Consider Central Park to be something more than New York City’s prime recreational open space but also, as is the case in this website’s current series of postings, a showplace containing works of art that have been assimilated into a landscape that is a work of art in and of itself. When we think of the various parts of the park that have acquired sculptures and other forms of focused display as well as historic preservation and restoration projects that preserve their original appearances, we inevitably turn to the heart of an American masterpiece in its own right and find the Bethesda Terrace, Arcade, and Fountain over which an Angel with outspread wings presides as a symbol of both the healing of sickness, injury, and infirmity following divine intervention and the blessing sent via the Croton Aqueduct since its opening in 1842 upon all residents and visitors to New York City who drink pure water from a supply system emanating in upstate New York.
