Located high above the cove of the Harlem Meer at the north end of Central
Park and directly behind the Conservatory Garden is the Mount,a barren
area that is currently used as the site of the
Park’s chief composting operation. Here,
leaves and branches are collected to be
recycled into plant food. Rarely visited, few
people really notice the remains of an old
foundation wall from a bygone era.
In 1750 a tavern was built on this site. In
1759 it was sold to Catherine McGown, the
widow of a Scottish sea captain. The adjacent
road running along the north slope was
renamed McGown’s Pass. Gentlemen riding
on horseback through the pass would frequent
McGown's Pass Tavern and it became a favorite
watering hole.
Catherine and the subsequent generations of
McGown’s operated the tavern until the
1840s when the Sisters of Charity of
St. Vincent de Paul purchased it. By the
mid-1850s, seventy sisters belonged to
the convent, which ran a boarding academy
for two hundred young ladies. The facility
included a sizable brick chapel and refectory.
Everything changed in 1858 when the
New York State legislature approved the
acquisition of the land for Central Park.
Realizing their days at the Mount were
numbered, the sisters moved to the Bronx
where the convent and school still flourish.
For a short while the vacated buildings were
used by the park commissioners for offices,
but were then made into military hospitals
during the Civil War from 1861 to 1865.
Ironically, after the war the old wooden building
became a tavern again, while the chapel was
modified into a statue gallery featuring the
works of Thomas Crawford, a notable American
sculptor of that era.
In the decades to follow, the tavern became a
hangout
for politicians and wealthy sportsmen like
William H. Vanderbilt and August Belmont.
Change occurred again when a fire in 1881
destroyed the Mount St. Vincent buildings,
an event which fueled an even greater
resurrection called appropriately,"McGown’s Pass Tavern".
During the early 1900s, the tavern prospered
with wealthy Manhattanites, but the years prior
to World War I saw its popularity fade. In 1915,
the city ousted the lessee of the property and
auctioned off all its artifacts. In 1917, the
tavern like so many historical sites in New York
was torn down for the last time.
The city government of New York has fondly
provided us the ruins of a brick retaining wall
and a compost heap as a recollection of things
past. A plaque commemorating the first home
in New York of the Sisters of Charity of
St. Vincent de Paul can be found within a rock
on the left side of the path opposite the
Meer’s cove.
