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Playmates Arch
is a stone and brick masonry structure located just south of the 65th
Street transverse. It was designed by Calvert Vaux, detailed by Jacob Wrey
Mould and completed by 1863. It continues a pedestrian walkway between the
Dairy and the Carousel and also serves as a bridge for the Center Drive.
Playmates Arch is one of the most ornate
masonry structures in Central Park with its characteristic Philadelphia
pressed brick and Milwaukee yellow brick-belt coursing and granite trim.
In his description of Central Park in 1864, Frederick B. Perkins called
Playmates the "tricolored archway." The span is 17 feet 8 inches
wide, and 9 feet 11 inches high. The underpass is 66 feet long.
The original cast-iron railing only remains
on the east side of the drive. The railing on the west side, destroyed in
an auto accident, was replaced with a duplicate cast-iron railing in 1989.
This was part of the overall restoration of the Arch by the Parks
Department, under the supervision of the Central Park Conservancy.
Cast-iron railings, readily available in 1863, are now regarded as
special, surviving ornaments.
Playmates derived its name partly from its
proximity to a number of major park attractions devoted to children: the
Dairy, which once served fresh milk and other refreshments, the Kinderberg,
a huge rustic shelter replaced in the 1930s by the Chess and Checkers
House, a Children's Cottage, with live animals, and the nearby Carousel.
The present Carousel is the latest in a line of three earlier machines in
Central Park. |