How Thousands of Years of History Weave Through NYC's Central Park

Just 200 years ago, Central Park didn't exist,

but what you might not know is

that you could still see evidence

of 13,000 years of world history

right here just by taking a walk in the park.

I'm Michael Wyetzner, I'm an architect,

and today we're gonna be taking a walkthrough time

in New York Central Park.

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We're standing here at the Columbus Circle entrance

to Central Park in New York City

where Broadway intersects 59th Street and Central Park West.

This was formally called Grand Circle

and also just The Circle.

This is the most famous entrance of the park

in part because of that connection to Broadway.

But Broadway has actually been a thoroughfare

in New York City long before Central Park existed.

In fact, it goes back to before the city

was called New York,

and even before it was called New Amsterdam.

The native Lenape people living on this island

traveled this very same route for generations

making this one of the busiest paths on the island

for around 13,000 years.

When early Dutch colonizers learned about it,

they called it the Wecquaesgeek Trail

in reference to the tribe of Wappinger people

who lived on the bank of the Hudson River.

Today, Broadway's famous for many reasons,

it is synonymous with theater,

and it was the first street in New York City

with electric street lamps.

But for architects and city planners,

one of its most important distinctions

is the way it cuts across the street grid of Manhattan

at a diagonal.

But what might surprise you

is that this portion of Broadway is one of the only roads

in Manhattan that runs true north.

Although Manhattan is often shown oriented vertically

on maps, which gives the impression

that it runs north and south,

it's actually tilted off axis from true north

by about 29 degrees.

Now that we've got our bearings,

let's journey northeast into the park

back in time to the formation of the island

of Manhattan itself.

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Behind me is Glen Span Arch near the northern end

of the park at 103rd Street.

The stones that make up this arch

are actually carved from the bedrock of Manhattan.

Although most of the boulders in Central Park

are Manhattan Schist,

which is around 450 million years old,

Glen Span Arch is made from a type of stone

called Fordham Gneiss,

which formed here over 1 billion years ago.

These stones were shaped by hand

with hammer and chisel into traditional voussoir

or wedge-shaped blocks that make up an arch.

When you pass through this arch

built from stones that are over 1 billion years old,

you feel as though you were crossing a portal

into an entirely different world back to a time

before Manhattan was transformed into a gleaming metropolis

of brick, steel and glass.

It's a perfect introduction to the north end of the park,

which feels the most naturalistic

and the most removed from the bustle

and hustle of Midtown Manhattan.

Here you'll find the most picturesque

waterfalls in the park.

As you might know from our other video on Central Park,

nearly all of its lakes and streams

are fed by pipes carrying drinking water.

But here passing under the arch

is where you'll find the only natural water source

that still exists in Central Park.

It's called Montayne's Rivulet,

and it starts at a body of water called The Pool.

It was named after a physician

who owned most of the land in this area

in the early 1600s when New York was still New Amsterdam.

This natural stream is mostly underground now,

after much of Manhattan was infilled with Earth

to create more buildable lots.

Montayne's Rivulet originally flowed all the way

to the East River, but today,

only this small portion remains.

Also underneath this arch is what's known as The Grotto.

A grotto is a small artificial cave made to look natural,

often with or near a water feature.

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This obelisk towering over my shoulder

is much older than Central Park.

In fact, it was carved about 3,500 years ago

and more than 5,000 miles away in Heliopolis, Egypt.

So how did it get here?

This 220 ton artifact,

carved from a single piece of granite,

was actually a gift.

It was given to the United States by Egypt in the 1870s

as a diplomatic gesture.

But this wasn't the first time obelisk had been moved,

although it was called Cleopatra's Needle,

it wasn't actually commissioned by Cleopatra.

It was originally created for Pharaoh Thutmose the Third

for the Temple of the Sun near modern-day Cairo.

2000 years later, while under Roman rule,

the temple was rediscovered as ruins

and the obelisk and its twin had been toppled over

and partially buried in the sand.

The Romans dug it up

and moved it to Alexandria on the north coast of Egypt

to a new temple that was created by Cleopatra,

hence the name Cleopatra's Needle.

In fact, you could still see evidence

from its Roman journey.

The bronze crabs that support the obelisk at the base

were forged by the Romans as a way to help it balance

when they installed it at Cleopatra's Temple.

The crabs supporting this obelisk are actually replicas,

but you could still see the originals

on display in the museum.

When this monument was moved to New York City,

it took some serious engineering

to get it across the Atlantic Ocean intact.

And the Roebling company, who had designed

and built the Brooklyn Bridge,

took on the job.

After it arrived in Manhattan,

a special temporary railroad was built

to move it from the banks of the Hudson River

to its current location in Central Park.

The train trip took 35 days to cover just a few miles,

in part because of a blizzard

that briefly shut down the operation.

Although there's nothing else like it in Central Park

or in the United States for that matter,

it was actually part of a matching set.

The other one was gifted to the United Kingdom

and stands on the banks of the River Thames in London

where they decided to leave it

instead of spending more money to bring it inland.

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Over my shoulder is what's known as The Blockhouse,

although it's not actually a house,

but a fort built for the war of 1812.

It was built in a hurry 'cause they thought the British

were going to attack again, but that never happened

and this fort was completed just two days

before the war ended in 1814.

So because it was built in such a hurry

and it was built by different groups,

the stones don't match.

And each group essentially brought their own building

materials with them,

which gives it this sort of motley, hodgepodge feel.

It's one of the oldest surviving buildings in Manhattan

and the oldest in the park.

And if you like the look of it,

you have Vaux and Olmsted to thank.

