Belvedere Castle
Encyclopedia
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
in New York, New York, that contains exhibit rooms and an observation deck.
Early history
Built as a Victorian follyFolly
In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but either suggesting by its appearance some other purpose, or merely so extravagant that it transcends the normal range of garden ornaments or other class of building to which it belongs...
in 1869, the castle caps Vista Rock
Vista Rock
Vista Rock is a rock located in Central Park, Manhattan, New York, United States. Made of schist, it is one of the park's highest natural elevations with Summit Park, as it stands 130 feet....
, the park's second-highest natural elevation Constructed of Manhattan schist
Manhattan schist
The Manhattan schist is a formation of mica schist rock that underlies much of the island of Manhattan in New York City. It is well suited for the foundations of tall buildings, and the two large concentrations of skyscrapers on the island occur in locations where the formation is close to the...
quarried in the park and dressed with gray granite, it tops the natural-looking woodlands of The Ramble
The Ramble and Lake, Central Park
The Ramble and Lake in Central Park together form an inseparable central feature of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux's "Greensward" plan to provide a Central Park for New York City...
, as seen from the formal Bethesda Terrace
Bethesda Fountain
Bethesda Terrace overlooks The Lake in New York City's Central Park. It is on two levels, united by two grand staircases and a lesser one that passes under Terrace Drive to provide passage southward to the Elkan Naumburg bandshell and The Mall, of which this is the architectural culmination, the...
. As the plantings matured, the castle has disappeared from its original intended viewpoint. Its turret is the highest point in the park.
Belvedere means 'beautiful view' or 'panoramic view' in Italian and the castle provides impressive views across Central Park and New York City. It was designed as an additional feature of the Central Park "Greensward" plan by the architects Calvert Vaux
Calvert Vaux
Calvert Vaux , was an architect and landscape designer. He is best remembered as the co-designer , of New York's Central Park....
and Jacob Wrey Mould
Jacob Wrey Mould
Jacob Wrey Mould was an architect, illustrator, linguist and musician, noted for his contributions to the design and construction of New York City's Central Park...
after they, along with Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted was an American journalist, social critic, public administrator, and landscape designer. He is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture, although many scholars have bestowed that title upon Andrew Jackson Downing...
, were reappointed to oversee the park's construction in 1865.
The site, which overlooks the Lower Reservoir, already held a fire tower under the control of the Croton Aqueduct
Croton Aqueduct
The Croton Aqueduct or Old Croton Aqueduct was a large and complex water distribution system constructed for New York City between 1837 and 1842...
board. In 1867, the board transferred the site to the Park, and the fire tower was demolished.
Design
Belvedere Castle was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in the late 1800s. An architectural hybrid of GothicGothic architecture
Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture....
and Romanesque
Romanesque architecture
Romanesque architecture is an architectural style of Medieval Europe characterised by semi-circular arches. There is no consensus for the beginning date of the Romanesque architecture, with proposals ranging from the 6th to the 10th century. It developed in the 12th century into the Gothic style,...
styles, Vaux's design called for a more weighty Manhattan schist
Schist
The schists constitute a group of medium-grade metamorphic rocks, chiefly notable for the preponderance of lamellar minerals such as micas, chlorite, talc, hornblende, graphite, and others. Quartz often occurs in drawn-out grains to such an extent that a particular form called quartz schist is...
and granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
structure with a corner tower with conical cap, with the existing lookout over parapet walls between them. To reduce costs it was revised in November 1870, and completed under the new Tammany Hall
Tammany Hall
Tammany Hall, also known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order, was a New York political organization founded in 1786 and incorporated on May 12, 1789 as the Tammany Society...
regime as an open painted-wood pavilion.
Weather Service use
Belvedere Castle was originally built as a shell with open doorway and window openings. It later housed the New York Meteorological Observatory, which was taken over by the United States Weather BureauNational Weather Service
The National Weather Service , once known as the Weather Bureau, is one of the six scientific agencies that make up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States government...
in 1912. The current source of Central Park weather observations, an Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS), is just south of the castle.
Pavilion (structure)
In architecture a pavilion has two main meanings.-Free-standing structure:Pavilion may refer to a free-standing structure sited a short distance from a main residence, whose architecture makes it an object of pleasure. Large or small, there is usually a connection with relaxation and pleasure in...
s deteriorated without painting and upkeep and were removed before 1900.
Closure and decay
After the New York Meteorological Observatory moved to Rockefeller CenterRockefeller Center
Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering between 48th and 51st streets in New York City, United States. Built by the Rockefeller family, it is located in the center of Midtown Manhattan, spanning the area between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue. It was declared a National...
in the 1960s, Belvedere Castle was closed to the public and became an object of much vandalism, neglect and deterioration.
