Yesterday morning at 7:45, I set out on my daily three-mile walk. My daily route begins on the Upper West Side, entering Central Park at 81st Street and Central Park West and crossing to the East Side, where I head down Fifth Avenue to 72nd Street. There, I cut back into the park and emerge on the West Side just across from the Dakota and the Majestic apartment buildings. Then it's off to Broadway and home.
Yesterday was special because it was sunny and warm, a classic spring morning with temperatures climbing into the low 60s, en route to 75. The park early yesterday was astonishing, an explosion of emerald green, twinkling flowers and runners, bikers and new parents out with their strollers. Everything looked brand new and happy now that winter is firmly behind us. As I walked, I couldn't help but think what a miraculous song nature is and how splendidly vibrant the park's improvisation is this time of year. As Laurie Olin wrote in The Wall Street Journal in October 2022 (go here), Frederick Law Olmsted’s Central Park is one of America's greatest works of art. How true. No matter where you walk or turn, you're faced with an extraordinary level of taste designed to make you feel nature's beauty.
So today, I decided to start the week at JazzWax with photos from yesterday's trek so you could see for yourself what I experienced:
Upon entering the park, the cutest tree...
Here, I was about to cross West Drive, with the Delacorte Theater up the path to the right...
Here I'm passing the massive Great Lawn, where so many notable outdoor concerts and softball games have been played...
A tree begging to have its picture taken as I moved counterclockwise around the Great Lawn, which was behind me as I snapped this...
After emerging from the park on the north side of the Metropolitan Museum of Art at 84th Street, I turned right and walked through the gauntlet of bosques and London Plane trees leading to the museum...
The Met at play, before admitting lines of tourists eager to see its vast collection. Last year, 3.2 million people visited...
One of the park's four transverse roads that bisect Central Park. This one enters the park at 85th Street on the East Side and emerges on 86th Street on the West Side...
Continuing down Fifth Avenue, there's order to the disorder created by trees growing as they please...
After I turned into the park at 72nd Street and walked a bit, I reached one of the park's most breathtaking features—the Mall, with its canopy of American elm boughs. In fact, the trees are one of the world's largest elm groves, with some of the trees reaching 90-feet in height. Unlike the rest of the park, Olmsted and Calvert Vaux didn't design the Mall as an ordered wilderness but as a place for formal strolling and lingering. The Mall is also stunning to see, running straight from 72nd Street to 66th Street—six city blocks of elms and shade, lined with park benches. Easily one of the most romantic spots in the city...
At 72nd Street, the Mall terminates at the Bethesda Terrace. Down a long flight of stone stairs is Bethesda Fountain, another famed park meeting place. Construction on the fountain and its surroundings began in 1861 and was completed in 1873...
A curious path emerges less traveled, since most people have no idea where it leads and steer clear for fear of becoming lost. Partly hidden is the San Remo, a twin-tower apartment building on Central Park West between 74th and 75th streets...
Along the way, I couldn't help but notice between two fir trees a portrait of old and new, co-existing—the Essex House hotel, which opened in 1931, and one of the new residential megatowers on what is now referred to as Billionaire's Row...
A lone water bird takes its feet for a spin as it tries out the lake...
A path leading up to the five-acre Strawberry Fields memorial to John Lennon, who, with his wife, Yoko Ono, lived just outside the park at the Dakota. The memorial was dedicated in 1985...
A crowd of about 30 sightseers dispersed just as I was nearing the Lennon memorial. Tourists typically jam this area, serenaded by someone with a guitar endlessly croaking Imagine. Many people who visit the memorial believe Lennon is buried there, so they leave flowers, candles and notes. Truth is, a day after his murder in 1980, Lennon's remains were cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, N.Y., and his ashes were scattered in Central Park, in sight of the apartment he shared with Ono...
Across Central Park West stands the Majestic, completed in 1931...
On Broadway and 75th Street stands the Ansonia, an apartment building that completed in 1903, a year before the New York City subway opened...
And what would a Sunday walk be without a stop at Zabar's, where Mike sliced me a quarter pound of nova. Then I grabbed two poppy bagels from the bread department and headed home...
JazzWax track: To hear the WNEW-AM New York spring radio jingle heard this time of year when the station was still broadcasting, go here.
