Everything about Bethesda Terrace totally explained
Bethesda Terrace overlooks
The Lake in
New York City's
Central Park. It is on two levels, united by two grand staircases and a lesser one that passes under Terrace Drive to provide passage southward to the
Elkan Naumburg bandshell and
The Mall, of which this is the architectural culmination, the theatrical set-piece at the center of the park.
Bethesda Fountain
Bethesda Fountain is the central feature on the lower level of the terrace. The pool is centered by a fountain sculpture designed by
Emma Stebbins in 1868 and unveiled in 1873. Stebbins was the first woman to receive a public commission for a major work of art in
New York City. The
bronze, eight-foot statue depicts a female winged angel touching down upon the top of the fountain, where water spouts and cascades into an upper basin and into the surrounding pool. Beneath her are four four-foot
cherubs representing
Temperance,
Purity,
Health, and
Peace. Also called the
Angel of the Waters, the statue refers to the
Gospel of John, Chapter 5 where there's a description of an angel blessing the
Pool of Bethesda, giving it healing powers. In Central Park the referent is the
Croton Aqueduct opened in 1842, providing the city for the first time with a dependable supply of pure water: thus the angel carries a
lily in one hand, representing purity, and with the other hand she blesses the water below. The base of the fountain was designed by the architect of all the original built features of Central Park,
Calvert Vaux, with sculptural details, as usual, by
Jacob Wrey Mould. In Calvert Vaux and
Frederick Law Olmsted's 1858
Greensward Plan, the terrace at the end of the Mall overlooking the naturalistic landscape of the Lake was simply called
The Water Terrace, but after the unveiling of the angel, its name was changed to
Bethesda Terrace.
The fountain, which had been dry for decades, was restored in its initial campaign, 1980-81, by the
Central Park Conservancy as the centerpiece of its plan to renovate Central Park. The Terrace, designed by Vaux with sculptural decoration by Mould, was restored in the following season. Resodding, and fifty new trees, 3,500 shrubs and 3,000 ground cover plants followed in 1986. The Minton encaustic tiles of the ceiling of the arcade between the flanking stairs were completed in 2007.
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