Monday, May 5, 2025 – PART OF THE ORIGINAL CENTRAL PARK PRESERVED AND RE-USED

By admin

From Horse Stables to Police Station, the Evolution of one of the Oldest Buildings in Central Park

Monday,  May 5  2025
Ephemeral New York
ISSUE #1441

One of the marvels of Central Park is that so many of the early buildings within its 843 acres, completed during or just after the park’s opening in the 1850s, have been repurposed over time.

The Dairy, where children could get safe, fresh milk, is now a visitors center. The Sheepfold, where the park’s 200 resident sheep sheltered, became Tavern on the Green in 1934. The Arsenal, which predates the park and served as the first menagerie, houses park administrative space.
Then there’s this low, long storybook confection of stone, slate, and dormer windows (above photo).
The Victorian-style building and a cottage next door sit on the south side of the 86th Street transverse—brick and mortar dwellings interrupting the lush greenery along this winding sunken thoroughfare.

Like the Dairy and Sheepfold, they were put up with specific functions in mind. The long building served as a stable for cart horses, which likely pulled carts and wagons for park employees tasked with construction and maintenance.

The designer behind the stable and cottage was Jacob Wrey Mould. This British-born architect doesn’t get as much credit as he should for his aesthetic contributions to Central Park.

Working with Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux to bring their Greenward Plan to life, Mould designed Belvedere Castle, the nature-inspired carvings on Bethesda Terrace, the Sheepfold, and many of the bridge

In 1870, Mould (below left) was made head architect for the Department of Public Works. A year later, his stables and cottage were completed (above photo).

Though not as ornate as the sheepfold, the stable “bears the mark of architectural distinction” thanks to the “loping rhythm of the dormers, and high level of craftsmanship,” noted Francis R, Kowsky, co-author with Lucille Gordon of Jacob Wrey Mould and the Artful Beauty of Central Park.

Inside was room for 26 horses as well as repair shops and storage areas, wrote Kowsky. The stable shared the site with a structure—perhaps the cottage—built for park keepers, an early incarnation of the park police, per the Central Park Conservatory.

Office space for the Central Park Board of Commissioners was planned.

“The new offices would have included ‘engineering, architectural, and gardening apartments,’” and “a separate building to house blacksmiths, carpenters, and other craftspeople,” according to a 2023 post by Cynthia Brenwall at the NYC Department of Records & Information Services.   

Also on the site was a house built for the reservoir keeper, whose job was to keep an eye on the two reservoirs flanking the transverse, one pre-existing the park and one built by Olmsted and Vaux.

What was the reservoir keeper looking out for? Think maintenance issues and suicide victims, per a 2002 New York Times article by Christopher Gray.

Into the early 20th century, the stable, cottage, and reservoir keeper’s house remained part of the parkscape. But when the pre-existing reservoir was decommissioned in 1929 and replaced by the Great Lawn in 1936 (with landfill from the digging out of Rockefeller Center), the keeper’s house was demolished.

Meanwhile, the stable and cottage were about to undergo a transformation. The park keepers who had patrolled the park in its early years had transitioned into a New York Police Department precinct, with the Arsenal serving as its precinct house, per the Central Park Conservatory.

In 1936, the cart horses were cleared out of the stable and the precinct took over. Renovated in the early 2000s, the Central Park Precinct house—a lovely survivor of the park’s early years in the late 19th century—is the oldest NYPD station in New York City.

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Tags: Central Park Police Precinct Building, Central Park Police Stables Building, Jacob Wrey Mould Stables Central Park, Oldest Buildings in Central Park, Stables 1871 Central Park, Stables 86th Street Central Park, Stables 86th Street Transverse Central Park, NYPL Digital Collections

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