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 * Arsenal (Central Park)
 * ("central park" "arsenal") AND ("Manhattan" OR "New York") NOT ("Classified Ad" OR "Display Ad" OR "Spare Times")



The Arsenal is a symmetrical brick building with modestly Gothic Revival details, located in Central Park in New York City adjacent to the Central Park Zoo. It is centered on 64th Street west of Fifth Avenue. Built between 1847 and 1851 as a storehouse for arms and ammunition for the New York State Militia, the building is the second-oldest extant structure within Central Park (behind Blockhouse No. 1), predating the park's construction.

The building currently houses the offices of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, City Parks Foundation, Historic House Trust, and the nearby Central Park Zoo as well as an art gallery known as the Arsenal Gallery, but it has also served as a zoo, a police precinct and a weather bureau and housed the American Museum of Natural History's collections while the museum's permanent structure was being erected.

Architecture
The Arsenal was designed by Martin E. Thompson.

Facade
Originally, the facade was a light color; an 1857 New York Times article described the facade as being "painted in imitation of granite", while the same paper said in 1922 that the building was clad with gray brick. On either side of the main stairway is a balustrade supported by ten vertical cast-iron rifles. The doorway is flanked by crossed swords, halberds, and spears. The panel above the door is decorated with a bald eagle displayed between stacks of cannonballs. A commemorative plaque was placed over the main doorway of the building, with the names of various officials who were involved in the building's construction. The windows on either side of the entrance were long and narrow, like those of a jail.

Thompson's symmetrical structure of brick in English bond, with headers every fifth course, presents a central block in the manner of a fortified gatehouse flanked by half-octagonal towers.

Features
The first floor contains floor-to-ceiling murals by Allen Saalburg, which combine historical vignettes of 19th-century New York life with ornamental scrolls and arabesques. The murals are installed on the walls of the lobby, measuring 20 ft tall and 25 by across. There are three murals in total: the mural on the wall opposite the main doorway measures 40 by, while the murals on either side wall measure 23 by. The mural to the right of the main doorway depicts Central Park during the American Civil War, and the mural to the left depicts the Arsenal and various military icons. The wall opposite the main doorway is painted in a brown and gold color scheme, with scenes of historical buildings.

The building has an especially strong frame because it was originally constructed as a munitions storehouse; the walls on the first floor are more than 3 ft thick.

The "Greensward Plan", the original plan for Central Park, is stored on the third floor.

Military use
The Arsenal was originally constructed as an ordnance storehouse for the New York State Militia. When the building was developed in the mid-19th century, the center of New York City was located several miles south, near Houston Street; it is unknown why the Arsenal was developed so far away. The New York state government laid the cornerstone for the Arsenal on July 4, 1847. In April 1848, the New York state legislature authorized the construction of a new arsenal in New York City at a cost of $15,000. Work on the Arsenal commenced the same year, and the building was completed in 1851. A 1924 New York Times article noted that the building cost $30,000 to develop. The arsenal occupied a 10 acre site that was shared with a powder magazine.

When plans for Central Park were finalized in 1856, the New York state government bought the site for $275,000. In 1857, New York City mayor Fernando Wood asked that the arsenal be integrated into the park around it. The arsenal and the land around it were incorporated into the park. During the American Civil War, in 1861, the Arsenal was used as troops' barracks, and it was also used to muster out troops returning from the front lines. The common in front of the building became a parade ground.

Use as menagerie
A zoo was not part of the original Greensward Plan for Central Park. However a menagerie near the Arsenal spontaneously evolved from gifts of exotic pets and other animals informally given to the park; this was a precursor to the Central Park Zoo. The first animal was left in Central Park; soon, people began donating other animals. Some animals were moved to the Arsenal in 1865, and larger animals grazed there during summers. The first permanent menagerie building was constructed behind the Arsenal in 1875.

American Museum of Natural History
New York governor John Thompson Hoffman signed legislation creating the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) on April 6, 1869. The chairman of the AMNH's executive committee asked Central Park commissioner Andrew Haswell Green if the museum could use the top two stories of the Arsenal, and Green approved the request in January 1870. Insect specimens were placed on the lower level of the Arsenal, while stones, fossils, mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles were placed on the upper level. The museum opened within the Arsenal on May 22, 1871. The Arsenal had 856,773 visitors in the first nine months of 1876 alone, more than the British Museum had recorded for all of 1874. The old exhibits were removed from the Arsenal in 1878, the year after the AMNH opened its own building across Central Park.

Demolition efforts
The United States Weather Bureau considered using the Arsenal as a weather observation station during 1911. By then, Manhattan's parks commissioner Charles Stover described the building as a "fire trap" and was advocating to replace the building. The industrialist Henry Clay Frick, who owned the nearby Lenox Library building, offered to replace the Arsenal with the library building in May 1912. The Municipal Art Commission approved the plan that June, despite protests from numerous civic and social groups. Frick withdrew his offer the same month, citing opposition. The Weather Bureau began studying the feasibility of relocating to Belvedere Castle in 1913.

