The unconventional woman behind Central Park’s Angel of the Waters sculpture

In the masterpiece that is Central Park, one feature has become a symbol of the park and the city itself: Bethesda Fountain.

Unveiled in 1873, the fountain—which commemorates the opening of the Croton Aqueduct 31 years earlier—graces the lower level of Bethesda Terrace in the heart of the park at the end of the Mall.

The fountain’s base and basins are lovely, especially with lily pads floating around in the tranquil water. But it’s the bronze sculpture in the center that commands attention.

Called the Angel of the Waters, it was the only sculpture commissioned during the building of the park by Central Park’s co-designers, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, according to NYC Parks.

The Angel of the Waters has been a recognizable icon for 150 years. But few New Yorkers know the story of Emma Stebbins, the woman who designed it—and the unconventional life she led as an artist who sidestepped the rigid roles women were largely confined to in 19th century Gotham.

Her early years were not radically different than those of other artistically gifted, well-to-do girls. Born into a comfortable and cultured New York City family in 1815, Stebbins was encouraged to study drawing and painting, wrote Jennifer Harlan in a 2019 New York Times “Overlooked No More” article. She went on to exhibit her work at the National Academy of Design.

“By her twenties, she was a diligent and dedicated worker whose skill and perseverance were remarked upon by contemporaries,” according to the History of American Women blog.

Her life over the next decades in New York City centered on her oils and watercolors. “The wealth and clout of her family allowed her to devote her life to a career of art, which was not often the case for women of lesser means,” stated the Smithsonian’s Unbound blog in 2020.

Stebbins’ world changed in 1857, when she traveled to Rome and switched her focus to sculpture. There she met an American sculptor named Harriet Hosmer, who had been living in Rome for five years with a band of expatriate artists, actors, and other creatives.

With this group, Stebbins began a new career in Europe—as well as a long love affair with the celebrated American Shakespearean actress Charlotte Cushman (above, with Stebbins in an 1850s portrait). “Stebbins was welcomed into this community of women and almost immediately began a romantic relationship with Cushman that would last for the rest of their lifetimes,” stated Unbound.

Stebbins and Cushman were so devoted to each other, they exchanged vows. “Cushman described herself as married to Stebbins, telling a friend in an 1858 letter that she wore ‘the badge upon the finger of my left hand,’” the Times stated.

While Stebbins and Cushman were living in Rome, Stebbins racked up sculpture commissions, mostly from the United States. Meanwhile, the construction of Central Park was underway. Stebbins’ brother Henry, chairman of a park architectural committee, pressured committee members to give his sister the project of creating the fountain called for in Olmsted and Vaux’s park plans.

Stebbins’ design was approved by the committee in 1862, per the New York Times. Executed in Rome and cast in Munich, Angel of the Waters was unveiled 11 years later in Central Park in front of a springtime audience of thousands, with the Central Park Band playing as the fountain spray (fed by Croton water) dazzled the crowd.

“At the dedication ceremony for the Fountain in 1873, Stebbins revealed that the sculpture’s angel was inspired by a Bible passage in the Gospel of John that describes an angel blessing the Pool of Bethesda and giving it healing powers,” wrote the Central Park Conservancy.

Clean Croton water “was ‘healing’ to New Yorkers, who had suffered through numerous devastating disease outbreaks because of contaminated drinking water,” continued the Conservancy. “The iconography of Stebbins’ sculpture furthers this connection, with the lily in the angel’s hand symbolizing the purity of the water and the four cherubs surrounding the pedestal representing peace, health, purity, and temperance.”

The fountain received mixed reviews. The New York Daily Herald pronounced it “one of the most exquisite ornaments of the park” in a June 1, 1873 edition of the paper, a day after the unveiling. The same day, the New York Times described it as a “feebly-pretty idealess thing of bronze.”

Stebbins may have had other concerns to deal with. In 1869, Cushman had been diagnosed with breast cancer. The couple returned to America in 1870, according to the New York Times piece. By the time Lady of the Waters was unveiled in 1873, Stebbins had paused her art career to care for Cushman, who ultimately died in 1876 of pneumonia. (Stebbins, unsurprisingly, was not in Cushman’s obituary, but Cushman did remember her in her will.)

