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The Great Lawn is a 13-acre oval lawn with a carpet of lush Kentucky Bluegrass and eight ball-fields. This green area is famous for being a beautiful place for reading and contemplation, as well as for playing frisbee and having a picnic among friends. It has also become a favorite for free concerts by the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera.
Location: Mid-Park from 79th to 85th St.
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It arrived in New York in July of 1880 and took 32 horses hitched in 16 pairs to drag the pedestal alone through the streets of the city.
Location: East Side at 81st St., behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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The largest art museum in the western hemisphere (spanning 4 blocks, it encompasses 2 million square ft), the Met is one of the city's supreme cultural institutions. Its permanent collection of nearly 3 million works of art. www.metmuseum.org.
Location: 5 Ave. & 82nd St.
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The statues of "The Tempest" and "Romeo and Juliet" depict characters from Shakespeare's plays and are strategically located in front of the Delacorte Theater.
"The Tempest" depicts Prospero, the magician, sheltering his daughter Miranda with this left hand while he casts a spell with this right hand while "Romeo and Juliet" show the two lovers just about to kiss, Romeo bending over Juliet whose head is thrown back.
Location: Delacorte Theater, mid-Park at 80th St.
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In 1959
a young Joseph Papp asked New York City to construct
a permanent outdoor amphitheater in Central Park for his five-year-old
organization, the New York Shakespeare Festival, which had been
performing free Shakespeare plays in city parks. Three years later, Papp
opened the 2,000-seat Delacorte Theater with a production of ''The
Merchant of Venice'' starring an unknown actor named George C. Sc
Since that first extraordinary summer at the Delacorte Theater, named for publisher and philanthropist George Delacorte, approximately 4 million people have seen free productions in Central Park. Papp was a true theatrical titan, whose funeral procession in 1991 shut down the streets of New York. He reintroduced the idea that theater should be for everyone, not just those who could afford increasingly expensive tickets.
Location: Mid-Park at 80th St.
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Location: East side of Turtle Pond, mid-Park at 79th St.
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The Turtle Pond runs below the Belvedere Castle and besides being home-base for a lot of turtles, it shelters frogs, fish, and waterfowl. Since the pond is designated as a quiet zone, this is a nice peaceful place to sit with a very young child and commune with nature.
Location: Mid-Park between 79th & 80th Sts.
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The Shakespeare Garden is a four-acre garden
nestled in a rocky hillside. The garden was dedicated to
One tree that now shades the lower part of the garden is a graft of a white mulberry tree planted by Shakespeare himself at New Place, Stratford-on-Avon, in the year 1602. The cutting was sent to him by King James I in His Majesty's attempt to introduce silk-culture into England.
Scattered throughout the garden are bronze plaques that provide the Shakespearean quotation that inspired the planting.
Location: West Side between 79th & 80th Sts.
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18. Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater
This house was originally a schoolhouse sponsored
by the Swedish government for the 1876 Centennial
Location: West Side at 79th St.
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Built in 1869 and once used by the New York Meteorological Observatory, the Castle is still used as a U.S. Weather Service Station. Belvedere Castle sits atop Vista Rock and is the highest point in Central Park. It offers some of the best views of the City and park anywhere.
Location: Mid-Park at 79th St.
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20. Sophie Irene Loeb Drinking Fountain
Location: James Michael Levin Playground, 5th Av. & 77th St.
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This sculpture of Alice in Wonderland, crafted by José de Creeft sits high upon a giant mushroom and presiding over a tea party to which she has invited all the children of the world. The sculptor also included plaques with inscriptions from Carroll’s "The Jabberwocky," in a granite circle surrounding this sculpture.
Location: East 74th St., north of the Conservatory Water.
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Around 1874, Vaux, one the Central Park's
designers, designed
a two-story boathouse at the eastern end of t
Today at the Boathouse visitors can enjoy a meal in any season, with heating helping to extend as long as possible the pleasure of dining on the deck overlooking the Lake. At Loeb you can also rent rowboats or take a ride in an authentic Venetian gondola.
Location: East Side between 74th & 75th Sts.
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Overlooking the Conservatory Water
Location: West of Conservatory Water, 74th St. near 5th Ave.
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At this artificial lake visitors can watch a radio-powered racing regatta between members of the Model Yacht Club, cheer on children with their tiny wind-powered sloops, or even rent a miniature boat radio control.
Location: East Side from 72nd to 75th Sts.
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This 70 feet high and 224 tons heavy Obelisk is inscribed
with Egyptian hieroglyphics honoring Pharaoh Tutmosis III and was originally built as a pair for the Temple of the
Sun at Heliopolis around the year 461 B.C. After the opening of Suez Canal in
1869, Ismail Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt, gave one Obelisk to the United
States in the hope of cultivating trade relations between the two
countries. 
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ott.
Shakespeare
in 1916 for the 300th anniversary of his death. Following a Victorian
tradition, only flowers mentioned in Shakespeare's plays and poetry were
planted in the garden. 
Exposition in
Philadelphia as an example of Swedish building design. At the end of the
exposition, the New York City Parks Department purchased
the schoolhouse for $1,500 and moved it to its present site. Its first
use was as a tool house; soon thereafter it was converted to a comfort
station and lunchroom; and after Swedish-Americans in the City
complained about its inappropriate use, it was remodeled as the Park's
entomological laboratory. In 1947 the building was retrofitted to house
a small children's theater and design workshops. Today it is the
headquarters for the Citywide Puppets in the Parks program and it holds various marionette plays
for children throughout the year.
This
statue was sculpted by Frederick George Richard Roth and was originally a drinking fountain
dedicated to Ms. Loeb, a writer and social advocate for children, and it
features Lewis Carroll's famous figures: Alice, the Queen, the Duchess,
the Cheshire Cat, the Griffon, and the White Rabbit. In 1987 it was moved by Central Park
Conservancy to the Levin Playground and refitted as a water feature,
very popular in summertime between the children.
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he Lake
where visitors
could purchase refreshments and take boat rides. After this wooden
Victorian structure with sloping mansard roof burned down, the current
Loeb Boathouse was built in the 1950s. 
