Bethesda Terrace

In their master plan for Central Park, the 1858 Greensward plan, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux proposed an architectural "heart of the Park" defined by a sweeping Promenade that would culminate in a Terrace overlooking the Lake. But as Vaux told a newspaper reporter in 1865, the architecture was always to be subordinate to the landscape: "Nature first, second and third — architecture after awhile."

Yet Olmsted and Vaux also understood the practical nature of a public park. There had to be places for people to gather, to experience the human variety the City had to offer, as well as the inspiration of nature. And they succeeded splendidly with Bethesda Terrace and what we now call the Mall (formerly the Promenade).

Park visitors stand on Bethesda's upper terrace and look across the Lake at the rugged shoreline of the Ramble. They look down on the lawn and watch classes of new mothers doing aerobics. Or they watch rowboats, and even an occasional gondola pass across the Lake's foreground. The scene is framed now as it was before the turn of the century —with two 20-foot ornamental poles bearing gonfalons, colorful medieval-style banners. Leaving the upper terrace, visitors can sit on benches built into the lawn's terrace walls and watch the human parade at eye-level.

The decorative elements for Bethesda Terrace itself were designed by English-born architect Jacob Wrey Mould. Reasserting the primacy of nature, Mould chose representative wildlife and seasonal design motifs. There are also carvings symbolic of day: a rising sun, a crowing cock. Night is represented by a lamp and book, a bat and owl, and a witch flying over a Jack-o'-lantern.

On the lower terrace is one of the most photographed fountains in the world, Angel of the Waters. Bethesda Fountain, as it is often called, was the only sculpture commissioned as part of the original design of the Park. The artist, Emma Stebbins, was the first woman to receive a commission for a major public work in New York City; the fact that she was the sister of Col. Henry G. Stebbins, the President of the Central Park Board of Commissioners, does not detract from her accomplishment or talent. The sculpture, dedicated in 1873, is a neoclassical winged female figure who symbolically blesses the water of the Fountain with her one hand and carries a lily, the symbol of purity, in the other. The Fountain celebrates the opening of the Croton Aqueduct, which brought fresh water to New Yorkers in 1842.
On March 2, 2007, the Central Park Conservancy reopened Bethesda Terrace Arcade after completing an intricate restoration. The Arcade is a richly decorated component of Bethesda Terrace, and now the treasured Minton tile ceiling has been preserved and reinstalled. The tile panels were removed from the Arcade in the early 1980s and put into storage because their backing plates were severely corroded from water infiltration. To restore the tiles, the Conservancy employed a team of seven conservation technicians who cleaned and repaired about 14,000 original tiles by hand. Only three panels were needed to replace badly damaged ones.

The Arcade’s ceiling is made up of 15,876 elaborately patterned encaustic tiles, handmade by Minton and Company, a leading 19th century ceramic manufacturer in Stoke-on-Trent, England. The Conservancy commissioned Maw and Company, Minton’s successor, for the project. To ensure the tiles will not suffer future water damage, the Conservancy also restored the Arcade’s infrastructure. The final phase of the $7 million project includes the reconstruction, waterproofing, and repaving of the upper terrace plaza and the 72nd Street Cross Drive above the Arcade.