With Cushman gone, Stebbins (above, in 1875) devoted herself to writing and publishing a biography of her partner. In increasingly poor health, she passed away in 1882 of a respiratory condition called “phthisis,” or pulmonary tuberculosis.

The Angel of the Waters lives on, a sublime symbol of the beauty of Central Park. And according to the Central Park Conservatory, there’s some speculation that Cushman was the basis for the figure of Stebbins’ angel.

[Third image: LOC; fourth image: Smithsonian Institute; fifth image: NYPL; sixth image: MCNY X2011.34.1484; seventh image: Wikipedia]

Taking a leisurely drive in the peaceful, pastoral Central Park of 1900

By taking a drive, we’re not talking about automobiles. In 1900, the year this postcard dates back to, “driving” still meant driving a horse-pulled carriage…as these well-dressed and probably upper-crust New Yorkers demonstrate.

At the turn of the last century, Central Park still more closely resembled the pastoral retreat Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux envisioned when they completed the park in the early 1860s. Instead of ballfields and playgrounds, the park was a place of rolling hills, recreated nature, and drives.

Is that the Museum of Natural History in the background? It looks lonely out there on Central Park West, which had yet to become the beautiful avenue of elegant apartment houses as we know it today.

[Museum of the City of New York: X2011.34.1513]

How an authentic Swedish cottage from 1875 ended up in Central Park

One of the wonderful things about Central Park is the enormous variety of buildings spread out among its 843 acres of pastures, hills, and woodlands.

On the northwestern end of the park, the remains of a stone fort dating to 1814 harken back to a sparsely settled Manhattan. At the southeastern end is a former arsenal-turned-office space completed in 1851. On the western side near 79th Street is a circa-1872 miniature castle with the best views in the city.

But there’s one structure almost as old as Central Park itself that’s always been a curiosity: the Swedish Cottage, near Belvedere Castle and the Shakespeare Garden on the park’s west side.

Almost all of the structures in Central Park either predate the park or were built specifically for it. So how did an authentic Swedish log cabin, one with gothic-style arched windows and a steep peaked roof, end up in New York’s premier city green space?

Its journey begins in Sweden in 1875.

“Designed by architect Magnus Isæus to serve as the Swedish Pavilion for the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, the building was constructed in Sweden of oiled pine and cedar, then dismantled, packed in crates, and shipped to Philadelphia, where it was erected by Swedish craftsman on the Exposition grounds,” wrote Cynthia S. Brenwall and Martin Filler in 2019’s The Central Park: Original Designs for the New York’s Greatest Treasure.

Rather than a cottage, the building was actually a Swedish schoolhouse. It was a hit at the Exhibition—an event described as the first World’s Fair ever to be held in America.

“Furnished with desks and chalkboards and staffed by Swedish teachers, the pavilion was a popular attraction that served as an example of Scandinavian building design to the American public,” stated Brenwall and Filler.

Visitors to the Exhibition enjoyed this one-room Swedish schoolhouse. That included one very distinguished visitor: Frederick Law Olmsted, a co-designer of Central Park. Apparently he was so captured by it, he paid $1500 to buy it and have it shipped to Central Park, where it was reassembled in its current location in 1877, according to New York City, by Robert Kahn. (Above image: the cottage in 1880)

Finding a use for the Swedish Cottage, as it was now called, took some time. Over the years it served as a park restroom, a nature center, and civil defense headquarters during World War II, noted Kahn.

Since 1947, it’s been the home of the Marionette Theater, with a permanent theater built inside the cottage in 1973, per centralpark.com. Though the cottage has undergone renovation over the years, this authentic pine and cedar cabin that charmed Olmsted has since entertained thousands of city kids and their families.

[Third photo: MCNY, 1880; X2010.11.1559]

The visiting British royal who dazzled 19th century New York City

During Queen Elizabeth II’s astounding 70-year reign over the United Kingdom, she made official visits to New York City only three times: a day-long trip involving a ticker-tape parade in 1957, a longer stay for the Bicentennial in 1976, and then a five-hour drop-in to the United Nations and Ground Zero in 2010, per a New York Times article published last week.

