July 9, 2002

2:24 PM

Prison in the Park
Central Park is a lot of things: the pastoral center of New York City, a relaxing stroll on a Saturday afternoon, a patch of grass lined with horse manure. It’s also home to a minimum-security prison...
posted by cell divide (7 comments total)

well not quite... it overlooks the park on central park north. It's not like there's a facility underneath the great lawn or anything. That would be a lot cooler, however. Also the morning news has a real subtle and attractive design.
posted by pinto at 3:10 PM on July 9, 2002

Glaring error in the first paragraph, though:
At the southeast corner of the park, the AOL-Time Warner Center will soon dominate Columbus Circle ...

Columbus Circle (and the new AOLTWC) is at the southwest corner of the park.
posted by UrbanFigaro at 3:26 PM on July 9, 2002

I love TMN, but this story was rather less than utterly-fascinating. I kept waiting for the journalist to go inside and tell us about it. But he didn't.
posted by Marquis at 4:04 PM on July 9, 2002

And to jump on, too, the title of the article correctly portrays the facility, "Prison on the Park"; the link from this post, however, has "Prison in the Park", which (as pinto pointed out) is just not true.

Just to set things straight...
posted by delfuego at 4:40 PM on July 9, 2002

Someday soon, we'll be hiring that damn fact-checking department....
posted by rosecrans at 6:45 PM on July 9, 2002

Rosecrans, come into the "office." Time to have a little "talk."
posted by ftrain at 9:46 PM on July 9, 2002

Aerial view of the block. The "prison" would seem to be the beige, capital-I-shaped building around mid-block; one can see by the shadow that it's taller than its neighbors.

I had once intended to walk all the way around the park, in stages, when I lived in the city. I only achieved about 80%, because the northern quarter of the park was reputed to be simply too dangerous to go into. Having stumbled onto junkies injecting each other in Morningside Park, I took this seriously, even though I was also told that Central Park North was one of the relatively safest (and toniest) places in Harlem. I took a lot of chances I perhaps shouldn't have (lower east side/alphabet city; sheep meadow at night -- a very cool crowd). I managed to avoid street crime, with the exception of being pickpocketed on a crowded subway platform. One acquaintance who came to town ventured down the tunnel between the subway and Penn Station, and got pulped. He had to go to a job interview black and blue. Um, anyway, I wish I'd completed my plan; and I never did see as much of the park as I'd intended.
posted by dhartung at 1:02 AM on July 10, 2002