BGuthrie Photos: NY -- NYC -- Central Park -- Charles A. Dana Discovery Center

NY -- NYC -- Central Park -- Charles A. Dana Discovery Center:

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[1] DANADC_180823_006.JPG	[2] DANADC_180823_014.JPG
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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. DANADC_180823_006.JPG: A View Into the Past Fort Clinton was named after New York Mayor (and later, Governor) DeWitt Clinton, who played a lead role in building new defenses for New York City during the War of 1812. Fort Fish was named after Nicholas Fish, the Chairman of the Committee of Defense in New York City during the War of 1812. Nutter's Battery was named after Valentine Nutter, a local land owner at the time of the war.
2. DANADC_180823_014.JPG: Military History
3. DANADC_180823_019.JPG: Fortifications Revolutionary War
4. DANADC_180823_027.JPG: This illustration shows two fortifications constructed by the British Army in 1776, and provides a sense of what the area looked like at the time. Defenses were constructed here because of the high ground with expansive views of the flatlands to the north. The view looks north, toward what was then the Village of Harlem.
5. DANADC_180823_031.JPG: Hastily drawn by a British officer, this map shows the location of British Forces after their successful invasion of New York McGowan's Pass is demarcated.
6. DANADC_180823_037.JPG: British forces surrendered to George Washington in 1781. Two years later, the Revolution came to an official end when both sides signed the Treaty of Paris. Washington returned to Manhattan on November 25, 1783, "Evacuation Day" for the British soldiers headquartered there. He travelled through McGowan's Pass on Kingsbridge Road and made his way south to the city.
7. DANADC_180823_041.JPG: War of 1812 During the War of 1812, the present-day Fort Landscape became strategically important once again. In 1814, New Yorkers rebuilt and connected the old British forts in this area to protect Manhattan against a threatened British invasion from the north, and gave them the names we still use today: Nutter's Battery, Fort Clinton, and Fort Fish. They also constructed a gatehouse over Kingsbridge Road to control access through McGowan's Pass.
8. DANADC_180823_045.JPG: War of 1812 During the War of 1812, the present-day Fort Landscape became strategically important once again. In 1814, New Yorkers rebuilt and connected the old British forts in this area to protect Manhattan against a threatened British invasion from the north, and gave them the names we still use today: Nutter's Battery, Fort Clinton, and Fort Fish. They also constructed a gatehouse over Kingsbridge Road to control access through McGowan's Pass.
9. DANADC_180823_048.JPG: In 1814, four British warships bombarded the little coastal town of Stonington, Connecticut. Barely 150 miles away from northern Manhattan, the attack spurred New Yorkers to build new defenses against the British all around the harbor.
10. DANADC_180823_050.JPG: The United States Army worked with civilian residents of Manhattan rebuild and reinforce the defenses at McGowan's Pass. This watercolor map shows the location of military defenses across northern Manhattan, including four stone Blockhouses stretched in a defensive line across Harlem Heights.
11. DANADC_180823_053.JPG: At least 1,600 soldiers were garrisoned at McGowan's Pass and nearby fortifications during the fall of 1814. The soldiers had little to do during their few months of service. Bored and under-utilized, many soldiers misbehaved or even absconded. The war was over by the new year and the defenses at McGowan's Pass were abandoned without a battle ever having been fought in northern Manhattan.
12. DANADC_180823_057.JPG: Integration Into Central Park
13. DANADC_180823_060.JPG: Naturalistic Landscape
14. DANADC_180823_063.JPG: Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) was a gentleman farmer from Connecticut. He had visited European parks and was impressed by their beauty. He was the superintendent in charge of clearing the land for the new park when he and Vaux created the Greensward plan.
15. DANADC_180823_066.JPG: Calvert Vaux (1824-1895) was a British-born and trained architect who had come to this country several years earlier. Central Park would be the first of many collaborations for Olmsted and Vaux.
16. DANADC_180823_071.JPG: In order to integrate the existing natural features into the Park's design, Olmsted and Vaux crafted the 11-acre Harlem Meer out of a tidal waterbody (the Harlem Creek) near the base of McGowan's Pass. The design created a naturalistic shoreline at the base of the Fort Clinton overlook.
17. DANADC_180823_076.JPG: Olmsted and Vaux incorporated the ruins of the War of 1812 into the northern Park landscape. The Blockhouse became a vine-covered scenic historic attraction within the North Woods of Central Park. Fort Clinton was developed as a scenic overlook incorporating rustic fencing, benches, and a flag pole.
18. DANADC_180823_082.JPG: Cultural Landscape
19. DANADC_180823_085.JPG: Shortly before the Park was built, the Sisters of Charity of Mount Saint Vincent purchased the former McGowan's Tavern and the surrounding property, developing the grounds as a convent and academy. With construction of the Park, the Sisters moved to the Bronx, and the complex eventually became a museum. Today, portions of the site's retaining wall are still visible at the location of the Conservancy's compost operation.
20. DANADC_180823_089.JPG: Shortly before the Park was built, the Sisters of Charity of Mount Saint Vincent purchased the former McGowan's Tavern and the surrounding property, developing the grounds as a convent and academy. With construction of the Park, the Sisters moved to the Bronx, and the complex eventually became a museum. Today, portions of the site's retaining wall are still visible at the location of the Conservancy's compost operation.
21. DANADC_180823_097.JPG: Although the two cannons were never in active use at the Fort Clinton overlook, they were installed at the site in 1906 given its military history. The cannons were removed from the location in the 1970s and placed in storage, likely to protect them from vandalism as the Park was in disrepair. Central Park Conservancy stabilized and conserved the cannons through the means of a passive alkaline soak, the application of a corrosion inhibitor, and ultimately a protective wax coating. The Conservancy re-installed the restored cannons in 2014.
22. DANADC_180823_101.JPG: Kingsbridge Road and Geology
23. DANADC_180823_105.JPG: Kingsbridge Road
24. DANADC_180823_107.JPG: The Kingsbridge Road originated near 23rd Street and traveled north up the island of Manhattan. It entered present-day Central Park at around East 95th Street and made its way through what is now the Fort Landscape. The rocky bluffs that made up the Fort Landscape were difficult to traverse, but the road made use of a natural pass through the rock outcrops. The road the crossed a bridge over tidal wetlands and the Harlem Creek, then split in two -- one road towards Boston and the other road towards Albany. It is because of the road topography that the Fort Landscape became an important strategic feature of this area.
25. DANADC_180823_113.JPG: Travelers along Kingsbridge Road crossed many different landscapes on their journey, including swamps, farms, forests, and streams. Before Central Park was built, the area around the present-day Fort Landscape consisted of rocky bluffs, tidal wetlands at the base of the rock outcrops, and flat farmlands to the north.
26. DANADC_180823_115.JPG: Land Forms A History of Central Park's Fort Landscape
27. DANADC_180823_119.JPG: The Rebirth of the Upper Park
28. DANADC_180823_123.JPG: Central Park was conceived to provide opportunities for recreation at a time when the word recreation literally referred to the sense of "rebirth" or "renewal" made possible by the opportunity to connect with nature. The Park was designed to provide the burgeoning population of New York in the 19th century with a reprieve from the stresses of urban life. Nowhere was this vision more perfectly realized than in the breathtakingly beautiful northern section of the Park. The character of this part of the Park changed dramatically in the first century of its existence, slipping into a severe decline by the 1970s into the early 1980s. This retrospective chronicles the factors leading up to that decline and highlights the remarkable turn-around in the decades since.
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Description of Subject Matter: Charles A. Dana Discovery Center
The Charles A. Dana Discovery Center, created in 1993 by Central Park Conservancy, offers a wide variety of free education and community programs, seasonal exhibits, and holiday celebrations.
Perched on the northern shore of the Harlem Meer, the Dana Center is Central Park's newest building, and the first to be built specifically as a visitor center. Adjacent to the Center is a small plaza, where many community programs take place. These include the Harlem Meer Performance Festival in summer, the Halloween Parade and Pumpkin Flotilla in autumn, and the annual Holiday Lighting event in winter. The Charles A. Dana Discovery Center is also the home of our catch-and-release fishing program.
The above was from http://www.centralparknyc.org/things-to-see-and-do/attractions/charles-a-dana-discovery-center.html
Wikipedia Description: Harlem Meer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Harlem Meer ("meer" is Dutch for "lake") occupies the northeast corner of New York City's Central Park. It lies west of Fifth Avenue, south of 110th Street, and north of the Conservatory Garden. The Meer has a meandering shoreline that wraps around the bluff that contains the remains of gun emplacements erected for the War of 1812 (but never used). After the 1966 completion of the Lasker Skating Rink and Swimming Pool over its westernmost end, the Harlem Meer was reduced to 11 acres (45,000 m2) in size and 1.2 kilometers (3/4 mile) in circumference.

