I have only been in the Arsenal, a handsome brick building facing 5th Avenue and East 64th Street, just once, to see an art exhibition several years ago. Before there was a Central Park, there was an Arsenal; it was constructed from 1847 to 1851 and was indeed first used for munitions storage for the New York State Militia, which at the time had members fighting the Mexican War in Texas. Only one building in Central Park is older and it too was built for wartime purposes.*
The building currently serves as the headquarters of the NYC Parks Department and doubles as an art gallery. In the past it served as the Central Park Zoo before the current one was built as well as a proto American Museum of Natural History, art gallery and weather bureau. Inside the entrance you will find painted murals depicting NYC during the 1930s Depression years. Also on display are a pair of bronze eagles originally mounted on the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument on Fort Greene Park, moved here to protect them from the inevitable work of the neighborhood youth.
Civil War-era diarist George Templeton Strong (you remember him from Ken Burns’ WNET Civil War series) called the Arsenal “hideous” and an “eyesore.” Strong ‘s ghost should get a load of the objects that have been built in NYC over the past couple of decades. For years the building was neglected until it found an “angel” in Robert Moses, who rehabilitated the building along with other changes he made to the park in the early to mid 20th Century.
*The oldest building in Central Park is Blockhouse #1, built in the 1810s when a British attack on NYC was feared; actually the British got no closer than the coast of Connecticut.
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4/13/22
4 comments
That’s very interesting, I did not know about the Arsenal.
werent there stables in there for police horses,or is that another building
in Central Park?
That’s my office building!
We have 2 stables in a small area behind the Arsenal and Zoo, but those are for Parks Dept’s PEP division. The NYPD stables are further north along the 86th St Transverse.
As we watched the St. Patrick day parade this year on TV, I saw the building behind the bleachers and wondered what it was. My wife from NYC didn’t recognize it. I guess it’s been hiding in plain sight all these years!