Cleopatra's Needle (New York City)

The stele, dating from the 15th century B.C., was installed in Central Park, west of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's main building in Manhattan, on February 22, 1881.

Originally erected in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis on the orders of Thutmose III, in 1475 BC,[4] the obelisk's granite was mined from the quarries of Aswan near the first cataract of the Nile.

The obelisks were moved to Alexandria and set up in the Caesareum—a temple built by Cleopatra in honor of Mark Antony or Julius Caesar—by the Romans in 13/12 BC, during the reign of Augustus.

The newspapers mistakenly attributed to a John Dixon the 1869 proposal of the Khedive of Egypt, Isma'il Pasha, to give the United States an obelisk as a gift for increased trade.

Once those were resolved, the obelisk was transported seven miles to Alexandria and then put into the hold of the steamship SS Dessoug, which set sail June 12, 1880.

Railroad ramps and tracks had to be temporarily removed and the ground flattened so that the obelisk could be rolled out of the ship, whose side had been cut open once again for the purpose.

[4] The final leg of the journey was made by pushing the obelisk with a steam engine across a specially built trestle bridge from Fifth Avenue to its new home on Greywacke Knoll, just across the drive from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

He noted that the prime advantage of the Knoll was its "isolation" and that it was the best site to be found inside the park, as it was quite elevated and the foundation could be firmly anchored in bedrock, lest Manhattan suffer "some violent convulsion of nature."

[14] A time capsule buried beneath the obelisk contains an 1870 U.S. census, a Bible, a Webster's Dictionary, the complete works of William Shakespeare, a guide to Egypt, and a copy of the United States Declaration of Independence.