Bow Bridge

Sixty feet of cast iron drawn in a single low arc across the Lake, Bow Bridge is the park's most proposed-on piece of infrastructure and one of the oldest cast-iron bridges in America, built in 1862 to Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould's design. The name is literal — it curves like an archer's bow — and the planters at each end and interlaced railing give it the air of garden furniture scaled up to landscape.

What you're really here for is the view from mid-span: the San Remo's twin towers rising over the trees to the west, the Dakota's gables beyond, rowboats stitching wakes below. In late October the Ramble's foliage doubles itself in the water and the bridge becomes the park's best ten minutes of standing still.