Liberal Arts Blog — Central Park Re-Visited: Manhattan’s Treasure Chest of Wonders
Liberal Arts Blog — Friday is the Joy of Art, Architecture, Design, Film, and All Things Visual Day
Today’s Topic: Central Park Re-Visited: Manhattan’s Treasure Chest of Wonders
The beauty of Central Park astounds continuously as you weave your way down the sinuous paths, vistas changing constantly, as you pass by pedestrians and bikers of every age and ethnicity, babbling in every language spoken on the planet earth. It is Manhattan’s premier theme park. A visual wonderland in winter, spring, summer, and fall. The size (at 843 acres almost twice the area of the country of Monaco and eight times that of Vatican City), the diversity of landscapes and backgrounds amaze. The immense rocks and hills, the lakes, the 100-acre reservoir, the wild woods, the bridges, the gardens, the Zoo, the 21 playgrounds, Shakespeare’s garden, the sheep’s meadow, the gothic Belvedere castle, and an ancient Egyptian obelisk. At some places, there is no sign whatever that you are in a city. At others skyscrapers of every architectural style imaginable loom above, adding texture to the painting in your mind. Have you ever had a picnic on sheep’s meadow? Taken a stroll through the Ramble? boated on the lake? Just got back from a trip to Manhattan and one highlight was definitely the two hour walk I took every day through Central Park. Today, a focus on three memories from a tiny corner of the Park: Cleopatra’s Needle, King Jagiello, and the Turtle Pond adjacent to Belvedere Castle and the Great Lawn. Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
CLEOPATRA’S NEEDLE (1475 BC) — weathered but still startling
1. Made of red granite with hieroglyphs, 69 feet high, weighing 200 tons, originally from Heliopolis, built on the orders of Thutmose III. (third link below)
2. A gift from the Khedive of Egypt in 1877 to the United States for “remaining a friendly neutral as two European powers, France and Great Britain maneuvered for political control of the Egyptian government.”
3. Railroad magnate William Henry Vanderbilt, son of Cornelius, paid for the transportation cost.
NB: “Scholars believe that obelisks represented eternity and immortality, and their long, tapering form functioned to connect the heavens and the earth. Their pinnacles were typically covered in gold to reflect the sunlight. When the Romans discovered the two obelisks in 12 BCE, both had toppled and were lying partially buried in the sand. The Romans transported the obelisks to Alexandria and installed them at an entrance to a temple dedicated to Julius Caesar. The temple had been built by Cleopatra, which is one theory of how they came to be called “Cleopatra’s Needles,” a name that still endures.” (fifth link below)
KING JAGIELLO (1354–1434) KING OF POLAND, GRAND DUKE OF LITHUANIA (built for the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens — the year of the Nazi invasion of Poland)
1. “The monument depicts a scene from the 1410 Battle of Grunwald when the king received two swords from his adversaries, the Teutonic Knights of the Cross. Ostrowski modeled the monument after a statue in Warsaw but added the dramatically raised swords”
2. “Just six months after the pavilion opened, in September 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland destroying all symbols of Polish nationalism including the original statue of the King.”
3. “When the Fair closed in 1940, the contents of the Polish pavilion were unable to return home because of the Nazi occupation…On July 15, 1945, the 535th anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald and two months after V-E Day, the monument was unveiled in Central Park.”
NB: “King Jagiello is one of several equestrian monuments in the Park. Others include the William Tecumseh Sherman monument and the monuments to the Latin American heroes Jose Marti, Simon Bolivar, and Jose de San Martin.”
THE TURTLE POND, THE BELVEDERE CASTLE, AND THE GREAT LAWN
1. Opposite King Jagiello’s statue, is the Turtle Pond. The turtles like to sunbathe on the rocks, facing the King.
2. “Five species of turtles inhabit the Pond year-round, including red-eared sliders, snapping, painted, musk, and box turtles. By far the most common are red-eared sliders. Distinguished by the red spots around their ears, they spend their days sunbathing on the banks of Vista Rock and sliding into the water to cool off.”
3. “Most of the sliders in Turtle Pond are former pets, and they are now considered an invasive species because they crowd out other turtle species and contribute to harmful algal blooms.”
NB: “The community of York Hill was displaced for the creation of the reservoir, and the population moved to Seneca Village to the northwest, which itself was demolished when Central Park was constructed in the 1850s.” Seneca Village was a community of free Black Americans. (See last link below for details.)
https://newyorksimply.com/central-park-things-to-do/
https://www.wanderlustchloe.com/facts-about-central-park/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra%27s_Needle_(New_York_City)
https://www.centralparknyc.org/locations/king-jagiello
King Jagiello Monument — Wikipedia
Great Lawn and Turtle Pond — Wikipedia
https://www.centralparknyc.org/locations/belvedere-castle
https://www.centralparknyc.org/locations/turtle-pond
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED THEMATICALLY
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned recently or ever related to art, sculpture, design, architecture, film, or anything visual.
This is your chance to make some one else’s day. And to cement in your own memory something cool or important you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than you otherwise would about something that is close to your heart.