Restoration and reopening
The Central Park Conservancy launched a restoration effort and reopened the structure on May 1, 1983, as the Henry LuceHenry Luce
Henry Robinson Luce was an influential American publisher. He launched and closely supervised a stable of magazines that transformed journalism and the reading habits of upscale Americans...
Nature Observatory. Soon after its restoration, the building was used as a filming location for Merchant-Ivory's 1984 film The Bostonians
The Bostonians (film)
The Bostonians is a 1984 Merchant Ivory film based on Henry James's novel of the same name. The film stars Vanessa Redgrave, Christopher Reeve, Madeleine Potter and Jessica Tandy. The movie received respectable reviews and showings at arthouse theaters in New York, London and other cities...
, starring Christopher Reeve
Christopher Reeve
Christopher D'Olier Reeve was an American actor, film director, producer, screenwriter, author and activist...
and Vanessa Redgrave
Vanessa Redgrave
Vanessa Redgrave, CBE is an English actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a political activist.She rose to prominence in 1961 playing Rosalind in As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has since made more than 35 appearances on London's West End and Broadway, winning...
. Its facade has been used for exterior shots of the castle where Count von Count
Count von Count
Count von Count, often known simply as "The Count", is one of the Muppet characters on Sesame Street, performed by Jerry Nelson. The Count is a vampire modeled after Bela Lugosi's interpretation of Count Dracula.-Description:...
lived on the children's television series Sesame Street
Sesame Street
Sesame Street has undergone significant changes in its history. According to writer Michael Davis, by the mid-1970s the show had become "an American institution". The cast and crew expanded during this time, including the hiring of women in the crew and additional minorities in the cast. The...
.
In 1995, the Conservancy's Historic Preservation Crew replaced the painted wooden loggia
Loggia
Loggia is the name given to an architectural feature, originally of Minoan design. They are often a gallery or corridor at ground level, sometimes higher, on the facade of a building and open to the air on one side, where it is supported by columns or pierced openings in the wall...
of the castle, working from Vaux's designs, on the granite piers and walls that had survived.
Nature observatory
The Observatory contains family-friendly displays that demonstrate the process by which naturalists observe their world and share their scientific discoveries about it. The displays, which include telescopes, microscopes, skeletons and feathers, are designed to expose children to fundamentals of the scientific method in natural observation. Other Observatory exhibits include a plywood tree with papier-mâchéPapier-mâché
Papier-mâché , alternatively, paper-mache, is a composite material consisting of paper pieces or pulp, sometimes reinforced with textiles, bound with an adhesive, such as glue, starch, or wallpaper paste....
reproductions of birds often seen in Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
, encouraging people to watch for these birds from the precipice of the castle, which has become one of New York's most popular birdwatching sites.
Free family and community programs hosted at Belvedere Castle include "On A Wing" birding programs, stargazing, astronomy talks, storytimes with the Princess of Belvedere Castle, and the "Spooks at Belvedere" haunted castle event every Halloween.
Surroundings
The new castle faced a rectangular receiving reservoir; today, it overlooks the Great LawnGreat Lawn and Turtle Pond, Central Park
The Great Lawn and Turtle Pond, Central Park, are inseparable features of New York City's Central Park.-History:The lawn and pond occupy the almost flat site of the rectangular, thirty-five-acre Lower Reservoir constructed in 1842, which was an unalterable fixture of the location of Central Park as...
, an oval of turf with eight baseball diamonds, loosely defined by plantings of trees in clumps in the manner of the English landscape garden
Capability Brown
Lancelot Brown , more commonly known as Capability Brown, was an English landscape architect. He is remembered as "the last of the great English eighteenth-century artists to be accorded his due", and "England's greatest gardener". He designed over 170 parks, many of which still endure...
, and, at the foot of Vista Rock, the Turtle Pond
Great Lawn and Turtle Pond, Central Park
The Great Lawn and Turtle Pond, Central Park, are inseparable features of New York City's Central Park.-History:The lawn and pond occupy the almost flat site of the rectangular, thirty-five-acre Lower Reservoir constructed in 1842, which was an unalterable fixture of the location of Central Park as...
, redesigned in 1997 as a naturalistic planting, in which no single vantage-point reveals the water's full extent. Sunken concrete shelving at varying depths provide ideal water depths for shoreline plants such as lizard's tail, bullrush, turtlehead, and blueflag iris. The success of habitat for birds, insects, amphibians, and reptiles is embodied in sightings of species of dragonfly not previously sighted in Central Park.