Harlem Meer
Coordinates: 40°47′47.8″N 73°57′6″W / 40.796611°N 73.95167°W
Harlem Meer ("meer" is Dutch for "lake") occupies the northeast corner of New York City's Central Park, in a section of park that was added to the original site, which had originally ended at 106th Street. It lies north of the Conservatory Garden, with a meandering shoreline that wraps around the bluff that contains the Blockhouse, the remains of gun emplacements erected for the War of 1812, which never saw action. Today Harlem Meer has been reduced to 11 acres (45,000 m2) and 1.2 kilometers (3/4 mile) circumference by the construction of Lasker Rink and Pool in 1966, for summer swimming and winter ice-skating, over its westernmost end.
The Meer, as Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux called it, was excavated in the lowest-lying section of the park, a semi-brackish, partly tidal wetland, which drained slowly into the East River; as Harlem Commons It separated the former suburb of Harlem to the north from the lower part of Manhattan Island. To avoid the swamp, the Boston Post Road had detoured westwards into the future park site, rising to cross McGown's Pass. The Meer and its wooded landscape were carried out by Andrew Haswell Green, to Olmsted and Vaux's specifications, from 1861, while Olmsted had been relegated to an advisory capacity.
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