New York Cycle Club   Photos

The Gates
Click on any picture for a larger view.

 

Page   1   2   3   4   5   6  

For many the first inkling that anything was afoot came when thousands of black blocks appeared lining foot paths throughout Central Park in January, 2005. Someone innocently asked in a post on the NYCC message board if anybody knew what they were for. Of course someone knew! They were bases for Christo and Jeanne Claude’s The Gates exhibition. A couple threads on the message board then quickly burgeoned and rollicked with a scorching diversity of opinion and debate about the merits of the installation. It seems NYCC members held deeply felt and widely diverging opinions and were not shy about voicing them. Check out the the posts for yourself by clicking here and here.

The gates themselves began appearing in early February, with their curtains neatly furled about the top. The unfurling and official first day of the installation was on Saturday, February 12. The public then flocked to Central Park in large numbers. The show officially closed on Sunday, February 27.

GATES STATS:

  • 7,503 gates
  • 5,290 tons of steel
  • 315,491 linear feet of vinyl tubing
  • 165,000 bolts and self-locking nuts
  • 15,000 steel plates to level the gates
  • 116,389 miles of nylon thread
  • 1,067,330 square feet of recyclable fabric

The following photographs give some sense of the impact The Gates had on the lives of New Yorkers. Thanks to the NYCC members who contributed photographs: Michael Casey, Darrell Fisher, Tom Laskey, Timothy McCarthy, Anthony Poole, Barbara Spandorf and Ed White.


The Prelude: black bases line the Central Park’s foot paths

 

Eventually workers started putting up the gates.

Up they go.

 

All over the park.

A cyclist got his laps in as the wicket-like structures continued to sprout up all over the place.

 

All sorts of people began visiting the park. The City was abuzz, awaiting the great unfurling of the curtains on February 12.

Next