Bethesda Terrace and Fountain

Where it sits. The terrace occupies the exact centre of Central Park, at the southern shore of the Lake on the 72nd Street cross axis, at the end of the quarter-mile allée of American elms called the Mall. It is the one place in the park where Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux allowed formal architecture into an otherwise deliberately naturalistic landscape, and they placed it so that a visitor walking north up the Mall arrives at a stone balustrade, looks down over the fountain, and sees the Lake and the wooded Ramble beyond it in a single composition.

The story behind it. In the Greensward Plan of 1858 the structure was simply the Water Terrace; it took the name Bethesda only after the angel arrived. Vaux designed it, and Jacob Wrey Mould carved it, working through the American Civil War: the stonework was delivered in 1862, the fountain masonry was in place by 1863, and the upper level was largely complete by 1867. The material is a mustard-olive New Brunswick sandstone with granite steps and landings, and paving of Roman brick laid on edge in herringbone. Mould's carving is the reason to look closely — the panels run a programme of the four seasons and the times of day, worked with birds, fruit, wheat and, for night, a witch on a broomstick that most visitors walk straight past.

The angel and the tiles. Emma Stebbins designed the bronze Angel of the Waters in 1868 and it was unveiled in 1873, the only sculpture funded by the city in the park's original design and the first major public art commission in New York awarded to a woman. The subject is the angel who troubles the pool of Bethesda in the Gospel of John, giving it healing power, and the reference is not decorative: the fountain celebrates the Croton Aqueduct, which from 1842 brought clean water into a city that had been drinking from contaminated wells. Four cherubs beneath the angel stand for temperance, purity, health and peace. Beneath the road, the arcade holds the terrace's other treasure — a ceiling of roughly fourteen thousand Minton encaustic tiles designed by Mould and made in Staffordshire. They were taken down in the 1980s when restoring them was judged too expensive, sat in storage for more than twenty years, and were finally conserved for about seven million dollars and reinstalled in 2007. It is the only such ceiling of its kind outdoors anywhere.

On screen. The terrace and fountain close Mike Nichols's television adaptation of Angels in America (2003), with Prior Walter speaking directly to camera beneath Stebbins' angel — a scene the play had been pointing at from its title onwards. A detail worth knowing for accuracy: many of that production's interior and vision sequences were shot at Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, but the fountain scene is genuinely on location. The Day by Day number in Godspell (1973) is staged at the fountain and in the arcade, capturing the terrace in its most derelict period. Enchanted (2007) sweeps its central musical number through the park and across this ground. Beyond features, the terrace appears constantly in television and in the establishing shots of films that never otherwise leave a soundstage.

What you actually see today. The terrace spent the 1960s and 1970s in genuine decay: a cafe operated on it until 1974, the fountain stood dry, the arcade leaked and the site became a drug market. The Central Park Conservancy restored the fountain in 1980 and 1981 and the terrace in 1982, taking the stonework apart, cleaning it and resetting it, and the tile ceiling completed the job in 2007. Today the arcade's acoustics attract singers and saxophonists almost every afternoon, rowing boats hired from the Loeb Boathouse cross the Lake below, and weekend mornings bring a rotation of wedding photographers. Bow Bridge is a two-minute walk west along the shore.

Getting there and timing. The B and C trains stop at 72nd Street on the west side, a seven-minute walk; the 6 at 68th Street–Hunter College is a similar distance on the east. Enter at either 72nd Street gate and walk in. There is no charge. The main staircases have no ramp, but the terrace can be reached at grade through the underpass from the Mall side. Late October, when the elms on the Mall turn, is the strongest week of the year; early morning gives the arcade and fountain with almost nobody in them. The fountain is switched off and drained for the winter, usually from late November until April, so anyone travelling specifically for the angel above running water should plan around that.