LPC Approves $1.5 Million Bridle Path Reconnection At Pinebank Arch In Central Park, Manhattan

The Landmarks Preservation Commission has signed off on circulation and site improvements surrounding Pinebank Arch in Central Park, Manhattan. Prepared by the Central Park Conservancy and budgeted at $1 million to $1.5 million in private funding, the project will eliminate the dead end where the bridle path terminates beneath the 1861 cast-iron bridge and reconnect the path to the broader park network. The scope also includes a reduced cul-de-sac with rustic benches and seating boulders, selective vegetation removal to reopen views of the arch, new plantings, and replacement lighting beneath the bridge.

The site sits in the park’s southwest corner between the West Drive and Central Park West, just west of Heckscher Playground and Umpire Rock.

Plans call for a new asphalt path with a granite block curb tracing the desire line worn across the lawn north of the bridge, with a branch doubling back to meet the bridle path at a flush granite Belgian block threshold. The existing cul-de-sac will be scaled down “to more of a human scale,” according to Conservancy project manager Cody Erhart, and outfitted with boulders and rustic benches of a type already installed elsewhere in the park’s southern end. The Bridle Path will retain its stone screenings surface, and two DOT light fixtures beneath the bridge will be replaced in situ using existing conduit, with downlights by Cline Bettridge Bernstein Lighting Design.

Image via LPC.

Selective removal of Ilex shrubs and Amelanchier will re-establish the historic visual connection between the arch and the surrounding landscape, which Erhart described as restoring “the grandeur of the archway.” The conceptual planting palette draws on eastern white pine, sweet bay magnolia, American witch-hazel, winterberry, and pinxterbloom azalea over an understory of sedges, ferns, and perennials, according to the presentation.

Pinebank Arch, designated Bridge No. 15, was erected in 1861 by J.B. and W.W. Cornell Ironworks and is one of four ornamental cast-iron bridges carrying pedestrians over the Bridle Path. The path dates to Olmsted and Vaux’s 1858 Greensward Plan and originally ran from Grand Army Plaza to the 102nd Street Cross Drive; its southern end was progressively truncated by the construction of the Central Park Zoo and Heckscher Playground, and a 2006 reconstruction left the landscaped cul-de-sac in place today. Construction on the path project is slated to begin in spring 2027 and is expected to conclude in spring 2028, according to the Conservancy.

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