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| New York
Architecture Images- Central Park Playmates Arch |
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architect |
Calvert Vaux 1824-1895 |
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location |
just south of the 65th Street transverse |
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date |
1863 |
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style |
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construction |
Philadelphia pressed brick and Milwaukee yellow brick-belt coursing and granite trim |
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type |
Bridge |
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images |
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| "Archway for the Foot Path under Drive East of the Play Ground." Lithograph. Eighth Annual Report, Central Park, for 1864. | |
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Playmates Arch, opening out onto the Carousel, is a beautiful Calvert Vaux conception. |
| Playmates Arch
is a stone and brick masonry structure located just south of the 65th Street
transverse. It was designed by Calvert Vaux, detailed by Jacob Wrey Mould
and completed by 1863. It continues a pedestrian walkway between the Dairy
and the Carousel and also serves as a bridge for the Center Drive.
Playmates Arch is one of the most ornate masonry structures in Central Park with its characteristic Philadelphia pressed brick and Milwaukee yellow brick-belt coursing and granite trim. In his description of Central Park in 1864, Frederick B. Perkins called Playmates the "tricolored archway." The span is 17 feet 8 inches wide, and 9 feet 11 inches high. The underpass is 66 feet long. The original cast-iron railing only remains on the east side of the drive. The railing on the west side, destroyed in an auto accident, was replaced with a duplicate cast-iron railing in 1989. This was part of the overall restoration of the Arch by the Parks Department, under the supervision of the Central Park Conservancy. Cast-iron railings, readily available in 1863, are now regarded as special, surviving ornaments. Playmates derived its name partly from its proximity to a number of major park attractions devoted to children: the Dairy, which once served fresh milk and other refreshments, the Kinderberg, a huge rustic shelter replaced in the 1930s by the Chess and Checkers House, a Children's Cottage, with live animals, and the nearby Carousel. The present Carousel is the latest in a line of three earlier machines in Central Park. |
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links |
thanks to www.centralpark2000.com & www.centralparknyc.org |
