Bow Bridge. Eighty-seven feet of cast iron spanning the Lake, and probably the most photographed bridge in New York City. It's been in Spider-Man, Enchanted, Manhattan, The Way We Were. Film crews who show up to shoot routinely stumble into actual proposals and weddings happening at the same time.
The bridge was designed by Calvert Vaux — the partner everyone forgets — and completed in eighteen sixty-two. It's the second-oldest cast-iron bridge in the entire United States. And it was built by the same Bronx foundry that made the dome of the United States Capitol. Look at the railing — those interlocking circles and Gothic patterns came from the same craftsmen who built the most recognizable roofline in American government.
Here's a small detail that tells you everything about Vaux: the south bank of the Lake sits higher than the north bank. Most people would've just built the bridge level and ignored it. Vaux had the workers raise the entire northern abutment until the bridge was per
fectly horizontal. Nobody would notice. He noticed.
Now — look at the water.
Central Park has seven major bodies of water. Every single one is artificial. The Lake you're standing over — twenty acres of it — was dug entirely by hand from what was previously a drainage-ditch swamp full of bone-boiling factories. Bone-boiling factories. They made glue from animal remains. That was the smell of thi