Excited New Yorkers waiting for the Prince’s procession to make it Broadway

Elizabeth’s visits to Gotham were certainly eventful. But they were nothing like the sojourn to New York City made by one member of the British royal family in 1860. On the cusp of the election of President Lincoln and the start of the Civil War, this 19-year-old prince was welcomed to Manhattan with a spectacular procession up Broadway, escorted to leading Manhattan landmarks, and feted at a ball so raucous, the floor of the venue actually broke.

The royal was the Prince of Wales, Albert Edward, the first son of Queen Victoria and the future King of England (above, in the 1860s). His trip across the Atlantic in the summer of 1860 was at first to be limited to Canada. “Queen Victoria’s original intention was to dispatch her son simply to visit England’s western possessions in Canada and inaugurate the opening of the Victoria Bridge in Montreal,” states an article by Claire A. Faulkner on Whitehousehistory.org.

But President Buchanan then invited the Prince to Washington, and other American cities were added to his itinerary, such as Richmond, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and New York.

The Prince’s journey abroad wasn’t unlike the dispatches young royals take today. “As a young man…the Prince of Wales could have been likened to most other teenagers—independent, rebellious, and strong willed,” wrote Faulkner. “It was hoped that the trip to North America would mark the beginning of his formal indoctrination into the responsibilities and duties of a member of the British royal family.”

In Canada and then America, “Bertie” was treated with respect, if not celebrity. But few cities rolled out the red carpet like New York—the nation’s undisputed capital of commerce and culture, with eager daily newspapers ginning up excitement. “The most splendid and glamorous of the American events in his honor, however, took place in New York, where the crowds were also the most admiring and enthusiastic,” wrote Faulkner.

The Prince of Wales and his entourage, photographed by Mathew Brady

After the Prince landed at the Battery with his entourage on October 11, fresh from Philadelphia, he entered his carriage and became the center of a grand procession going up Broadway. An estimated 200,000 New Yorkers lined the thoroughfare to watch the slow procession, which didn’t make it past City Hall and to Canal Street until sundown, according to a New York Times piece published the next day.

Bands played “God Save the Queen” and other British songs; Mayor Fernando Wood accompanied the Prince, who “raised his hat and rose repeatedly in acknowledgement of this warm reception,” observed the Times. American and British flags were on display all along the route.

The procession continued past Grace Church, Union Square, and then to the new luxurious Fifth Avenue Hotel, where the Prince would be staying—with an army of policemen stationed in and outside the hotel for security. Of course, not everyone was thrilled by the royal visit, particularly the city’s Irish residents. People of Irish descent amounted to about a quarter of the total population and viewed the government the Prince represented as the oppressor of their home country, stated Ian Walter Radforth in his book, Royal Spectacle.

Fifth Avenue Hotel, 23rd Street in 1860

The Prince had a jam-packed schedule for the next few days, breathlessly covered by the press. He and his entourage toured noteworthy landmarks like New York University, the Astor Library, and Cooper Union; he visited Central Park and planted an English oak. On the last day of his visit, thousands of firemen from Manhattan and Brooklyn marched past the Fifth Avenue Hotel in a magnificent torch-lit parade, stated House Divided, from Dickinson College. 

Perhaps the pinnacle of the Prince’s trip was the ball held in his honor. What was originally supposed to be a simple dinner quickly evolved into a breathtaking event at the Academy of Music on 14th Street. Four hundred elite New Yorkers paid $100 each to host and attend the ball; up to 2,000 guests showed.

Guests dressed in “black coats, shimmering silks, and elegant velvets” began arriving around 7:30 p.m., but the Prince and his entourage, plus members of city government like Mayor Wood, didn’t arrive until after 10, according to a Leslie‘s Weekly article in 1901. Distinguished invitees included Hamilton Fish and George Templeton Strong, the lawyer and diarist who characteristically poked fun at the whole spectacle, according to Radforth.

The rush of excitement and thunderous applause broke the floor. “A few people fell through, but no one was seriously injured,” stated the Leslie’s article. The Prince was ushered into the supper room—under the command of the chefs and managers from Delmonico’s—for his own safety. Newspapers gleefully published all the details the next morning: the beautiful flowers, the Union Jack flags, and the ladies the Prince danced with.

