The photographs at the Harlem Meer in Central Park were taken by Sharon Cuff on Saturday, July 18th, 2015. The Harlem Meer (“meer” is Dutch for “lake”) occupies the northeast corner of New York City’s Central Park, in a section of park that was added to the original site, which had originally ended at 106th Street.
Harlem Meer, lies north of the Conservatory Garden, with a meandering shoreline that wraps around the bluff that contains the Blockhouse, the remains of gun emplacements erected for the War of 1812, which never saw action.
The Meer, as Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux called it, was excavated in the lowest-lying section of the park, a semi-brackish, partly tidal wetland, which drained slowly into the East River; as Harlem Commons It separated the former suburb of Harlem to the north from the lower part of Manhattan Island.
To avoid the swamp, the Boston Post Road had detoured westwards into the future park site, rising to cross McGown’s Pass. The Meer and its wooded landscape were carried out by Andrew Haswell Green, to Olmsted and Vaux’s specifications, from 1861, while Olmsted had been relegated to an advisory capacity.
Sharon Cuff was born in Pennsylvania, graduated from the former Philadelphia Dance Academy. A foreign exchange student to France, USSR, and England. She graduated from Boston Conservatory of Music – BFA degree. Former hair designer/stylist within all mediums of the entertainment field.
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