Belvedere Castle
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Transcript of Belvedere Castle
Belvedere Castle:Follies, Forecasts, Feathers &
Flowers
By Todd Larson
My childhood romps through Central Park often took me up to
the summit of Vista Rock…
…where craggy, decrepit old Belvedere Castle ominously
hulked over me…
…convincing me that Count Dracula dwelt therein (and
partially right I was — it was used as the castle of The Count on
Sesame Street)…
…but its weather-beaten door was always barred to me, dashing all my hopes and dreams of meeting
the venerable vampire in the flesh.
Now revamped as the Henry Luce Nature
Observatory, the castle has opened its door,
inviting the public in to see not bats in the
belfry…
…but birds in the Belvedere.
The Observatory’s collections of natural history artifacts such as bird feathers and skeletons, along with microscopes and telescopes, introduce
young ones to the scientific method by which naturalists observe their world, draw conclusions about its inner workings, and share their insights with the
community.
Always nature-centered in its
own right, Belvedere
Castle was built in 1871 of gray granite and the park’s native
schist — a layered
crystalline rock unique to
Manhattan — as a natural
outgrowth of Vista Rock, the park’s second-highest natural
elevation.
Sculptor Jacob Wrey Mould and architect Calvert Vaux conceived the towered, arched edifice as a
Romanesque-Gothic folly providing a romantic overlook onto Central Park’s picturesque scenery,
including Turtle Pond, the Ramble, and the reservoir (now the Great Lawn) —
hence its name, Belvedere, an Italian word meaning “beautiful view.”
Originally built as a shell with open windows, terrace pavilions, and portals topped by Mould’s bronze sculptures of bat-winged cockatrices, the
castle was enclosed when it became the headquarters of New York’s Weather Bureau
Station in 1919.
To accommodate meteorological equipment, the tower’s conical slate roof with copper cresting
and flagstaff was replaced by
“more martial ghost-walk
battlements,” as M.M. Graff put it in her 1982 book
The Men Who Made Central Park. Weather
data and readings have been taken at
Belvedere for local weather
reports ever since.
So whenever TV or radio
meteorologists announce, “The temperature in
Central Park is…”, that figure comes from the castle in the air.
But when the Weather Bureau Station relocated to Rockefeller
Center in the late 1960s, Belvedere Castle was closed to
the public and besieged by decay and vandalism, sporting
neon-streaked graffiti on its crumbling walls and sprouting weeds in its eroding mortar.
The mighty fortress was on the brink of collapse when the Central Park Conservancy
rescued this damsel in distress in 1983. Its restoration included
reconstruction of the original tower roof and colorful wood terrace pavilions from their
extant foundations.
Drac may have flown the coop, but its eeriness lingers: every
Halloween, the cockatrices signify it as the “Spooks at Belvedere”
haunted castle.
Friendlier winged creatures also frequent the castle. Belvedere’s terraces are pristine places to watch more than 200 species of
birds. Let’s meet a few of our feathered friends…
Belvedere’s Birds
Blackbird
Heron
Gray Catbird
Hooded Merganser
Hooded Warbler
Kestrel Osprey
Grebe
Ruby-Throated Hummingbird
White-Throated Sparrow
This springtime gathering of turtles after a long winter’s hibernation is one among many natural sights in and around Turtle Pond, which include reptiles,
amphibians, crickets, dragonflies, and shoreline plants such as…
Belvedere’s Beasts
Belvedere’s Buds & Bulbs
Blue-Flag Iris Bulrush
Lizard’s Tail Turtlehead
Thank you for
watching!For more
information on Belvedere Castle, please
visit:www.centralpark2000.com/database/belvedere_castle.htmlwww.centralpark.com/pages/attractions/belvedere-castle.htmlwww.centralparknyc.org/site/PageNavigator/virtualpark_thegreatlawn_belvederecastle