Ask the Conservancy: Bridges, Staff and Shakespeare

Bow Bridge, like the Park's other 36 bridges and arches, are maintained by the Conservancy's Monuments Conservation crew.

Thanks to everyone who submitted questions on Facebook and Twitter. Here are answers to your questions by the Conservancy's Park experts.

I proposed at Shakespeare garden! It would be cool to tell my wife the story of how it became Shakespeare's garden, how long ago and why Shakespeare. She's an English teacher so I would get lots of points for telling the story.

In 1912 when the Swedish Cottage was placed in its present location, a garden was laid out on the slope behind the building featuring a series of concrete cascading pools. In 1915, NYC Parks Commissioner Charles Stover dedicated the existing garden to Shakespeare in honor of his recently departed friend Mayor Gaynor, a passionate lover of the Bard's work. Friends of Stover dedicated a semi-circular stone bench to him on the upper level of the garden. It is called the “whispering bench,” because a message whispered on one side of the 20-foot bench can be heard on the other side.

When the Central Park Conservancy restored the garden in 1989, Bruce Kelly, the landscape architect of Strawberry Fields, was chosen to redesign the garden. Kelly found an 1878 Plant-Lore and Garden-Craft of Shakespeare in which 200 plants in works by the Bard are catalogued. Plaques were installed to match the quotes. One plaque, near roses on the rustic fence, reads “O, how full of briers is this working-day world!" (As You Like It, 1:3). The Shakespeare Garden offers an escape from the working-day world fit for the Bard himself.

What's the annual budget for the Park and how many people work on Park maintenance?

Though many people think tax dollars provide most of Central Park's funding, 85 percent of the cost of maintaining the Park is raised by the Central Park Conservancy each year, mainly from donations by individuals. The Conservancy’s current annual budget is $45.8 million, and we have invested more than $600 million in the Park since the Conservancy's founding in 1980.

During colder months, the Conservancy employs between 280 and 290 staff members in the Park. In the warmer months, from April to October, the staff increases to accommodate greater maintenance and horticulture needs. Currently (August 2012), 348 Conservancy staff members are working in the Park. The NYC Department of Parks & Recreation has an additional staff of about 10 people in the Park. Volunteers also play a huge role in maintaining Central Park: during the last year over 1,000 individual volunteers donated a total of 52,485 hours of their time to the Park

How are the Park's bridges maintained?

The Park's bridges are maintained by the Conservancy's Monuments Conservation crew, also responsible for care of the Park's monuments, sculptures and other decorative and historic architectural elements in the Park. The maintenance regiment is cyclical, including work such as cleaning and repointing masonry, maintenance and touch-up painting of cast iron components and occasional repair or replacement of missing components. Replacing components sometimes involves sculpting a model from which a mold is created to cast the missing pieces.

In addition to the conservation of their architectural character by the Conservancy's monuments crew, the bridges are routinely examined for structural issues by the Bridge Inspection Unit of the NYC Department of Transportation through a collaborative agreement with the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation. Any potential issues are flagged and brought to the attention of the Conservancy and the Parks Department, and our Planning, Design and Construction team works with the Parks Department to coordinate further analysis and repairs if needed.

Beyond cyclical maintenance and routine repairs, our Planning, Design and Construction team oversees more substantial bridge restoration projects as part of the Conservancy's ongoing program of work to renew and rebuild the Park.