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Month: March 2018

Central Park’s Vanderbilt Gate

March 27, 2018 Tags:
Best Central Park Walking Tours - Secrets Central Park

Best Central Park Walking Tours - Secrets Central ParkAt the Fifth Avenue entrance to Central Park’s Conservatory Gardens near the top of Central Park, is a magnificent gate.  The wrought iron gate was not built for the gardens but was a gift of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney to New York City and originally stood in front of Cornelius Vanderbilt II’s mansion at Fifth Avenue and 58th Street–where Bergdorf-Goodman is today.  Designed by the great architect George B. Post, of New York Stock Exchange fame, along with Richard Morris Hunt, the house first opened in 1883.  The gate, designed by Post and produced in Paris in 1894, is a spectacular way to enter the center Italian Garden of the Conservatory Gardens.  See the gate on the Secret Places of Central Park walking tour.

Fort Fish in Central Park

March 12, 2018 Tags: ,
Central Park Tour

Central Park Tour

Fort Fish, in what is now Central Park was named after Nicholas Fish who, during the War of 1812, was on the City Committee of Defense to protect New York from British invasion.

Nicholas was also a good friend of Alexander Hamilton.  They were both in the Hearts of Oak militia in New York  (1st Battalion/5th Field Artillery Regiment) before and early in the Revolutionary War.  Both were at Yorktown and both were members of the New York Society of the Cincinnati (for which Fish was also president).  Fish named his son, Hamilton Fish, after Alexander Hamilton.  Hamilton Fish would go on to serve as New York governor and United States senator from New York.

In John Trumbull’s painting above called, The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis both Colonel Nicholas Fish and Colonel Alexander Hamilton can be seen on the bottom right. Fish is at the very far right and Hamilton is four men in.

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