Admit one to the Prince’s Ball

On Monday, October 14, the Prince bid farewell to New York City, heading up to West Point before a visit to Albany and then Boston, and then the trip back home across the Atlantic. Newspaper writers expounded on the royal visit; Bertie resumed life in England and took the throne upon the death of his mother in 1901.

What did the Prince of Wales think of his trip to New York? I haven’t found anything relaying his thoughts. But based on the recollections in newspapers and other first-hand accounts, a starry-eyed Gotham pulled out all the stops to impress this future king.

[First, second, and third images: LOC; fourth image: Getty Museum; fifth image: NYPL; sixth image: LOC; seventh image: MCNY, X2014.12.158]

The little-known 9/11 memorial to kids in Central Park

Some 9/11 memorials around New York City are enormous monuments to the horrors of that early September day. Others are quiet and inconspicuous, occupying such small pockets of the cityscape that they tend to go overlooked (like this bronze tablet affixed to the VA Hospital at East 23rd Street).

The plaque just steps away from the Hans Christian Andersen statue in Central Park belongs in the latter category. Embedded into the pavement, the simple bronze plaque honors the nearly 3,000 children who lost a parent in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

It’s a fitting spot to honor these 9/11 kids. The statue of the beloved Danish fairy tale author has been at 74th Street off of East Drive since 1955, when it was gifted to New York by the Danish American Women’s Association to commemorate Anderson’s 150th birthday, according to NYC Parks.

The climbable statue of Andersen reading The Ugly Ducking has always attracted kids, as does the model boat pond right nearby. One of the two Alice in Wonderland-themed statues in Central Park is steps away. So is Pilgrim Hill—a legendary sledding spot in the park from which the shouts of happy children can be heard after a snowfall. It’s a child-centered area close to the zoo and playgrounds.

“In Honor of the Children Who Lost Their Parents on 9/11,” reads the plaque, funded by the Stuart Frankel family. Stuart Frankel is the name of what’s described as “New York’s oldest independent brokerage firm on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.” A more personal connection between the company (or the family behind it) and the kids of 9/11 seems to be left a mystery.

5 wildly different sign styles outside New York’s subway entrances

The New York City subway system has 472 stations, according to the MTA. Some of these stations made up the original IRT line that debuted in October 1904; others opened in the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, and beyond (looking at you, Second Avenue Q train).

190th Street/Fort Tryon Park

The nice thing about a subway system constructed in different decades is that there’s no one uniform subway sign above ground outside station entrances. The wide range of sign styles reflects the era the station opened and/or the feel of the surrounding neighborhood. Each has a different magic.

Fifth Avenue/59th Street

At the 190th Street IND station at Fort Tryon Park is this subway sign (top photo), with what looks like hand-cut lettering. The station opened in 1911, and I don’t know when the sign appeared. But it’s certainly a vintage beauty in an exceedingly beautiful section of Upper Manhattan.

Lexington Avenue/51st Street

These twin lantern-like subway signs outside Central Park give off a more old-timey vibe. You can find them at the Fifth Avenue and 59th Street N/R station. When illuminated at night, they’re enchanting.

Downtown Brooklyn

The Jazz Age comes alive thanks to this subway signage at the 6 train station on Lexington Avenue and 51st Street (third image). The chrome and lettering seem very Art Deco—as does the building beside it, the former RCA Building/General Electric Building, built between 1929-1931.

The subway signs lit up in green in Downtown Brooklyn look like they’re giving off radiation! It’s all part of the sleek, unusual design that feels very 1930s or 1940s to me.

The last photo features a more elegant, business-like sign design, perhaps from Lower Manhattan or Downtown Brooklyn again. It’s the only one that doesn’t appear to be a lamp, though it’s possible it might light up when the skies darken. Sharp-eyed ENY readers identified the location at One Hanson Place, the address of the circa-1929 former Williamsburg Savings Bank Tower.

An awe-inspiring arch in Central Park’s North Woods

Most of Central Park is a pleasure ground of playgrounds, pathways, gentle hills, and rolling meadows. As you head north at about 102nd Street, however, much of the terrain transforms into a woodland wildlife landscape with thick woods, waterfalls, and a ravine.

