Conservatory Water, Central Park
Encyclopedia
Fifth Avenue (Manhattan)
Fifth Avenue is a major thoroughfare in the center of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. The section of Fifth Avenue that crosses Midtown Manhattan, especially that between 49th Street and 60th Street, is lined with prestigious shops and is consistently ranked among...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
's 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...
, centered opposite 74th Street. To the south lies the slope of Pilgrim Hill, surveyed by John Quincy Adams Ward
John Quincy Adams Ward
John Quincy Adams Ward was an American sculptor, who is most familiar for his over-lifesize standing statue of George Washington on the steps of Federal Hall on Wall Street.-Early years:...
's bronze of The Pilgrim set among Prunus serrulata
Prunus serrulata
Prunus serrulata or Japanese Cherry; also called Hill Cherry, Oriental Cherry or East Asian Cherry, is a species of cherry native to Japan, Korea and China. It is known for its spring cherry blossom displays and festivals....
and other specimen trees, notably a globose European Hornbeam
European Hornbeam
Carpinus betulus is a hornbeam native to eastern, western, central and southern England. It requires a warm climate for good growth, and occurs only at elevations up to 600 metres...
and nine species of oak, all set in rolling lawn. The result is a somewhat manicured Park landscape, planned in deferential reference to the estate plantings of the owners of the mansions that once lined this stretch of Fifth Avenue.
Conservatory Water is named for another estate-garden feature, a glass-house for tropical plants, to be entered from Fifth Avenue by a grand stair that was planned in the original "Greensward" plan, 1857, but never built. Instead, where a parterre
Parterre
A parterre is a formal garden construction on a level surface consisting of planting beds, edged in stone or tightly clipped hedging, and gravel paths arranged to form a pleasing, usually symmetrical pattern. Parterres need not have any flowers at all...
display of tender annuals had been planned, a naturalistic pond displaying water lilies
Nymphaeaceae
Nymphaeaceae is a family of flowering plants. Members of this family are commonly called water lilies and live in freshwater areas in temperate and tropical climates around the world. The family contains eight genera. There are about 70 species of water lilies around the world. The genus...
was excavated. The steep bank towards Fifth Avenue was densely planted with shrubs and trees, including birch
Birch
Birch is a tree or shrub of the genus Betula , in the family Betulaceae, closely related to the beech/oak family, Fagaceae. The Betula genus contains 30–60 known taxa...
—for quick cover—and copper beech. Samuel Parsons
Samuel Parsons
Samuel H. Parsons Jr. . Parsons was a well-known American landscape architect remembered primarily for his "Beaux-Arts" designs in New York City, the development of Central Park, San Diego’s Balboa Park, and for serving as a founding member to the American Society of Landscape 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....
's assistant and partner, who was named Superintendent of Plantings, described the effect in his Landscape Gardening (1891):
The general shape of this pond was oval, with winding, irregular shores, bounded by a high bank on the east side and a great willow drooping over the north end. Rocks were disposed in the immediate banks, so as to suggest a natural formation, rather than an artificial pond. The bottom, scarcely three feet deep, was cemented tight as a cup, and the water flowed gently in at one end, and out at the other, and so through a basin and into the sewer. Eighteen inches of soil was made rich with manure and deposited over the bottom.
Hardy water lilies, both European and American, were naturalised in the bottom mud and tender ones, planted in boxes were wintered over in the park's conservatory, now the site of Conservatory Garden
Conservatory Garden
The Conservatory Garden is the only formal garden in Central Park, New York City. Comprising , it takes its name from a conservatory that stood on the site from 1898 to 1934. The park's head gardener used the glasshouses to harden hardwood cuttings for the park's plantings. After the conservatory...
.
Later the naturalistic waterlily pond was reshaped as a model boat pond similar to that in the Jardin du Luxembourg
Jardin du Luxembourg
The Jardin du Luxembourg, or the Luxembourg Gardens, is the second largest public park in Paris The Jardin du Luxembourg, or the Luxembourg Gardens, is the second largest public park in Paris The Jardin du Luxembourg, or the Luxembourg Gardens, is the second largest public park in Paris (224,500 m²...
