New York City · US

Balcony Bridge

On the west side of Central Park's Lake, near 77th Street, a slender stone span carries the busy West Drive over a narrow water inlet. This is Balcony Bridge, one of the park's most picturesque ornamental crossings, designed by Calvert Vaux in the early 1860s as part of Frederick Law Olmsted and Vaux's layered network of drives, paths and arches. Its name comes from a delightful quirk of design: two small balcony-like alcoves with stone benches jutting out over the water on the east side, intended as a resting place to pause and take in the view. Standing on those balconies, you look southeast across the open water of the Lake, framed by clustered trees, with the uptown towers of Manhattan rising beyond—among the most scenic panoramas in the park. Yet the bridge itself is just as rewarding seen from the opposite shore of the Ramble or gliding past in a rowboat, its pale greywacke and schist arch often mirrored dramatically in the surface of the water.