After the Manhattan Municipal Building was finished in 1914, the Manhattan Parks Department applied for space in that building. The Parks Department moved out during May 1914; the department estimated that it had spent $16,000 to $18,000 annually on the Arsenal's upkeep. After the Parks Department moved out, the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society contemplated using the Arsenal as the headquarters of the National Academy of Design. Members of the public opposed the conversion of city-owned property to private use, and parks commissioner Cabot Ward did not want any building on the Arsenal's site. Ward stated in March 1915 that the Arsenal would be shortly demolished; he told The New York Times that "nothing historic is in any way associated with the Arsenal Building". This would have required relocating the Arsenal's New York City Police Department offices to the park's sheepfold and the weather station to Belvedere Castle. There were difficulties in relocating the weather station, since the Arsenal housed half a century's worth of weather records, but the Weather Service ultimately agreed in February 1918 to move to Belvedere Castle.

The American Institute of Safety proposed using the Arsenal as an exhibition space in June 1918, and the New York City Board of Estimate recommended that the lease be granted. Mayor John Francis Hylan agreed to lease the Arsenal if the organization spent about $100,000 on restoration and if the Manhattan park commissioner had control over all exhibits. The Park and Playgrounds Association opposed the plan, and the Society of American Officers wanted the Arsenal so they could display their own artifacts. The city approved the Institute of Safety's plans for the building in April 1919, and renovations began the next month. The Park and Playgrounds Association unsuccessfully asked the New York Supreme Court to place an injunction against the institute in mid-1919, but the New York Court of Appeals reversed the Supreme Court's decision in June 1920, banning the Safety Institute from using the Arsenal.

In early 1922, Manhattan park commissioner Francis D. Gallatin requested that the New York City Board of Aldermen issue $75,000 in bonds to fund a restoration of the Arsenal. By then, the New York Times described the Arsenal as a "near-ruin". Gallatin wanted to move the Weather Bureau back to the Arsenal after the renovation, but many local residents opposed both the Arsenal's restoration and the weather station's relocation.

1920s to 1950s
In 1924, NYC Parks decided to renovate the Arsenal for $185,000. The project was completed that year, when the Manhattan Department of Parks moved back in. The southern half of the first floor housed the Parks Department's forestry and engineering divisions, while the northern half contained the NYPD's 22nd Precinct. The accounts, purchase, and personnel divisions and the chief clerk occupied the second floor, while divisional heads and executive engineers worked on the third and fourth stories. The basement was converted to a garage in 1927, and part of the second floor was furnished at the end of 1928. A marble tablet, commemorating the building's previous use as the American Museum of Natural History's first building, was installed outside the Arsenal in 1929. The Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs proposed demolishing the Arsenal as part of a 1931 plan for improving Central Park, but Manhattan's parks commissioner Walter R. Herrick opposed the plan because the Arsenal's central location was ideal as the Parks Department's headquarters.

The Manhattan Department of Parks became part of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (NYC Parks) in 1934. The same year, the Parks Department announced plans to restore the Arsenal to its original design. Conical roofs on eight turrets were replaced with crenellated parapets, and the exterior was sandblasted. Over 60 landscape architects and around 70 tradesmen and architects worked on the renovation. According to later NYC Parks commissioner Adrian Benepe, the architect Aymar Embury II likely designed the decorations around the Arsenal's front doorway around this time. The Central Park Zoo to the west was built around the same time; the Arsenal formed the eastern leg of the zoo's central "square". As part of a Works Progress Administration program, Allen Saalburg received a contract to paint murals for the lobby in January 1935; work on the murals began that May, and they were installed the next year.

The NYPD's 22nd Precinct moved from the Arsenal in 1936 after a new precinct house was built on the park's 86th Street transverse road. Afterward, NYC Parks had exclusive use of the Arsenal. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia had a temporary "retreat" at the Arsenal in 1939, where no one could visit him, in contrast to his office at New York City Hall. NYC Parks also began decorating the building during the Christmas holiday season. The department's website wrote that "over time the Arsenal has become a parks fixture".

1960s and later
The building currently houses the offices of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, City Parks Foundation, Historic House Trust, and the nearby Central Park Zoo as well as an art gallery known as the Arsenal Gallery

Critical reception
When the Arsenal was first constructed, its architecture was not well received. Over the late 19th and early 20th century, wealthy Fifth Avenue residents had developed negative sentiments toward the Arsenal and neighboring menagerie. A book from 1899 referred to the edifice as "a flimsy structure of vulgarized Norman architecture".