Belvedere Castle is a

folly In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but suggesting through its appearance some other purpose, or of such extravagant appearance that it transcends the range of usual garden buildings. Eighteenth-cent ...

Central Park Central Park is an urban park in New York City located between the Upper West and Upper East Sides of Manhattan. It is the fifth-largest park in the city, covering . It is the most visited urban park in the United States, with an estimated ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. It contains exhibit rooms, an

observation deck An observation deck, observation platform, or viewing platform is an elevated sightseeing platform usually situated upon a tall architectural structure, such as a skyscraper or observation tower. Observation decks are sometimes enclo ...

, and since 1919 has housed Central Park’s official weather station. Belvedere Castle was designed by

Calvert Vaux Calvert Vaux (; December 20, 1824 – November 19, 1895) was an English-American architect and landscape designer, best known as the co-designer, along with his protégé and junior partner Frederick Law Olmsted, of what would become New York Ci ...

and

Jacob Wrey Mould Jacob Wrey Mould (7 August 1825 – 14 June 1886) was a British architect, illustrator, linguist and musician, noted for his contributions to the design and construction of New York City's Central Park. He was "instrumental" in bringing the Brit ...

in 1867. An architectural hybrid of Romanesque and

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

styles, the design called for a Manhattan schist and

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies un ...

structure with a corner tower and conical cap, a lookout over parapet walls beneath it. Its name comes from

belvedere Belvedere (from Italian, meaning "beautiful sight") may refer to: Places Australia *Belvedere, Queensland, a locality in the Cassowary Coast Region Africa * Belvedere (Casablanca), a neighborhood in Casablanca, Morocco * Belvedere, Harare, Z ...

, which means "beautiful view"

in Italian In Italian (foaled February 18, 2018) is a British-bred multiple Grade I turf winning Thoroughbred racehorse. Her Grade I wins in 2022 include the Diana Stakes at Saratoga Race Course and the First Lady Stakes at Keeneland. Background In Ital ...

Design

Belvedere Castle was built as a shell with doors and windows open to the weather. Originally, the main tower had a more medieval design, with a weather antenna on top, but during the castle's 1983 renovation, the tower was restored in a German style with a

flag A flag is a piece of fabric (most often rectangular or quadrilateral) with a distinctive design and colours. It is used as a symbol, a signalling device, or for decoration. The term ''flag'' is also used to refer to the graphic design empl ...

, a

weather vane A wind vane, weather vane, or weathercock is an instrument used for showing the direction of the wind. It is typically used as an architectural ornament to the highest point of a building. The word ''vane'' comes from the Old English word , m ...

, and an

anemometer In meteorology, an anemometer () is a device that measures wind speed and direction. It is a common instrument used in weather stations. The earliest known description of an anemometer was by Italian architect and author Leon Battista Alberti ...

on top. The two fanciful

half-timbered Timber framing (german: Holzfachwerk) and "post-and-beam" construction are traditional methods of building with heavy timbers, creating structures using squared-off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large woode ...

wooden

pavilion In architecture, ''pavilion'' has several meanings: * It may be a subsidiary building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often it is associated with pleasure. In palaces and traditional mansions of Asia ...

s deteriorated without painting and upkeep and were removed before 1900, but restored in the 1980s. Starting in 1919, Belvedere Castle housed the New York Meteorological Observatory, which had been taken over by the

United States Weather Bureau The National Weather Service (NWS) is an agency of the United States federal government that is tasked with providing weather forecasts, warnings of hazardous weather, and other weather-related products to organizations and the public for the ...

. The current weather station in Central Park, an Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS), is located immediately south of the castle, though wind equipment is still located on the main tower."Belvedere Castle"

New York City Department of Parks and Recreation The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, also called the Parks Department or NYC Parks, is the department of the government of New York City responsible for maintaining the city's parks system, preserving and maintaining the ecolo ...

The castle caps Vista Rock, a outcropping of schist and the park's second-highest natural elevation. (Summit Rock, at 83rd Street overlooking

Central Park West Eighth Avenue is a major north–south avenue on the west side of Manhattan in New York City, carrying northbound traffic below 59th Street. It is one of the original avenues of the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 to run the length of Manhattan, ...

, is higher at .) Constructed of Manhattan schist quarried in the park and dressed with gray granite, it tops the natural-looking woodlands of The Ramble, as seen from the formal

Bethesda Terrace Bethesda Terrace and Fountain are two architectural features overlooking the southern shore of the Lake in New York City's Central Park. The fountain, with its ''Angel of the Waters'' statue, is located in the center of the terrace. Bethesda T ...

