just 200 years ago Central Park didn't exist but what you might not know is that you could still see evidence of 13,000 years of world history right here just by taking a walk in the park I'm Michael Whitner I'm an architect and today we're going to be taking a walkth through time in New York Central [Music] Park we're standing here at the Columbus Circle entrance to Central Park in New York City where Broadway intersects 59th Street and Central Park West this was formerly called Grand Circle and also just the circle this is the most famous entrance of the park in part because of that connection to Broadway but Broadway has actually been a thorough fair in New York City long before Central Park existed in fact it goes back to before the city was called New York and even before it was called New Amsterdam the native LPE people living on this island traveled this very same route for Generations making this one of the busiest paths on the island for around 13,000 years when early Dutch colonizers learned about it they called it the oneach gwok trail in reference to the tribe of wener people who lived on the bank of the Hudson River today Broadway is famous for many reasons it is synonymous with theater and it was the first Street in New York City with electric street lamps but for Architects and city planners one of its most important distinctions is the way it cuts across the street grid of Manhattan at a diagonal but what might surprise you is that this portion of Broadway is one of the only roads in Manhattan that runs True North although Manhattan is often shown oriented vertically on maps which gives the impression that it runs north and south it's actually tilted off axis from du North by about 29° now that we've got our bearings let's Journey Northeast into the park back in time to the formation of the island of Manhattan itself behind me is Glenn span Arch near the Northern end of the park at 103rd Street the stones that make up this Arch are actually carved from the Bedrock of Manhattan although most of the boulders in Central Park are Manhattan schist which is around 450 million years old Glen span Arch is made from a type of stone called forom nice which formed here over 1 billion years ago these Stones were shaped by hand with hammer and chisel into traditional voussoir or wedge shaped blocks that make up an arch when you pass through this Arch built from stones that are over 1 billion years old you feel as though you were crossing a portal into an entirely different world back to a time before Manhattan was transformed into a gleaming Metropolis of brick steel and glass it's a perfect introduction to the North End of the park which feels the most naturalistic and the most removed from the bustle and hustle of Midtown Manhattan here you'll find the most picturesque waterfalls in the park as you might know from our other video on Central Park nearly all of its lakes and streams are fed by pipes carrying drinking water but here passing under the arch is where you'll find the only natural water source that still exists in Central Park it's called Mon's rivulet and it starts at a body of water called the pool it was named after a physician who owned most of the land in this area in the early 1600s when New York was still New Amsterdam this natural stream is mostly underground now after much of Manhattan was infilled with Earth to create more buildable Lots montine rivulet originally flowed all the way to the East River but today only this small portion remains also underneath this Arch is what's known as The Grotto a grotto is a small artificial cave made to look natural often with or near a water [Music] feature this obisk towering over my shoulder is much older than Central Park in fact it was carved about 3,500 years ago and more than 5,000 Mi away in heliopolis Egypt so how did it get here this 220 ton artifact car from a single piece of granite was actually a gift it was given to the United States by Egypt in the 1870s as a diplomatic gesture but this wasn't the first time the oisk had been moved although it is called Cleopatra's Needle it wasn't actually commissioned by Cleopatra it was originally created for Pharaoh thos iiii for the Temple of the sun near modern day Cairo 2,000 years later while under Roman rule the temple was rediscovered as ruins and the oblisk and its twin had been toppled over and partially buried in the sand the Romans dug it up and moved it to Alexandria on the North coast of Egypt to a new Temple that was created by Cleopatra hence the name Cleopatra's Needle in fact you could still see evidence from its Roman Journey the bronze crabs that support the oblisk at the base were forged by the Romans as a way to help it balance when they installed it at Cleopatra's Temple the crabs supporting this oblisk are actually replicas but you could still see The Originals on disp play in the museum when this Monument was moved to New York City it took some serious engineering to get it across the Atlantic Ocean intact and the roing company who had designed and built the Brooklyn Bridge took on the job after it arrived in Manhattan a special temporary railroad was built to Move It from the banks of the Hudson River to its current location in Central Park the train trip took 35 days to cover just a few miles in part because of a blizzard that briefly shut down the operation although there's nothing else like it in Central Park or in the United States for that matter it was actually part of a matching set the other one was gifted to the United Kingdom and stands on the banks of the river temps in London where they decided to leave it instead of spending more money to bring it Inland over my shoulder is what's known as the Block House although it's not actually a house but a fort built for the War of 1812 it was built in a hurry cuz they thought the British were going to attack again but that never happened and this fort was completed just 2 days before the war war ended in 1814 so because it was built in such a hurry and it was built by different groups the stones don't match and each group essentially brought their own building materials with them which gives it this sort of mly hodge podge feel it's one of the oldest surviving buildings in Manhattan and the oldest in the park and if you like the look of it you have Vox and Olstead to thank they preserved it effectively as an architectural Folly which is a small ruin or rustic structure and it serves no purpose other than to give a sense of History because this is one of the highest points of Manhattan it was strategically