5 Central Park Landmarks
to Visit by Bike.

The Imagine mosaic was dedicated on October 9, 1985 — what would have been John Lennon's 45th birthday. Yoko Ono donated the 2.5-acre teardrop-shaped lawn as a memorial to her husband, who was shot just outside the Dakota apartment building across the street five years earlier, on December 8, 1980.

The black-and-white mosaic at its center is a gift from the city of Naples, Italy. Designers Bruce Kelly and David Varnell modeled the garden after a quiet English landscape — what Lennon would have called "a place to dream." There are no flashy memorials, no statues. Just a circle and a word.

From our shop, riding there

It's the closest landmark in the park. Head north up 7th Avenue for two blocks, enter at Merchant's Gate (Columbus Circle), then bike west along the perimeter of the park for about half a mile. Strawberry Fields sits just inside the West 72nd Street entrance, on your right.

The Mall is the only intentional straight line in all of Central Park — a quarter-mile promenade lined with American elm trees, planted in the 1860s. It's one of the largest stands of American elm in North America, roughly 150 trees forming a continuous, cathedral-like canopy.

That matters because Dutch elm disease wiped out most American elms across the country during the 20th century. The Central Park Conservancy has fought to preserve these specifically, treating each tree individually. When you ride under that arch in autumn, you're seeing something most American cities lost.

The southern half is called Literary Walk — busts of Shakespeare, Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, and a few American writers stand along the path. The northern end opens onto Bethesda Terrace, our next stop.

The Angel of the Waters statue at the center of the fountain (1873) was the first major NYC public art commission awarded to a woman. Emma Stebbins designed it. Her brother Henry chaired the Central Park Board of Commissioners at the time — which is how she got the commission, and also why she was paid less than half of what male sculptors received.

The angel holds a lily in one hand and gestures with the other over water that, in Stebbins' biblical reference (John 5:2-4), was given healing properties by an angel's touch. Designed during the cholera epidemic of 1842, the statue marked the completion of NYC's Croton Aqueduct — the first time New York had reliable clean water.

Walk down to the arcade underneath the bridge. The Minton tile ceiling has 15,876 hand-glazed tiles. The panels were removed in the 1980s for restoration and not reinstalled until 2007 — so for two decades, this place had a plywood ceiling.

Designed by Calvert Vaux in 1862, Bow Bridge is one of the oldest cast-iron bridges in the United States and the most-photographed structure in Central Park. The graceful 60-foot arch crosses The Lake from Cherry Hill (on the south side) to the Ramble (on the north). At sunset the iron rails throw long shadows across the water.

Vaux, working with Frederick Law Olmsted, designed Central Park to feel found, not engineered. Bow Bridge is the proof — it looks like it was always there. The graceful low arch was unprecedented at the time, requiring custom cast-iron sections fabricated in Brooklyn and shipped uptown.

You've seen this bridge in Manhattan (1979), The Way We Were (1973), Spider-Man 3, and roughly 200 other films. Movie crews love it because the angle and lighting work in any season.

The other view

For the iconic photograph — Bow Bridge with the San Remo and El Dorado towers in the background — bike past the bridge to the southwest corner of The Lake (Cherry Hill). The view from there is the postcard.

Belvedere Castle, completed in 1869, was Calvert Vaux's deliberate folly — a half-Italian, half-Gothic stone tower built to be deliberately small. From a distance, it looks far larger than it is. That's the joke. Belvedere means "beautiful view" in Italian, and from the parapet you get a 360° view that takes in the Great Lawn, the Reservoir, Turtle Pond, and the Manhattan skyline rising over the trees.

Since 1919, this has been the official New York City weather station. When the news says "New York hit 92° today" or "Central Park got 8 inches of snow," those measurements are taken right here — by automatic instruments mounted on the roof. Every climate record for NYC is technically a Central Park record, and Central Park's measurements come from Belvedere.

The castle sits atop Vista Rock, a Manhattan schist outcropping that pre-dates the park by 450 million years. Climb the spiral stairs to the upper terrace and look east — you'll see the Great Lawn below where the old Croton Reservoir used to be (filled in during the 1930s).