A Guided Walk in the Ramble – Central Park’s “Wild Garden”
Tuesday, June 17th, 6-7:30 pm. Live and in-person tour
Entering the Ramble in Central Park is like stepping through a secret garden gate and emerging into a whole new dimension. Mere steps from the buzzing activity of the Boathouse and Bethesda Terrace lies what Frederick Law Olmsted called his ‘wild garden.’ Winding pathways and trickling brooks make you feel a world away from the sights and sounds of traffic (both human and motorized). The area’s rocky crags and woodlands also help make it the most famous birding area of the park.
Explore the Ramble with Landmark West and former Central Park Conservancy guide Catherine Fredman. Catherine has spent years exploring the Ramble, and there can be no better person to wander through this precious park habitat with. She wowed our May walking tour group with an evening on the Central Park Mall and Bethesda Terrace. This month, she’ll show us all that we have never really seen hidden in the Ramble. Please note that this will be an active walk on uneven terrain.
Our Guide:
Catherine Fredman was a volunteer tour guide with the Central Park Conservancy for twelve years. She has lived in New York for most of her life and still finds new things to discover and delight in in the park.
Come spend a beautiful evening reveling in the Ramble!
Oral History 101 Workshop with Fanny Garcia
Wednesday, June 18th, 9:30 – 11 am. Live and in-person workshop
Oral Histories provide invaluable resources for stories that would often otherwise be lost to time. By recording these histories, we provide a record for current and future generations to glimpse into the way our forebearers experienced the same streets we inhabit.
LANDMARK WEST! began documenting Oral Histories with our The Many Lives of San Juan Hill project.
Learn more about Oral Histories from one of the key facilitators of our own.
Co-Sponsored by the New York Preservation Archive Project
Our Presenter:
Fanny Julissa Garcia is a Honduran-American oral historian with a focus on applied oral history—a framework she established to describe how oral histories can be used to educate, inform policy change, and support communities endangered by violence. Her work examines immigration justice, detention and incarceration, family separation, and border policies. Her work is deeply informed by her experiences as an immigrant and survivor of trauma and generational poverty. These experiences led to a twenty-year career as a social justice advocate, working to address the public health and socioeconomic impact of HIV/AIDS in low-income immigrant communities, fighting to end family detention, and supporting survivors of sexual violence.
Email landmarkwest@landmarkwest.org if interested.
Photo by Diana Davies
Walking Tour: Upper West Side Pride
Wednesday, June 25, 6-7:30 pm
Celebrate Pride Month with the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project and Landmark West! on a stroll of the iconic Central Park West, from Columbus Circle to the American Museum of Natural History. We’ll uncover the LGBTQ history of The Dakota dating back to its construction in the 1880s, and highlight artists — from James Dean to Leonard Bernstein — who have called the Upper West Side home. The tour will include sites of post-Stonewall protest connected to Lesbian Feminist Liberation and the Gay Activists Alliance, two leading activist groups of the 1970s. We’ll also look at important spaces of community, including the site of a Gay Be-In in Central Park, where thousands of LGBTQ people marked the end of NYC’s very first Pride March, held in 1970.
Tour will be led by NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project Project Manager Amanda Davis with LW! staff Megan Fitzpatrick and Sean Khorsandi.
TICKETS
This is a 50/50 tour. Proceeds of the tour support the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project — Celebrating 10 Years! and LANDMARK WEST — Celebrating 40 Years!
Select Past Events:
2025 Mayoral Candidates Forum with Preservation Organizations
When: [PAST] Monday, March 24, via Zoom
WATCH RECORDING
Landmark West! and fellow preservation organizations from across NYC are hosting a forum via Zoom with Mayoral candidates on Monday, March 24 at 6 pm. This is the ONLY Mayoral candidate forum focused on preservation and development issues, and we strongly urge you to attend — to learn more about the candidates, and to let them know that New Yorkers care about preserving our city and our neighborhoods.
This is one of the most important Mayoral elections in memory. Our city is at a turning point, and powerful forces are pushing unprecedented measures to deregulate development in our city and roll back longstanding landmark and zoning protections. The next occupant of City Hall will shape our city and our neighborhoods for generations.
Holding the Safety Net in San Juan Hill VIDEO
Wednesday, January 25th 6-7pm via Zoom
Please join Landmark West! and architectural historian Jessica Larson in this exploration of the ways in which Black charity and reform initiatives shaped the landscape of San Juan Hill, the community Robert Moses demolished to make way for the Lincoln Center for the Perforning Arts complex, in the early decades of the 20th century. Larson will focus in on the architecture of the buildings constructed to facilitate this social work, and together we will look at how the built environment of San Juan Hill was shaped by community-driven efforts to address poverty and improve the quality of life for the residents. Because charity work was deeply gendered, Larson will emphasize the significance of women to the spatial and welfare programs of the neighborhood.
Speaker Jessica Larson is a Ph.D. candidate in Art and Architectural History at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her dissertation examines the architecture of charitable and reform institutions built in Manhattan for Black aid recipients between the Civil War and World War I, with a focus on how women reformers directed to these designs. She has held fellowships with the American Council of Learned Societies, the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Library of Congress. She has also worked for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Princeton University Art Museum, and the Bruce Museum. Jessica is currently a Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Museum of American History.
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Looking for VIDEOS of past LW programs? LW! Members have free access HERE with passcode!
Need the passcode? Email us at Landmarkwest@Landmarkwest.org – all recordings are available for free viewing for members