History

The Harlem Meer occupies the northeast corner of Central Park, a section of the park that was added to the original park site, which originally ended at 106th Street. The Meer, as Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux called it, was excavated at the lowest-lying section of the park, a semi-brackish, partly tidal wetland, which drained slowly into the East River. It separated the former suburb of Harlem to the north from the lower part of Manhattan Island. To avoid the swamp, the Boston Post Road detoured westwards into the future park site, rising to cross McGown's Pass.

The creation of the Meer and its adjacent wooded landscape was carried out by Andrew Haswell Green, to Olmsted and Vaux's specifications, from 1861, when Olmsted had been relegated to an advisory capacity.

1988-1993 restoration

The Harlem Meer was restored in 1988–1993 by the Central Park Conservancy. A concrete perimeter curb (installed in the 1940s) was removed and replaced by a more natural shoreline. As part of the restoration, the Meer was dredged and cleaned of 34,000 cubic yards (26,000 m3) of sediment and debris. On the north shore, the Conservancy built the Charles A. Dana Discovery Center to provide a visitors' center at the north end of Central Park. The center was designed by the architects Buttrick White & Burtis in a style intended to harmonize with Calvert Vaux's original Victorian park structures.

Activities

The waterside plaza next to the Dana Discovery Center is currently the site for the Sunday afternoon Harlem Meer Performance Festival, from mid-June to the first week of September. Catch-and-release fishing is a favorite summertime occupation along the Meer's banks. Besides the usual yellow perch and crappie, anglers have reported catches of the predatory Asian northern snakehead, Channa argus, a notoriously invasive species.

An island in the Meer provides a retreat for waterfowl, particularly black-crowned night herons. The Meer also has a resident population of muskrats.

In literature

Ron P. Swegman, an author who writes about fly fishing, made the Harlem Meer a focal point of his essay collection Small Fry: The Lure of the Little. The book includes a section titled "Bright Fish, Big Cities", a pun on the New York novel Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney; it details the Meer's history and describes the experience of fly fishing there in the early 21st century.
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