McGowan's Pass

McGowan's Pass (sometimes spelled "McGown's") is a topographical feature of Central Park in New York City, just west of Fifth Avenue and north of 102nd Street.

Although the name is usually omitted from maps today, McGowan's Pass was clearly marked on charts of the region from the Revolutionary War until the early 20th century.

In Dutch Colonial days, this area of north Manhattan was part of the "commons," land administered by the community of Nieuw Haarlem as a whole.

During a yellow fever epidemic in 1752, the Colonial Assembly decamped from downtown New York and met in the Black Horse tavern, while boarding a half-mile east at the farm of Dyckman's cousin, Benjamin Benson.

When Central Park was being built, a lake called Harlem Meer was constructed from a natural waterway north of McGowan's Pass.

[13] Its proprietor until 1890 was Patrick H. McCann, brother-in-law to local Tammany Hall leader Richard Croker and sometime friend of Hugh Grant, Mayor of New York.

The name of the tavern caused confusion for visiting parents who told their cab driver to take them to Mount St. Vincent's and found themselves at a large, convivial saloon in Central Park, instead of a sedate convent school.

The New York Times reported that its equipment, furniture, sporting prints, and "Old Gabe," the tavern's yellow parrot, brought in barely $1,500.

[18] The old tavern's driveways and foundations remain in use by the Central Park Conservancy, which uses it as a composting area and has reverted to calling it "The Mount.