Category: Exploring Harlem

Central Park Conservatory Garden Located between 104th and 106th Streets by Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10029

Central Park Conservatory Garden Located between 104th and 106th Streets by Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10029

The Central Park Conservatory Garden

Located between 104th and 106th Streets off Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10029

https://www.centralparknyc.org/

https://www.centralpark.com/visitor-info/central-park-conservancy/

Hours: Depends on the season and the Dawn to Dusk rule

Hours of Operation:

November-February (8:00am-5:00pm)

March (8:00am-6:00pm)

April (8:00am-7:00pm)

May (August 14th 8:00am-8:00pm)

August 15-31 (8:00am-7:30pm)

September (8:00am-7:30pm)

http://www.centralparknyc.org/things-to-see-and-do/#what_lawns-and-landscapes

Fee: Free

TripAdvisor Review:

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g60763-d272517-Reviews-Conservatory_Garden-New_York_City_New_York.html?m=19905

The entrance to the Central Park Conservatory Garden in Winter 2023 (The Vanderbilt Gates)

The map of the gardens

This time of the year (Spring) the Central Park Conservatory is in full bloom and its magnificence is at its finest in the Spring and Summer months. In May, the tulips and daffodils are just finishing their flowering and the lilacs are just finishing their blooming and still fragrant the garden. The lawns are all a deep green and the dogwood trees are just starting to bloom around the rings of the gardens.

The newly renovated pathways

Don’t miss walking around the Gardens off to the side closest to the Harlem Meir as they are open through the renovation. You will see beds of flowers along the fountain’s edge and can admire all the sculpture. What is most impressive is that in-between the Gardens is a vast green lawn surrounded by trees. The lawn of the Conservatory is nice to just admire with the trees lining it on all sides.

Central Park Conservatory Garden Spring 2025

The best time to come to the Conservatory Gardens is in early to late Spring and the early Summer when everything is in full bloom. This is when Mother Nature shows us her great magic.

The Central Park Conservatory in the Spring of 2025

The beauty of the Central Park Conservatory is that it blooms all year around except the winter and even then, there is a quiet elegance to the garden.

The gardens in full bloom in Summer 2025

History of The Central Park Conservatory:

The Central Park Conservatory Garden is the only formal garden in Central Park, New York City and is located approximately between 104th and 106th Street on Fifth Avenue in NYC. The Garden consists of about six acres of formal landscaping of trees, shrubs and flowers. The formal garden is divided into three smaller gardens each with a distinct style: Italian, French and English. The Central Conservatory Garden is an officially designated Quiet Zone and offers a calm and colorful setting for a leisurely stroll and intimate wedding.

The Central Park Conservatory in the Spring 2025

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 was torn down, the garden was designed by Gilmore D. Clarke, landscape architect for Robert Moses, with planting plans by M. Betty Sprout and constructed and planted by WPA workers, it was opened to the public in 1937.

The Garden is composed of three distinct parts, skillfully restored since the 1980’s and is accessible through the Vanderbilt Gate at Fifth Avenue and 105th Street, a quarter south of the park’s northeast corner.

The Vanderbilt Gate at the Central Park Conservatory

The Vanderbilt Gate once gave access to the forecourt of Cornelius Vanderbilt II’s chateau designed by George Browne Post, the grandest of the Fifth Avenue mansions of the Gilded Age, at 58th Street and Fifth Avenue, sharing the Plaza with Plaza Hotel. The wrought iron gates with cast iron and repousse details, were designed by Post and executed in an iron foundry in Paris.

The fountain at the Central Park Conservatory















The fountain statuary in the main gardens. 





Below the steps flanked by Cornelian cherry, the central section of the Conservatory Garden is a symmetrical lawn outlined in clipped yew, with a single central fountain jet at the rear. It is flanked by twin aisles of crabapples and backed by a curved wisteria pergola against the steep natural slope, that is dominated at its skyline by a giant American Sycamore.














Otherwise there is no flower color; instead on any fine Saturday afternoon in June, it is a scene of photography sessions for colorful wedding parties for which limousines pull up in rows on Fifth Avenue.










The Cherry Trees at the gardens in 2019





To the left of the south side is the garden of mixed herbaceous borders in wide concentric bands around The Secret Garden water lily pool, dedicated in 1936 to the memory of Frances Hodgson Burnett with sculpture by Bessie Potter Vonnoh. 














Some large shrubs, like tree lilac, magnolias, buddleias and Cornus alba ‘elegantissima’ provide vertical structure and offer light shade to offset the sunny locations, planted by Lynden Miller with a wide range of hardy perennials and decorative grasses, intermixed with annuals planted to seem naturalized. This  garden has seasonal features to draw visitors from April through October.










To the right of the central formal plat is a garden also in concentric circles, round the Untermyer Fountain, which was donated by the family of Samuel Untermyer in 1947. The bronze figures, Three Dancing Maidens by Walter Schott (1861-1938) were executed in Germany about 1910 and formed a fountain at Utermyer’s estate “Greystone” in Yonkers, New York.