They preserved it effectively as an architectural folly,

which is a small ruin or rustic structure,

and it serves no purpose

other than to give a sense of history.

Because this is one of the highest points in Manhattan,

it was strategically important.

And along the ridge there was a line of other forts

like this one, including Fort Clinton,

Nutter's Battery and Fort Fish.

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This building over my shoulder is known as The Arsenal.

Millard Fillmore, who would later become president

of the United States,

oversaw the construction of this building

as a place to store arms

for the New York State militia.

But that didn't last long.

The state of New York seized the land underneath it

for the new Central Park.

And since then, The Arsenal has had many different uses.

It was once the original home

of the Museum of Natural History

where paleontologists reconstructed dinosaur skeletons

in the studio on the upper floor.

It also served as an art gallery

until that moved to another location uptown,

and it was also the original weather station in the park

until that also moved to Belvedere Castle.

Today, The Arsenal serves a civic

rather than a militaristic function.

It is now the headquarters of the New York City Department

of Parks and Recreation, the Arsenal Gallery,

the City Parks Foundation, the Historic House Trust,

and the New York Wildlife Conservation Society.

And the grounds around it

are used as the Tisch Children's Zoo.

There are still some clues

of this building's military origins,

one of which are the murals in the main lobby.

These murals were created by artist Allen Saalburg

for the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s.

Another hint that this was a military facility

is the architecture itself.

With its castle-like crenellations,

it is very reminiscent of other military buildings

in New York from the time period

including The Armory on the upper east side.

Another feature is the eagle and the stacked cannonballs

above the main entranceway.

The architect of this building, Martin Thompson,

also designed a famous bank in the early 1800s

whose facade is now on display

inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art,

which sits on Central Park Land.

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Where we're standing is what's known as McGown's Pass.

We've already traveled an ancient waterway

and an ancestral native path.

Now let's take a walk on a road

that was truly revolutionary.

In the 17th and 18th century,

Boston Post Road was the main artery of Manhattan.

It ran all the way from the southern tip of the island

north to Boston.

And it got its name because it was the official route

for the postal servants.

Hence the term post.

Here at the northern end of Central Park,

Boston Post Road passed through a narrow ravine,

which made it a very important location

during the Revolutionary War.

Paul Revere even carried a letter from Samuel Adams

to bring news of the Boston Tea Party along this road.

A few years later, the British stormed Manhattan in 1776

seemingly overpowering the revolutionary soldiers

and causing Washington to question

whether they had lost the war.

But as the British march north

towards Washington's headquarters

at the Morris-Jumel Mansion,

which we covered in a previous video on Manhattan mansions,

it was right here at McGown's Pass

that Washington's troops stopped the British advance

and turned the tide of the war once again.

Seven years later, in 1784,

the occupying British troops left the island of Manhattan

on what is remembered as Evacuation Day.

And George Washington led a victory march

down Boston Post Road in celebration.

McGown's Pass is a great example

of the preserved history in the park,

but of course, many of the buildings

and settlements on what would become park land

did not survive.

Like the free Black settlement of Seneca Village

an infamous example of eminent domain

where an entire land owning community

was forcibly displaced.

Near the site was another community that predated the park,

a convent known as Mount St. Vincent,

which was established in 1847

by the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul.

When the park was commissioned,

their land too was claimed by eminent domain,

and they moved to the Bronx.

While the designers of the park,

Vaux and Olmsted, used the convent

as their headquarters during construction,

it was also used as a hospital during the Civil War.

And it was the Sisters who had been displaced

that came back to serve as nurses

to the injured soldiers.

Today, only a few foundations and a stone marker

memorialized the fact that the convent was ever here.

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Central Park was designed with many small entrances

as opposed to one singular grand entrance.

This was meant to highlight the fact that the park

was built for all the people of New York.

An inclusive democratic space to be enjoyed

by everybody from politicians and bankers,

to factory workers and fishermen.

And each of the original 20 entrances to the park

were designated with a name

honoring occupations or roles in society.

This celebration of New Yorkers

also included direct reference to the diversity of cultures

and national origins of people in the city.

With the Strangers Gate at 106th Street,

making explicit reference to immigrants,

which have always been a boon to the culture

and industry of the city.

The park's designers and commissioners

considered naming the gates after other things

like military figures or diplomatic leaders.

But ultimately, the decision to honor everyday people

was a philosophical statement

by Frederick Law Olmsted,

who was a passionate abolitionist.

In his view, naming the gates after everyday people

of all backgrounds and occupations

would highlight the free labor economy of the North

in direct contrast to the enslaved workers

of the Confederate South.

In fact, in 1863 at the height of the Civil War,

Vaux and Olmsted even resigned in protest

when the commissioners of the park

tried to bring in Richard Morris Hunt,

the famous architect,

to create a grand gated entrance plaza to the park.

A far cry from their egalitarian vision,

but it was never built.

Although this standoff happened in the mid 1800s,

the names of many of these gates

wouldn't actually be carved into the stone

until the year 2000

when the Central Park Conservancy finally put into action

the original vision of the park's designers.

In the end, though, Richard Morris Hunt

did get to build his entrance gate, sort of.

Calvert Vaux designed the original building

for the Metropolitan Museum of Art,

which sits within the park.

But Richard Morris Hunt was later hired

to build an addition to it,

and when he did his building completely blocked

the view of Vaux from Fifth Avenue

and also included a grand entrance

built in a European style.

So now when you enter the Met, in a sense,

you're entering the park

the way Richard Morris Hunt originally wanted you to.

That's just a small slice of the history

that you could reach out and touch

inside of Central Park.

Let us know what other places

you'd like to learn about

in the comments below.

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