, Paris. The formally-shaped shallow basin set in a moulded curb of "Atlantic Blue" granite is home water to a flotilla of model sailboats, made familiar in the pages of E.B. White's Stuart Little
Stuart Little
Stuart Little is a 1945 children's novel by E. B. White, his first book for children, and is widely recognized as a classic in children's literature. Stuart Little was illustrated by the subsequently award-winning artist Garth Williams, also his first work for children...
(1945) and recreated in the popular 1999 film
Stuart Little (film)
Stuart Little is a 1999 family film. It is loosely based on the novel of the same name by E. B. White. It combines live-action and computer animation. The screenplay was co-written by M. Night Shyamalan and Greg Brooker, with uncredited script doctoring by David O. Russell and Billy Ray...
.
The Kerbs Boathouse (1954) in picnic Georgian taste houses resident model sailboats as well as the radio-controlled model
Radio control
Radio control is the use of radio signals to remotely control a device. The term is used frequently to refer to the control of model vehicles from a hand-held radio transmitter...
yachts of the Central Park Model Yacht Club.
The waters of Conservatory Water shelter a seasonal population of unusual minute freshwater jellyfish, Craspedacusta sowerbyi
Craspedacusta sowerbyi
Craspedacusta sowerbyi is a freshwater jellyfish in the phylum Cnidaria. Since it is classified as a hydrozoan, it is one of many jellyfish that are also known as hydromedusae...
. In the sculptured Beaux-Arts pediment of a Fifth Avenue penthouse window overlooking Conservatory Water, the Red-tailed Hawk
Red-tailed Hawk
The Red-tailed Hawk is a bird of prey, one of three species colloquially known in the United States as the "chickenhawk," though it rarely preys on standard sized chickens. It breeds throughout most of North America, from western Alaska and northern Canada to as far south as Panama and the West...
named "Pale Male
Pale Male
Pale Male is a well known New York City Red-tailed Hawk who has made his home since the early 1990s near Central Park. Birdwatcher and author Marie Winn gave him his name because of the unusually light coloring of his head...
" set up a nest, under the binocular watch of the Park's numerous bird-watchers.
Bronze sculptural groups set in small terraces fronting the Water commemorate Alice in Wonderland (by José de Creeft, 1959) and Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet noted for his children's stories. These include "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," "The Snow Queen," "The Little Mermaid," "Thumbelina," "The Little Match Girl," and "The Ugly Duckling."...
(by Georg John Lober, 1955): see List of sculptures in Central Park.
Discreetly sited near the top of Pilgrim Hill is the white granite exedra
Exedra
In architecture, an exedra is a semicircular recess or plinth, often crowned by a semi-dome, which is sometimes set into a building's facade. The original Greek sense was applied to a room that opened onto a stoa, ringed with curved high-backed stone benches, a suitable place for a philosophical...
seat commemorating Waldo Hutchins (1822–1891), a member of the original Board of Commissioners for Central Park. It was executed by the Piccirilli Brothers
Piccirilli Brothers
The Piccirilli Brothers were a family of renowned marble carvers who carved a large number of the most significant marble sculptures in the United States, including Daniel Chester French’s colossal Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.-History:In 1888, Giuseppe Piccirilli , a...
in 1932, with a sundial featuring a bronze sculpture by Paul Manship
Paul Manship
Paul Howard Manship was an American sculptor.-Life:Manship began his art studies at the St. Paul School of Art in Minnesota. From there he moved to Philadelphia and continued his education at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts...
. Incised in the bench and paving are arced lines representing shadows on the vernal and autumnal equinox
Equinox
An equinox occurs twice a year, when the tilt of the Earth's axis is inclined neither away from nor towards the Sun, the center of the Sun being in the same plane as the Earth's equator...
es.