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If you’ve read any of my books on Alexander Hamilton, you know I’m a fanatic about primary sources. So when I started to research Central Park, one of my first steps was to look at all the photos and all the contemporary reports that I could find. You can see the resulting essays on this site via the Central Park tag, especially the pages on early images of the Park.

This post and the following one include images of buildings, sculptures, and landscape features in the south and north ends of Central Park that I did not write essays on, because they’ve long since disappeared.

Southeast entrance

When construction of the Park began in 1858, the southeast corner of Central Park (Fifth Avenue at 59th Street) was the Park’s main entrance. For years, New Yorkers debated how to embellish that area. In the meantime, a fountain was erected with a small figure.

Today the Pulitzer Fountain and the Sherman sculpture mark the southeast entrance.

Southwest entrance

Each of the original entrances to Central Park bears a name engraved beside it. (See this post on the Park’s gates.) At the southwest corner is the Merchants’ Gate. Directly inside the gate stood a bronze allegorical figure of Commerce by Paris sculptor Jules Fesquet. The uninspired work was donated by an expatriate New York merchant in August 1865. Daytonian in Manhattan gives details of Commerce’s trials and tribulations over the following decades. The latest photo I’ve seen, in the NYC Parks and Recreation archives, dates to 1934, and shows the sculpture missing an arm.

Zoo

In the early years of Central Park, people began donating animals that ranged from pets to elephants. This menagerie was emphatically not part of Olmsted and Vaux’s Greensward Plan. The animals were kept in the basement of the Arsenal and in ramshackle huts surrounding it. During the Tweed years (1870-1871), Jacob Wrey Mould was commissioned to design a large wooden structure near the Arsenal to house some of the animals. It stood just west of the Arsenal.

Mould’s menagerie building was torn down in the late 1930s to make way for Robert Moses’s revamped zoo.

Just north of Sheep Meadow

The Mineral Springs building was designed by Calvert Vaux in an exotic Moorish style in the late 1860s, “by the universal and urgent demand of the medical profession of New York, upon grounds of public health and utility.” Its elaborate silver faucets dispensed ten varieties of mineral water. The kiosk was at the northern end of Sheep Meadow.

Schultz & Warker agreed in 1867 to pay for the construction of the building (its cost ballooned to $43,000), in return for the right to operate the springs for five years. In January 1871, the pair begged the Park’s Board of Commissioners – at the time, Boss Tweed’s men – to pay for and take over the building, and give them a lease for the concession. They also asked the Board to build a carriage road to the Mineral Springs kiosk so that the many invalids who came for the benefits of the waters would not have to walk to it. Schultz & Warker’s letter was printed as a supporting document to the report of the Board of Commissioners of Central Park for 1871-1872 (printed pp. 3-5).

By the 1950s, the Mineral Springs building had fallen into disrepair. Robert Moses tore it down and erected a nondescript building in its place, which today houses a Pain Quotidien.

Near the Mall

The Ladies’ Refreshment Salon, just northeast of the Mall (overlooking the Lake and the Ramble) was designed by Calvert Vaux, the Park’s co-designer and consulting architect. Although it was intended as a genteel retreat where ladies might take refreshments, it opened in 1864 serving light refreshments to all, since no other restaurants had been built in the south end of the Park. It was referred to as the “Casino”, which meant “little house” (not gambling den!).

In 1929, Mayor Jimmy Walker licensed the Casino to a friend for use as a high-class night club. After Walker fled corruption charges in 1932, Robert Moses had the Casino razed to make way for a playground. The SummerStage theater now stands on the Casino’s site. More here, including photos.

Near the Casino

During the nineteenth century, Robert Burns was tremendously popular among New Yorkers – especially those of Scottish descent. This 1862 sculpture by Robert Thompson was titled Auld Lang Syne. Thompson represented Tam O’Shanter and Souter Johnnie, drinking buddies from Burns’s “Tam O’Shanter“.

Thompson was one of the stonecarvers who worked on the reliefs at Bethesda Terrace. Auld Lang Syne was donated to the Park by a group of Scotsmen and placed near the Casino, northeast of the Mall. However, the work was sculpted from sandstone and soon began to deteriorate. It was moved inside Mount St. Vincent (on which, see next week’s post). For more on Auld Lang Syne, see Daytonian in Manhattan.

More

• Three pages on this site include extensive photos and sketches of Central Park’s early years, in chronological order: through 1860, 1861-1865, and 1866-1870. For all posts on this site dealing with Central Park, click here.
• Central Park: The Early Years covers Central Park from the 1850s to 1870s. Details here, or order on Amazon here.
• Want wonderful art delivered weekly to your inbox? Check out my free Sunday Recommendations list and rewards for recurring support: details here.