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Cherry
Hill offers a Bethesda Terrace experience in miniature. From the
rise of Cherry Hill, you also can see across the Lake to the abundant
landscape of the Ramble. And just as Bethesda Terrace invites you and
delights you visually with its Victorian ornament, so the Cherry Hill
Fountain serves as a decorative arts destination in its own whimsical right.
Jacob
Wrey Mould, Calvert Vaux's assistant, designed the decorative
elements for Bethesda Terrace in 1859 and also is responsible for the
fountain at Cherry Hill. He clearly pulled out all the stops for this
1860's creation. The ornamental finial on the fountain's top, the
gilded cups brimming over with water, the frosted glass globes for
lighting, a sculpted bluestone basin inset with Minton tiles -- all
in the service of a watering trough for horses. Cherry Hill was
intended to be a scenic turn-around for carriages, a place to admire
the surrounding cherry trees in springtime bloom and take in the
lakeside view.
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Today
Cherry Hill is a restful destination for sunbathing or reading. A
short walk west down a nearby slope leads to Wagner Cove, one of
Central Park's hidden oases of calm. Tucked away into a shady corner
of the Lake, the Cove features a small rustic wood shelter. The
original shelters date from the Park's first years, when rowboats
would crisscross the Lake, picking up passengers at one of six
shelters that dotted the edge of the Lake and dropping them off at
another. Today there is no rowboat ferry service, but the charm of
the site remains.
In
1981 and 1998, the Conservancy carried out restorations of Cherry
Hill Fountain.
In
1993, the Conservancy beautified Wagner's Cove, on the Central Park
Lake east of Strawberry Fields, with a variety of shoreline plantings.
The
cove is a memorial to the late New York City mayor Robert Wagner. |
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