Morningside Park Designated a Scenic Landmark

The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission unanimously granted scenic landmark status to Morninside Park. Designed by Fredrick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, Morningside Park in Manhattan was chosen for its unusual topography, scenic views and noteworthy public sculptures.

Located on along a rocky ledge extending from 110th to 123rd streets and between Morningside Drive and Manhattan Morninside Avenues, the park is comprised of approximately 30 acres that were excluded from the street grid under a proposal by Andrew Haswell Green, a commissioner and comptroller of Central Park.

Olmsted and Vaux developed a design for the park in 1873 that was revised 14 years later, partly because of a sharp decline in the city’s economy. Such important institutions as Columbia University, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and St. Luke’s Hospital decided to build along Morningside Drive across from the park before it opened in 1895.

Morningside Park features a massive buttressed masonry retaining wall with a parapet, overlook bays, imposing entrance stairways, natural rock outcroppings, and curving pathways across the site. It also boasts three important sculptures: Lafayette and Washington (1890, by Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty); the Carl Schurz Monument (1909-1913, by sculptor Karl Bitter and architect Henry Bacon, who is responsible for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.) and Bear and Faun/Seligman Fountain (c. 1910, by Edgar Melville Walter, a sculptor and student of Auguste Rodin).

Morningside Park brings to 10 the total number of scenic landmarks in New York City