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Photo: via Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
A spacious green lawn that was originally home to a herd of sheep, which grazed in the meadow and were tended to in their nearby pen - a Victorian-style building which today is the Tavern on the Green restaurant (see Eat below).
Sheep Meadow is a 15-acre (61,000 m2) meadow near the southwestern section of Central Park, between West 66th and 69th Streets in Manhattan, New York City. It is adjacent to Central Park Mall to the east, The Ramble and Lake to the north, West Drive to the west, and Heckscher Playground and Ballfields to the south.
© OpenStreetMap contributors
A vintage carousel built in 1908 and situated on this spot since the 1950s, it's the fourth carousel to inhabit this location and is beautifully painted.
Built in the 1870s as a dairy farm, with a structure designed to resemble a country church. Today it is a visitor center and gift shop for the park, housed in a beautiful structure. Next door is the Chess & Checkers House, another visitor center and the volunteer headquarters, with a number of chess and checkers tables under a shady pergola.
A popular monument to the famous sled dog who successfully led a sled team through a treacherous blizzard to deliver medicine to Nome, Alaska, thus ending an epidemic.
So named in 1981 in memory of John Lennon, the former Beatle, who was murdered close by outside his home in the Dakota building. Lennon's widow Yoko Ono, who still lives in the Dakota, subsequently donated $1 million to upgrade the area with hundreds of tree and flower species, including strawberries. The area serves as a Garden of Peace and includes a memorial floor mosaic (donated by the Italian city of Naples) that says simply "Imagine", referring to the title of one of Lennon's evocative songs.
A popular free concert series held in the summer.
Central Park's largest playground, Heckscher is unique among Central Park's playgrounds in that it is not on the boundaries of the park. The playground has a range of play equipment, including a large water feature.