Amid this more rustic, secluded environment—intentionally designed by co-creators Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux to feel like the deep woods of the Catskills or Adirondacks—is Central Park’s most incredible bridge.

Huddlestone Arch isn’t the biggest of the park’s 36 bridges, and it’s not necessarily the prettiest. But it’s the one that takes its stones straight from the park itself and earns top prize as an engineering feat.

The enormous boulders that make up the arch, placed together by hand, stay in place not because of mortar or other supporting material but gravity.

The boulders are arranged so they “huddle” together and keep their place, making the bridge strong enough to support the East Drive above it and act as a gateway to the Loch, the stream that winds its way through the ravine.

Huddlestone Arch in 1895

“Only gravity and pressure keep the massive boulders in place,” explains the Central Park Conservatory.

Huddlestone Arch was completed in 1866, and it’s parallel to roughly 107th Street closer to Fifth Avenue. On the other side of the arch is the Lasker Rink and Harlem Meer. The Rink is currently under construction, and right now the arch is fenced off. The footpaths to the arch are accessible.

Much of Central Park may be an illusion; Olmsted and Vaux brilliantly recreate unspoiled nature across the park’s 843 often rocky acres. But if you’re feeling adventurous and can’t get to New Paltz, this awe-inspiring engineering marvel is waiting for you.

[Third image: MCNY X2010.11.1274]

What makes Central Park’s “whisper bench” so unusual and enchanting

Some parts of Central Park encourage loud noise—the ballfields, the playgrounds, and the areas under Bethesda Terrace and certain bridges, where buskers play to enthusiastic crowds.

Other sections call for quiet and softness, and park visitors know to lower their voices. That’s where the whisper bench, inside the lush and lovely Shakespeare Garden, comes in.

Officially known as the Charles B. Stover bench, this smooth granite half-circle earned its nickname “because a whisper spoken into one end of the bench can be heard on the other side,” explains the Central Park Conservatory.

The 20-foot bench that curls inward at the ends is unlike any of the 10,000 mostly wood benches spread out across Central Park. It’s also one of the park’s most enchanting places to sit, surrounded by four shady acres of flowers, herbs, and trees mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays and poems.

The Shakespeare Garden was a favorite of Charles Stover, who served as city parks commissioner in the 1910s. Stover was a longtime advocate for New York’s parks and playgrounds, according to the Conservatory.

The bench bearing his name was dedicated in 1936, two decades after the Garden was established. Since then, it’s been popular with curious park-goers who test out the acoustics, as well as those seeking peace and contemplation. It’s also a romantic setting, so expect couples to stop and sit close.

There’s another place in Manhattan also famous for whispers: the “whispering gallery” of Grand Central Terminal. It’s on the lower level of the station. Supposedly if you stand against the wall and whisper, your words can be heard across the space thanks to the vaulted ceilings.

The amazing survival story of the last 3 single-family row houses on Central Park West

If you find yourself facing the corner of Central Park West at 85th Street, you’ll see three stunning row houses, each with different Queen Anne-style touches. They’re charming, confection-like holdouts from the Gilded Age, dwarfed (but not outshined) by their Art Deco apartment tower neighbor.

247-249 Central Park West

But before 1930, these three beauties were part of a row of nine spanning the entire block. While their sister buildings met the wrecking ball, they managed to survive—and now are thought to be the last remaining single-family row houses on all of Central Park West.

Their story begins with the Dakota. When this Gothic-inspired apartment building several blocks south was completed in 1884, Gilded Age real estate developers began to imagine Central Park West as a parkside avenue of similarly grand, luxurious apartment buildings.

One builder who apparently didn’t share that vision was a speculative developer of other properties on today’s Upper West Side named William Noble. In 1887, Noble hired architect Edward L. Angell to construct nine single-family row houses between 84th and 85th Streets along what until 1883 had been known as Eighth Avenue.

The “Noble houses,” as numbers 241-249 Central Park West were later called, spanned the entire block, which Noble outfitted with six ornamental lampposts. The fairy tale-like Queen Anne style served as an antidote to the cookie-cutter brownstones lining so many Gilded Age Manhattan streets.

