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Went down the rabbit-hole to unravel the mysterious relocation of the Strangers' Gate in Central Park thanks to @2emesouffle via @gothamist - THREAD
https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/1873-map-central-park-details-its-verdant-plant-life
https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/1873-map-central-park-details-its-verdant-plant-life
Today, Strangers’ Gate is marked at the 106th Street entrance from Central Park West https://thombradley.wordpress.com/2020/09/30/nyc-are-there-really-gates-at-the-central-park-entrances
Yet this maybe-1873 map via @nyplmaps clearly shows the Strangers’ Gate at the northwest corner of Central Park (110th Street and Eighth Avenue). https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/4ee14540-3569-0134-fa82-00505686a51c
How did the gate move four blocks south? A commenter on @ephemeralNY thought the original references to the NW corner were a mistake. Perhaps the map was a “pre-production” version? https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2010/05/15/who-named-the-gates-of-central-park
Still, 1870’s authoritative “Reference to the Central Park Guide” (published by the Central Park Board of Commissioners and reprinted in Morrison Heckscher’s “Creating Central Park” from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2008) also listed the Strangers’ Gate at the NW corner.
Thanks to a 1886 dispute about whether the NW corner entrance should be used for carriage traffic, we definitively know that in fact the corner was called the Strangers’ Gate after the park was finished. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1886/05/03/103106128.html?pageNumber=5
In the mid-20th century, the circle outside the park’s NW corner was renamed to honor Frederick Douglass (a precursor to renaming Eighth Avenue north of the park in his honor). https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1950/09/18/89746989.html?pageNumber=14
Might the Strangers’ Gate have been relocated in 1950 when the circle was renamed for Douglass? NO! A 1972 article about pedestrian improvements to the circle clearly refers to the adjacent Strangers’ Gate. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1972/08/31/81957174.html?pageNumber=32
Not yet changed by 1992! Then, a founder of “Friends of Central Park,” Robert Makla, writes a letter to the Times complaining about NYC Parks Department plans to redesign the Strangers’ Gate at Douglass Circle and an unnamed entrance at 106th Street. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1992/05/23/828392.html?pageNumber=22
Finally, in 1999, Henry Stern’s Parks Department unveils its plan to chisel the original 19th century names for Central Park’s gates into the stone walls at each entrance. The map shows the Strangers' Gate at 106th Street! https://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/03/nyregion/central-park-entrances-in-a-return-to-the-past.html
So, was it Henry Stern that relocated the Strangers’ Gate from 110th Street to 106th Street in the 1990s? Stern may have taken the secret to his grave when he died last year. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/obituaries/henry-j-stern-dead.html
