Everything about Harlem Meer Central Park totally explained
Harlem Meer ("Meer" is Dutch for "Lake") occupies the northeast corner of
New York City's
Central Park, in a section of park that was added to the original site, which had originally ended at 106th Street. It lies north of the
Conservatory Garden, with a meandering and diverse shoreline that wraps around the bluff that contains the
Blockhouse, the remains of gun emplacements erected for the
War of 1812, which never saw action. Today Harlem Meer is reduced to eleven acres and 1.2 kilometers (3/4 mile) circumference by the construction of
Lasker Rink and Pool, for summer swimming and winter ice-skating, over its westernmost end.
The Meer, as
Frederick Law Olmsted and
Calvert Vaux called it, was excavated in the lowest-lying section of the park, a semi-brackish, partly tidal wetland, which drained slowly into the
East River and separated the former suburb of
Harlem to the north from the lower part of
Manhattan Island. To avoid the swamp, the
Boston Post Road had detoured westwards into the future park site, rising to cross McGown's Pass. The Meer and its wooded landscape were carried out by
Andrew Haswell Green, to Olmstead and Vaux's specifications, from 1861, while Olmsted had been relegated to an advisory capacity.
Harlem Meer once again has natural-seeming banks, restored in 1988-93 after a 1940s concrete curbing was removed, and the Meer was cleaned of of sediment and debris and redredged. On its north shore, the
Charles A. Dana Discovery Center was constructed, to provide visitor orientation for the north end of Central Park, in a style intended to harmonize with Calvert Vaux's original park structures. The waterside plaza next to it's the site for the late-afternoon Harlem Meer Performance Festivals, the last week of May and the first week of September. Catch-and-release fishing is a favorite summertime occupation along the Meer's banks.
An island in the Meer provides a retreat for waterfowl.
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