The original nine Noble houses are in the background, 1925

“Not only did [Angell] vary his designs for the houses, but he varied the materials too, from red brick to buff-colored brick, from brownstone to carved limestone,” wrote Margot Gayle in 1979 in the New York Daily News.

“The corner houses were the most elegant, each having two exposures, windows with panels of stained glass and a bay-windowed tower terminating in a peaked roof.” Though each row house had different architectural bells and whistles, the gables and chimneys of all the houses reflect the design of the Dakota, the article pointed out.

By 1928, streetcars were long gone from Central Park West

Central Park West as a luxury thoroughfare was in its infancy, and a horsecar line ran up and down the avenue. Still, the Noble houses were pricey. “The houses were at the upper end of the market—they cost $37,000 each in construction alone, exclusive of decoration—and the first occupants were all prosperous,” wrote Christopher Gray in the New York Times in 1990.

Among the first occupants was William Noble; he took number 247 for himself, per a 2014 New York Times article. His neighbor at number 248, a wealthy colonel named Richard Lathers, made news by arranging a reception in his home where relatives of Robert E. Lee and U.S. Grant were invited to bring “North and South together in an informal and quiet way,” according to a biography.

Number 248’s beautiful detailing

As the decades went on, the Noble houses changed hands. Meanwhile, Central Park West’s fortunes boomed. Stylish, modern Art Deco apartment buildings that scaled new heights and commanded high prices lined the avenue.

The 1920s marked the beginning of the end for six of the Noble houses. “In 1925, Sam Minskoff, a builder, sued to break the private house restrictions so he could build what was ultimately erected in 1930 as the tall apartment house that replaced 241-246 Central Park West,” wrote Gray.

Number 247 stained glass loveliness

Why didn’t the entire row of Noble houses get demolished? Thank the strong-minded holdout owner of number 249. “Probably all would have been taken down had not the owner of the northernmost of the remaining houses stubbornly refuse to sell,” wrote Gayle. “A neighbor recalls him as a man who knew his own mind, liked to view the park from his windows, wore a bowler, and walked a poodle twice a day.”

This stubborn neighbor was identified in Gray’s article as W. Gedney Beatty, an “architect-scholar.” As a result, “247, 248 and 249 have since survived in the shadow of their taller neighbor,” he wrote.

The 3 remaining Noble houses in 1975

They were expensive when they were new, and the prices of the remaining Noble houses in today’s real estate market are mind-blowing.

In 2014, number 247—beautifully restored and with its own lap pool—sold for $22 million. Number 248, also renovated to its original beauty, just set an Upper West Side real estate record earlier this year by finding a buyer at $26 million, according to Ilovetheupperwestside.com.

Number 249 Central Park West

[Third image: New-York Historical Society; fourth image: NYPL; seventh image: MCNY 2013.3.1.34]

The favorite way the Gilded Age elite enjoyed Central Park in the 1860s

Central Park was conceived as a respite from the noise and pollution of the industrial city—a tranquil landscape where New Yorkers could relax and refresh in a natural environment.

But in the first years of the park’s existence in the 1860s, it was the wealthy who enjoyed it the most. After all, in the early Gilded Age, they were the ones who had the leisure time to spare and the vehicles to bring them to this green space far from the center of the city.

So how did they use the park? By driving—or being driven. With fancy carriages and a coachman or two handling the road, New York ladies and gentlemen spent late afternoons traversing the park’s many drives. Sometimes a Gilded Age sportsman would take the reins on his own trotting horse.

“Another notable feature of former days was the driving in Central Park,” according to the book Fifth Avenue, from 1915. “Here might be seen old Commodore Vanderbilt, driving his famous trotter, ‘Dexter’; Robert Bonner, speeding ‘Maude S.’; Thomas Kilpatrick, Frank Work, Russell Sage, and other horsemen driving to their private quarter- or half-mile courses in Harlem; leaders of society or dowagers in their gilded coaches; and even maidens of the ‘Four Hundred’ driving their phaetons.”

[Image: Currier & Ives after Thomas Worth]