The Ramble and Lake
The 38-acre (150,000 m2) Ramble, located on the north shore of the Lake, is a forested area with highly varied topography and numerous winding walks, designated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation as a protected nature preserve.
It was designed as a "wild garden" away from carriage drives and bridle paths, in which to be wandered, or to be viewed as a "natural" landscape.
At the northwestern corner of the Lake, the ground rises toward Vista Rock, crowned by a lookout and folly named Belvedere Castle.
[3]: 2–3 The Ramble covers 36 to 38 acres (14.6 to 15.4 ha), and contains a series of winding paths, as well as outcrops, rustic structures, and several bridges.
[2][4][5]: 131 The Ramble is designated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation as a "Forever Wild" natural preserve, which prevents any future redevelopment of the site.
[8] The Lake, covering 20 acres (8.1 ha),[9] unified what Calvert Vaux called the "irregular disconnected featureless conglomeration of ground".
[10] It was excavated, entirely by hand, from unprepossessing swampy ground transected by drainage ditches and ramshackle stone walls.
[14][12] In addition, an inlet called Bank Rock Bay extends off the extreme north end of the Lake.
[16][13] Today, the site of the Ladies' Pond is occupied by a lawn and dog walk that is much lower than the surrounding topography.
[45] It was so named because it abutted the Ladies' Skating Pond, and might have been used as a gender-separated locker room for female skaters[45] as early as 1860.
[46] The Ladies' Pavilion, a wrought iron shelter in a playful Gothic style, was later relocated atop the Hernshead.
Jacob Wrey Mould had designed the pavilion in 1871 as a shelter for people waiting to change streetcars at Columbus Circle in the southwest corner of the park.
[45][47][48] Though no drawings remain of the original Ladies' Pavilion, Mould designed a similar shelter at the southeast corner, on Fifth Avenue, between 1871 and 1872.
[45] When the USS Maine Monument was installed on the shelter's site, the cast-iron elements were disassembled and stored, to be re-erected on the Hernshead.
[45][49] The pavilion was partially rebuilt with some of its overhead panels in 1973, though the city deemed a full renovation to be too expensive, as it would have cost $95,000.
[48] Six years later, it was completely restored in a project funded with a $7,000 grant from the Arthur Ross Foundation and a $150,000 donation from a Japanese donor.
[58][59] The Loeb Boathouse opened for limited service in June 2023 following a $3.25 million renovation,[60][61] and it fully reopened in March 2024.
[1] Originally prefabricated in Sweden and formerly known as the Swedish Schoolhouse, it was shipped to the U.S. for the 1876 Centennial Exposition before being relocated to Central Park.
[74] In late August 1857, after Central Park's construction was approved, workers began building fences, clearing vegetation, draining the land, and leveling uneven terrain.
31–35 [76] The Lake was the first feature to be completed,[77][78] partially due to the fact that it was being filled from water that was drained from the adjacent Ramble.
[84] In 1927, mayor Jimmy Walker commissioned Herman W. Merkel, a landscape designer, to survey the park and create a plan for improvement.
[91] The Central Park Conservancy renovated the Lake's shoreline starting in 2006, in a project to enhance both its ecological and scenic aspects.
[93] The replacement bridge was made of steel, clad in ornamental cast iron facings, with a wooden deck.
[29] The cascade, where the Gill empties into the lake, was reconstructed to approximate its dramatic original form, inspired by paintings of Asher B. Durand.
Sections of the Lake were dredged of accumulated silt—topsoil that had washed off the surrounding slopes—and the island formerly in the lake, which gradually eroded below water level, was reconstructed in mid-2007 with rugged boulders along its shoreline, graded wetland areas, and submerged planting shelves for water-loving native plants, like pickerel weed.
[94] In the 1920s, the lawn at the north end was referred to as the "fruited plain", and in the 1950s and 1960s, the Ramble was feared by many as a haven for "anti-social persons".
[96] In the early 1960s, under Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr., the Parks Department proposed building a senior center in the Ramble with the hope of curbing cruising and anti-gay assaults.
