energy at the newly renovated Heckscher Playground, just south of the ballfields and the largest in the park. Swings, slides, climbing structures and a big sand pit are inside, as well as a large wading pool where smaller children can cool off.

If you skipped Whole Foods, try the Ballplayers’ House, and lunch on a salad or a burger and a beer while watching a baseball game. A few steps away is the beautifully restored carousel. Built in 1951, it resides under a huge red and white canopy and boasts 58 intricately hand-carved and colored horses.

Then devote the afternoon to boating. At the boat pond rent a battery-operated sail boat — like the one Stuart Little raced on — for $10 a half-hour. Even with the wired controls, navigation requires some skill; the controls move the rudder and sails, but you still need to catch the wind.

If you prefer muscle to wind power, walk across the road to the Loeb Boathouse, where you can rent a rowboat for $12 for the first hour and cruise around the lake and under Bow Bridge, one of the oldest cast-iron girder bridges in the country. Easily seasick? The boathouse also offers bicycle rentals. The hearty can do the 6.1-mile loop around the park, while dabblers can opt for a 1.7-mile spin by using the 72nd Street transverse to circle the Lower Loop.

Dockside dinner at the upscale Boathouse can be your splurge for the day, but you should reserve ahead if you don’t want to wait for a couple of hours. (There’s also an outdoor bar and grill at the Boathouse, which has a limited menu, or you can head south to the Sheep’s Meadow Café for barbecue.) Reserve a gondola ride as well ($30 for 30 minutes and available until 10 p.m.). Andrés García-Peña, in striped red shirt and straw hat, has piloted the craft — a present to the city from Venice — for the past 15 years. Standing on the boat’s back end, he serenades you with “O Solo Mio” and “Volare.”

Mr. García-Peña said he had planned to work on the gondola for only a couple of months at first, but fell in love with the job. “Every person who gets on this gondola is happy,” he explained.

A trolley service from the boathouse will shuttle you back to Fifth Avenue and 72nd Street at the day’s end. Some lucky few can even sleep in the park this weekend: there is an Urban Park Rangers sleepover scheduled for Saturday night. (Registration for this weekend has closed, though there is still time to register for the last campout of the season in Manhattan on Sept. 26 at Inwood Hill Park.)

Next morning, you may want to start the day with something more substantial — and expensive — than croissants, by eating brunch at Tavern on the Green. (A less expensive option is the Boathouse Express Cafe.) From the Tavern’s ornate luxury, head to the Ramble. Between 73rd and 79th Streets, this section of the park was meticulously designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux to appear as an untamed woodland. There is a free Amble Through the Ramble walking tour at noon on Sunday that starts at Belvedere Castle at 79th Street.

To cool off, consider heading north to take a dip in Lasker Pool, between 106th and 108th Streets and not far from the Meer. This weekend is your last chance to swim there before the pool closes. Though it is a welcome oasis for many urban families, I must admit that Lasker is not one of my favorite destinations. Aside from the shabby condition — it is clearly the poorer northern cousin of Wollman Rink — the city’s stringent rules for public pools can be irritating. In the interest of safety, visitors are prevented from bringing anything other than themselves and a bathing suit into the pool area. No keys, cellphones, suntan lotion, deck chairs or newspapers. On one visit I was wearing a blue T-shirt over my bathing suit. Sorry, the guard said, only white is allowed; colors could release dye into the water, she explained.

“But I’m not going in the water,” I countered. “I’m just here to watch my son.”

What happens if he starts drowning in the pool? she asked. “Would you jump in and save him?”

I couldn’t figure out what she was getting at, but instinctively replied, “Of course.”

“See,” she said triumphantly, “you might go in the water.”

I retreated to the locker room.

Borrowing a pole to fish at the nearby Meer doesn’t require any interrogation, just identification. The rangers at the Charles A. Dana Discovery Center offer a cup of soft corn kernels for bait. This Sunday afternoon, fishing poles will be collected at 2 p.m. instead of 4 because of a performance by the ARC Gospel Choir.

Grab a potato knish and a hot dog from a Knish Nosh stand on the way down to the North Meadow Recreation Center, midpark at 97th Street, where you can pick up a basketball or handball game. Or concoct your own sports relay by borrowing a field kit with Frisbees, bats, balls, jump ropes and hula hoops.

The Tennis Center is a few blocks lower, at 96th Street. Inside is a tiny pro shop, locker rooms and a small concession stand where you can buy a can of balls for $3.75 and coffee or ice cream to have on the shaded outdoor terrace while waiting for a court. Vacationers (and anyone else without a permit) can play for $7 an hour. Those without rackets can get their hearts pumping by jogging once or twice around the reservoir (1.58 miles).

Whatever combination of activities you choose, make sure to leave enough time — make it your Monday plan — for aimless wandering. That is surely one of the greatest charms of Central Park, and the one in which even native New Yorkers can experience the thrill of unexpected discovery. Sunbathers, in-line skaters, folk and ballroom dancers, tourists from every part of the globe, impromptu buskers, pet cats and dogs whose owners tote them around in baby carriages can turn up anywhere.

So find a bench and sit back. Even if you haven’t left home, you can watch the world go by.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/ar....html?ref=arts

[Merry]

Calvert Vaux's Oak Bridge Rebuilt in Central Park

September 18, 2009, by Pete













Back in 1860 when Calvert Vaux and Frederic Law Olmstead gave the world Central Park, one key element at the northern end of the Lake was Oak Bridge, a span constructed of white oak and cast iron leading into the Ramble. That bridge has since been replaced twice, first with another fancy one in the 1870s (when it was renamed the Bank Rock Bridge), and then again in the lean years of the Great Depression by a utilitarian model in tubular steel with a wood plank floor. Now the original Vaux design, re-imagined by Jan Herd Pokorny Associates, is being reconstructed. Again we get carved white oak and cast iron, but now it all sits atop a very substantial base that should last for generations, or until Donald Trump pays for a solid-gold bridge with inlays of his initials.

Oak Bridge, Central Park [Jan Hird Pokorny Associates]
Central Park coverage [Curbed]

http://curbed.com/archives/2009/09/1...ntral_park.php