important and along the ridge there was a line of other forts like this one including Fort Clinton nutter's battery and Fort Fish this building over my shoulder is known as the Arsenal Millard Filmore who would later become president of the United States oversaw the construction of this building as a place to store arms for the New York State militia but that didn't last long the state of New York seized the land underneath it for the new Park and since then the Arsenal has had many different uses it was once the original home of the Museum of Natural History where paleontologists reconstructed dinosaur skeletons in a studio on the Upper Floor it also served as an art gallery until that moved to another location Uptown and it was also the original weather station in the park until that also moved to Bader Castle today the Arsenal serves a Civic rather than a militaristic function it is now the headquarters of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation the Arsenal gallery the city parks Foundation the historic house trust and the New York Wildlife Conservation society and the grounds around it are used as the Tish Children's Zoo there are still some clues of this building's military Origins one of which are the murals in the main lobby these murals were created by artist Alan suberg for the works progress administration in the 1930s another hint that this was a military facility is the architecture itself with its castle-like crenellations it is very reminiscent of other military buildings in New York from the time period including the armory on the Upper East Side another feature is the eagle and the stack cannonballs above the main entrance way the architect of this building Martin Thompson also designed a famous Bank in the early 1800s whose facade is now on display inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art which sits on Central Park [Music] land where we're standing is what's known as M's pass we've already traveled and Ancient Waterway and an ancestral native path now let's take a walk on a road that was truly revolutionary in the 17th and 18th century Boston Post Road was the main ottery of Manhattan it ran all the way from the southern tip of the Island North to Boston and it got its name because it was the official route for the postal servants hence the term post here at the Northern end of Central Park Boston Post Road passed through a narrow Ravine which made it a very important location during the Revolutionary War Paul Rivier even carried a letter from Samuel Adams to bring news of the Boston Tea Party along this road a few years later the British storm Manhattan in 1776 seemingly overpowering the Revolutionary soldiers and causing Washington to question whether they had lost the war but as the British marched north towards Washington's headquarters at the Mars Jamal Mansion which we covered in a previous video on Manhattan Mansions it was right here at mcgown's pass that Washington's troops stopped the British advance and turned the tide of the war once again 7 years later in 1784 the occupying British troops left the island of Manhattan on what is remembered as evacuation day and George Washington let a victory march down Boston Post Road in celebration mcgown's pass is a great example of the preserved history in the park but of course many of the buildings and settlements on what would become Park land did not survive like the free black settlement of Sena Village an Infamous example of eminent domain where anent enire landowning Community was forcibly displaced near the site was another community that predated the park a Convent known as Mount St Vincent which was established in 1847 by The Sisters of Charity of St Vincent dep Paul when the park was commissioned their land too was claimed by eminent domain and they moved to the Bronx while the designers of the park vo and Olstead used the convent as their headquarters during construction it was also used as a hospital during the Civil War and it was the sisters who had been displaced that came back to serve as nurses to the injured soldiers today only a few foundations and a stone marker memorialize the fact that the convent was ever here Central Park was designed with many small entrances as opposed to One Singular grand entrance This was meant to highlight the fact that the park was built for all the people of New York an inclusive Democratic space to be enjoyed by everybody from politicians and bankers to factory workers and fish and each of the original 20 entrances to the park were designated with a name honoring occupations or roles in society this celebration of New Yorkers also included direct reference to the diversity of cultures and National Origins of people in the city with the strangers gate at 106 Street making explicit reference to immigrants which have always been a boon to the culture and Industry of the city the parks designers and Commissioners considered naming the gates after other things like military figures or diplomatic leaders But ultimately the decision to honor Everyday People was a philosophical statement by Frederick Law Olstead who was a passionate abolitionist in his view naming the gates after Everyday People of all backgrounds and occupations would highlight the Free Labor economy of the North in direct contrast to the enslaved workers of the Confederate South in fact in 1863 at the height of the Civil War Vox and Olstead even resigned in protest when the commissioners of the park tried to bring in Richard moris Hunt the famous architect to create a grand gated entrance Plaza to the park a far cry from their egalitarian Vision but it was never built although this standoff happened in the mid 1800s the names of many of these Gates wouldn't actually be carved into the stone until the year 2000 when the Central Park Conservancy finally put into action the original vision of the parks designers in the end though Richard Morris hunt did get to build his entrance gate sort of Calver Vox designed the original building for the Metropolitan Museum of Art which sits within the park but Richard moris Hunt was later hired to build an addition to it and when he did his building completely blocked the view of voxes from Fifth Avenue and also included a grand entrance built in a European style so now when you enter the met in a sense you're entering the park the way Richard Morris hunt originally wanted you to that's just a small slice of the history that you can reach out and touch inside of Central Park let us know what other place you'd like to learn about in the comments below