[1] An architectural hybrid of Romanesque and Gothic styles, the design called for a Manhattan schist and granite structure with a corner tower and conical cap, a lookout over parapet walls beneath it.

[8]) 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.

The natural rock was tunneled through for the innovative sunken transverse roadway that still carries commercial and other traffic unobtrusively through the park.

[10][11]: 58–59  In 1867, Vaux decided to develop this area by building Belvedere Castle on the top of the rock, overlooking the Croton Reservoir.

[11]: 60  Under Tammany Hall's leadership, it was revised in November 1870 to reduce costs and was completed as an open painted-wood pavilion of Mould's design.

[16] After the New York Meteorological Observatory automated its equipment and moved its offices to Rockefeller Center in the 1960s, Belvedere Castle was closed to the public and became an object of much vandalism, neglect and deterioration.

[5] In 1995, the Conservancy's Historic Preservation Crew replaced the painted wooden loggia of the castle, working from the 1860s designs, on the granite piers and walls that had survived.

[21] 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.