. The natural rock was tunneled through for the innovative sunken transverse roadway that still carries commercial and other traffic unobtrusively through the park. The castle serves now as a visitor center and gift shop. Free family and community programs hosted at Belvedere Castle include birding and other Central Park Conservancy discovery programs for families as well as a variety of history and natural history programs led by NYC Urban Park Rangers, including stargazing/astronomy and wildlife-education events. The eastern elevation formerly faced a rectangular receiving reservoir that was part of the

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. The great aqueducts, which were among the first in the United States, carried water by gravity fro ...

system. The reservoir was filled in with city building rubble, beginning with spoil from construction of the

New York City Subway The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the government of New York City and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, an affiliate agency of the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Opened on October ...

IND Eighth Avenue Line The IND Eighth Avenue Line is a rapid transit line in New York City, United States, and is part of the B Division of the New York City Subway. Opened in 1932, it was the first line of the Independent Subway System (IND), and the ''Eighth Avenu ...

(now carrying the ) in the 1930s. Today, the eastern elevation overlooks the

Great Lawn and Turtle Pond The Great Lawn and Turtle Pond are two connected features of Central Park in Manhattan, New York City, United States. The lawn and pond are located on the site of a former reservoir for the Croton Aqueduct system which was infilled during t ...

, which occupies the former site of the receiving reservoir.

History

The castle was designed by the architects

and

as an additional feature of the

Greensward Plan Central Park is an urban park in New York City located between the Upper West and Upper East Sides of Manhattan. It is the fifth-largest park in the city, covering . It is the most visited urban park in the United States, with an estimated 42 ...

, created by Vaux and

Frederick Law Olmsted Frederick Law Olmsted (April 26, 1822August 28, 1903) was an American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator. He is considered to be the father of landscape architecture in the USA. Olmsted was famous for co- ...

. Olmsted and Vaux were re-hired to their positions in mid-1865 after quitting abruptly several years before. In 1867, Vaux decided to develop this area by building Belvedere Castle on the top of the rock, overlooking the Croton Reservoir. The site already held a fire tower under the control of the Croton Aqueduct board, and so the fire tower was demolished. The original plans for Belvedere Castle called for two turreted stone towers: a larger structure on the eastern elevation and a smaller structure on the west side. Under

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 City political organization founded in 1786 and incorporated on May 12, 1789 as the Tammany Society. It became the main loc ...

's leadership, it was revised in November 1870 to reduce costs and was completed as an open painted-wood pavilion of Mould's design. The eastern structure was completed by 1871, while the western structure was never built. As the plantings matured, the castle has been obscured from its original intended viewpoint. Its turret is the highest point in the park. After the New York Meteorological Observatory automated its equipment and moved its offices to

Rockefeller Center Rockefeller Center is a large complex consisting of 19 commercial buildings covering between 48th Street and 51st Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The 14 original Art Deco buildings, commissioned by the Rockefeller family, span th ...

in the 1960s, Belvedere Castle was closed to the public and became an object of much vandalism, neglect and deterioration. The

Central Park Conservancy The Central Park Conservancy is a private, nonprofit park conservancy that manages Central Park under a contract with the City of New York and NYC Parks. The conservancy employs most maintenance and operations staff in the park. It effectively ...

launched a restoration effort and reopened the structure on May 1, 1983. The original turret was replaced, the pavilions were rebuilt, and the castle was converted into a visitor center. In 1995, the Conservancy's Historic Preservation Crew replaced the painted wooden

loggia In architecture, a loggia ( , usually , ) is a covered exterior gallery or corridor, usually on an upper level, but sometimes on the ground level of a building. The outer wall is open to the elements, usually supported by a series of columns ...

of the castle, working from the 1860s designs, on the granite piers and walls that had survived. The same year, a $340,000 grant was distributed toward restoring the castle as the Henry Luce Nature Center. That restoration was completed in 1996. In 2018, the Central Park Conservancy conducted a second renovation of Belvedere Castle. Plans included replacing existing doors and windows with double paned glass. In addition the Conservancy proposed to construct a new access path to

ADA Ada may refer to: Places Africa * Ada Foah, a town in Ghana * Ada (Ghana parliament constituency) * Ada, Osun, a town in Nigeria Asia * Ada, Urmia, a village in West Azerbaijan Province, Iran * Ada, Karaman, a village in Karaman Province, T ...

standards from the East Drive. The access path − actually an elevated ramp with parapets − has been criticized as creating an unnecessary barrier in the otherwise naturalistic park. Following the $12 million renovation, the castle reopened on June 28, 2019, complete with a geothermal heating and cooling system that was installed by the Central Park Conservancy.

References

Citations

Sources

* *

External links

* {{Protected areas of New York City 1869 establishments in New York (state) Buildings and structures in Manhattan Castles in New York (state) Central Park Folly buildings in the United States Nature centers in New York City