The Untermyer Fountain





https://www.centralparknyc.org/locations/untermyer-fountain





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untermyer_Fountain





This section of the Conservatory Garden has two dramatic seasons of massed display of tulips in the spring and Korean chrysanthemums in the fall. Beds of satolina clipped in knotted designs with contrasting bronze-leaved bedding begonias surround the fountain and four rose arbor gates are planted with reblooming ‘Silver Moon’ and ‘Betty Prior’ roses.










The French Gardens at the Central Park Conservatory in Summer 2025





After the Second World War the garden had become neglected and by the 1970’s became a wasteland. It was restored and partially replanted under the direction of horticulturist and urban landscape designer Lyden Miller to reopen in June 1987. The overgrown, top-heavy crabapples were freed of water shoots and pruned up to a higher scaffold for better form. The high-style mixed planting was the first to bring estate garden style to urban parks, part of the general of Central Park under Elizabeth Barlow Rogers of the Central Park Conservancy.










The Conservatory in the early Spring of 2025





(This information directly from Wikipedia and has many sources)







			


	


			
				


	
The Amiable Child Memorial                                554 Riverside Drive at West 124th Street          New York, NY 10027
	
	

		
The Amiable Child Memorial                                554 Riverside Drive at West 124th Street          New York, NY 10027
	


	

		

The Amiable Child Memorial





554 Riverside Drive at West 124th Street





New York, NY 10027





Open: 6:00am-1:00am





https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/riversidepark/monuments/1206





https://riversideparknyc.org/places/amiable-child-monument










I stumbled across the Amiable Child Memorial over the summer when I was walking Riverside Drive for “MywalkinManhattan” project (see walking 155th Street) and came across this small memorial when I was passing Grant’s Tomb. It is off to the side on the path by the woods. It is a small monument and very humbling in its look. It is a small urn on a pedestal marking a grave of a small child surrounded by a fence. I got the following information from the NYC Parks Department website when I wanted to know more about the site:










The historic sign for the Tomb





This unique New York City monument marks the site of one of the few private graves on public land within the five boroughs. It belongs to St. Claire Pollock (the namesake of nearby St. Claire Place), a child who died on July 15, 1797 in the fifth year of his life, probably from a fall from the cliffs of the parkland onto the rocks near the Hudson River.










The tomb up close 





In the two centuries that have passed since the tragedy of the “Amiable Child” as he was described on his headstone-different accounts of St. Claire origins and family have persisted. George Pollock, the owner of the property on which the boy was buried, was either his father or his uncle. He was a linen merchant of Scots-Irish or possibly English descent, who lived in a mansion on Strawberry Hill (later called Claremont) in the 1790’s. He  had sold his property to Mrs. Cornelia Verplanck, his former neighbor, by January 18, 1800 when he wrote as follows:










The Tomb of the Amiable Child park and flowers





“There is a small enclosure near your boundary fence within which lie the remains of a favorite child, covered by a marble monument. You will confer a peculiar and interesting favor upon me by allowing me to convey the enclosure to you so that you will consider its part of your own estate, keeping it however always enclosed and sacred.”










The park in the Spring of 2025





Claremont Hill was the site of the Battle of Harlem Heights, fought during the Revolutionary War on September 16, 1776. By 1806, it had been acquired by Michael Hogan, a former British Consul in Havana, who built Claremont Mansion (for which Claremont Avenue was named). Possible sources for the name are Hogan’s birthplace of County Clare, Ireland and his friend Prince William, Duke of Clarence, who would ascend the English throne as King William IV in 1830. Known as the site of a popular roadside inn by 1860, Claremont was acquired by the City from the heirs of Joel Post in 1873 for the development of Riverside Park.










The Park and the Tomb in the Spring 2025





In the 1890’s, Claremont Inn was host to numerous politicians, socialites and entertainers including the Morgan’s, Vanderbilt’s and Whitney’s, Lillian Russell and Admiral George Dewey. By 1907, the Inn had been transformed into a restaurant, serving the likes of Cole Porter and James J. Walker. It was destroyed by fire in 1950. The playground which now stands on the site was built shortly afterwards.





A century after the Tomb of the Amiable Child was laid, New York’s most famous monumental grave-Grant’s Tomb-was completed. The domed structure across Riverside Drive, designed by architect John Duncan and sculptor John Massey Rhind, was dedicated on April 27, 1897. The later structure is as grand a testimony to the accomplishments of national leader as the monument to the amiable child is a modest and touching tribute to a young boy who never had the opportunity to grow into adulthood. This monument was dedicated on May 3, 1967 (www.nycgovparks.org/parks/riverside-park/mounments/1206).





*You really have to look off the beaten path to see this unique little memorial but it is very touching and soulful. Take the time when visiting the neighborhood to visit this very touching site. You will find it by the path behind Grant’s Tomb.










Look for more sculptures  by looking at the Parks website http://www.nycgovparks.org.