The Rowers, Central Park

Post published:September 4, 2019

Date: 1968
Sculptor: Irwin Glusker
Medium & size: Bronze; two figures in a small boat (about one foot square), on a three-foot bronze and granite pedestal.
Location: Central Park, just east of the Loeb Boathouse on the Lake.

Boats are permitted on only two of Central Park’s many bodies of water. You can race model sailboats and motorboats on Conservatory Water.

Boat race on Conservatory Water, ca. 1910-1915. Photo: Library of Congress

And as early as 1860, you could hire boatmen to row you around the Lake, the park’s largest body of water except for the two reservoirs.

Currier & Ives print of the Lake with boats and swans, and Bow Bridge. No date. Image: Library of Congress

Today, if you yearn for an excursion with a European feel, you can hire a gondolier with a dead-black Venetian gondola – the descendant of one donated to the park in 1862. According to Cook’s 1869 guide to Central Park (p. 58), the first gondola was the gift of John A.C. Gray, Esq., a former commissioner; it was not in use in 1869 because Gray did not present a Venetian gondolier with it. Cook noted that “It looks sufficiently romantic” just sitting in the water. But by 1900, there were gondoliers working at the Lake.

Gondoliers at the Lake in Central Park, ca. 1900. Photo: Library of Congress

Olmsted and Vaux did not complain that rowboats would disrupt their pastoral landscape. But a large, permanent structure to store those boats – that was another matter. It would interfere with their carefully planned vistas of the Lake. Nevertheless, boating was extremely popular, and a place to store those boats was needed. In 1874, more than a decade after Central Park opened, an elegant boathouse was built to a design by Calvert Vaux. (The gondoliers above are standing in the Boathouse.)

Vaux’s Boathouse in Central Park, 1872. From the annual report of the Board of Commissioners, 1872-1873.

Half a century later Vaux’s Boathouse was replaced with one far less elegant, which soon fell into disrepair.

Later boathouse on the Lake in Central Park; after 1924. Photo: Library of Congress

In the early 1950s, Carl and Adeline Loeb donated money for a new building. The Boathouse, in faux-Victorian style, is now famous for its restaurant with delicious food and a fabulous view.

The Boathouse in Central Park. Photo copyright © 2019 Dianne L. Durante

The Rowers honors the Loebs and commemorates the boathouse’s original purpose.

Irwin Glusker, The Rowers, 1968. Near Loeb Boathouse, Central Park. Photo copyright © 2019 Dianne L. Durante

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