:: Guest blog post by Andy Hong ::

Central Park may be the most beautiful city park in the world and is most certainly worth anyone’s time to visit.  We would recommend getting a walking guide and spend a couple of hours walking through it.  The park was revolutionary for its time (a park set aside for the enjoyment of the average citizen) along with Frederick Law Olmstead’s additional efforts repeated in Prospect Park in Brooklyn and the city parks in Buffalo.  With its wonderful history, there are many things to see in Central Park – from the USS Maine monument to the monument for Balto the hero dog.  However, our favorite place is the angel at Bethesda fountain.  This is no cherub, or victorious Valkyry, or deity gracing some Astor/Rockefeller/Morgan monument to their glory.  This is your working immigrant housemaid angel.  The “tired, poor, yearning to breathe free,” hardworking, toiling, and battered east European crammed into dark smelly tenement halls on the lower East Side.  This angel does not dance but walks heavily, with little grace, as those gilded become prominent around her.  The monument is thought to be a tribute to those who died during the Civil War, and its somberness and the date of its placement would seem to agree.  However, it is actually a tribute to the new water delivery system of its time.  Which in itself is fitting since that too is something taken for granted.

Photo Credit: Andy Hong, used with permission.

Footnote from Julie: The angel on the Bethesda Fountain was designed by Emma Stebbins in 1868.  She worked on the statue in Paris for a time, completing and installing it in Central Park in 1873.  Stebbins was the first woman to be commissioned for a major piece of artwork in New York City.