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Belvedere Castle was originally designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux as a Victorian folly |
Rising out of Vista Rock, the second highest natural elevation in the Park, Belvedere Castle harmonizes perfectly with its site, as it was constructed from the same Manhattan schist. Providing views of the Park and the city, the Castle's tower is truly a belvedere — an architectural term for lookouts and observatories, the Italian word translates literally as beautiful view. Visitors can look down at the Delacorte Theater to the left; straight ahead is the Great Lawn, once one of the Park's original reservoirs and now offering softball fields, basketball courts, and an abundance of lawn for passive recreation. And below, with a boulder-strewn shoreline, is Turtle Pond.
The Castle itself was originally designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux as a Victorian folly. In architectural terms, a folly was a fantasy building — a miniature Greek or Roman temple or a pint-sized Gothic castle — that offered a dash of the unexpected in a carefully calculated pastoral landscape. The Castle originally was only a shell, with open window frames and doorways, really an elaborate scenic overlook.
Today, Belvedere Castle has true windows and doors and is home to the Henry Luce Nature Observatory, run by the Central Park Conservancy. Inside are simple displays that show how naturalists observe the world to learn how it works, and how they share their findings. There are telescopes and microscopes and skeletons and feathers - all designed to pique the curiosity of young visitors.
On the Castle's second floor, papier mâché reproductions of birds often seen in Central Park roost in the branches of a plywood tree. Central Park is one of the country's richest birdwatching areas, located on the Atlantic flyway. Budding naturalists can borrow Discovery Kits, which contain binoculars, reference material, maps, and notepaper, and take off to explore either the Ramble (home to many species of birds), or to study aquatic life at the edge of Turtle Pond.
If you have lived in the City for any length of time you've probably heard the phrase, "The temperature in Central Park is...." The information is coming from meteorological instruments located at Belvedere Castle. Data has been collected at this site by the U.S. Weather Bureau since 1919.
To read the Park's Department's historical sign, click here.
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