Vince Davenport: Chief Engineer and Director of Construction
Jonita Davenport: Project Director.

One hundred fifty-one years ago the City of New York purchased a large piece of land and asked the two landscape architects, Mr. Calvert Vaux and Mr. Fredrick Law Olmstead to design a public park.

The park is entirely man-made, all the trees had to be planted, soil was brought, there was only swamps and the rocks which had been pushed in by glaciers billions of years ago.

Mr. Vaux and Mr. Olmstead surrounded the park with a stone wall, leaving entrances to the park at each interruption in the wall, where a walkway starts, those entrances are called Gates.

Today, there are no gates at those entrances but Mr. Vaux and Mr.Olmstead had planned to install steel gates to lock the park at night.

The city hired a designer for those gates, but Mr. Olmstead disliked the complicated design and decided that there would be no closing gates, however the name gates remained. Many of these park entrances have names: Mariners Gate; Boys and Girls Gate; Artists Gate; Emigrants Gate; Explorers Gate; Inventors Gate...

The geometric grid pattern of the hundreds city blocks surrounding Central Park was reflected in the rectangular structure of the commanding and sculptural saffron colored vinyl poles, while the serpentine design of the walkways and the organic shape of the bare branches of the trees was mirrored in the continuously changing rounded and sensual movements of the free-flowing nylon panels moving in the wind.

After Michael R. Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City, announced, on January 22, 2003, that a 43-page contract had been signed permitting New York artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude to realize their temporary work of art: The Gates, Central Park, New York, 1979-2005, the fabrication of all the materials was started. The installation, at the site in Central Park, was completed with the blooming of the 7,503 fabric panels on February 12, 2005.

The 7,503 gates, 16 feet  (4,87 meters) tall varied in width from 5 feet 6 inches to 18 feet (1,68 to 5,48 meters) according to the 25 different widths of walkways, on  23 miles (37 kilometers) of walkways in Central Park. Free-hanging saffron colored fabric panels, suspended from the horizontal top part of the gates, came down to approximately 7 feet (2,13 meters) above the ground. The gates were spaced at 12 foot (3,65 meter) intervals, except where low branches extended above the walkways. The gates and the fabric panels were seen from far away through the leafless branches of the trees. The work of art remained for 16 days, then the gates were removed and the materials industrially recycled.

The 5 inch (12,7 cm) square vertical and horizontal poles were extruded in 60 miles (96,5 km.) of saffron-colored vinyl. The vertical poles were secured by 15,006 narrow steel base footings, 613-837 pounds (278-380 kilograms) each, positioned on the paved surfaces. No holes were made in the ground.

The components of The Gates were fabricated off-site by seven manufacturers located on the East Coast of the USA. The weaving and sewing of the fabric panels were done in Germany.

In teams of eight, 600 workers wearing The Gates uniforms, were responsible for installing 100 gates per team. The monitoring and removal teams included an additional 300 uniformed workers. The monitors assisted the public, answering questions and distributing 1-million free fabric samples. All workers were financially compensated and received breakfast in the morning, and one hot meal a day. Professional security worked in the park after dark.

As Christo and Jeanne-Claude have always done for their previous projects, The Gates was entirely financed by the artists through their C.V.J. Corp, (Jeanne-Claude Javacheff, President) with the sale of preparatory studies, drawings, collages, and scale models, earlier works of the fifties and sixties, and original lithographs on other subjects.

The artists do not accept sponsorship or donations.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude donated the merchandising rights to the charitable foundation NNYN (Nurture New York’s Nature and the Arts) who are sharing the proceeds with The Central Park Conservancy.

The people of New York used the park as usual.

For those who walked through The Gates, following the walkways, the saffron-colored fabric  was a golden ceiling creating warm shadows  When seen from the buildings surrounding Central Park, The Gates seemed like a golden river appearing and disappearing through the bare branches of the trees and highlighting the shape of the meandering footpaths.

Some of the materials:

• 5,290 US Tons of steel (4,799 Metric Tons) (10,580,000 pounds) (equal to 2/3 the steel in the Eiffel Tower) for 15,006 specially designed steel footing weights, varying between 615 and 837 pounds each, according to the width of the gate, (279 - 379 Kg.). Gates varied in width because there are 25 different widths of walkways in Central Park. The weights rested on the hard surface of the walkways. There were no holes in Central Park.

• 315,491 linear feet (60 miles) (96.5 Km.) of Vinyl tube, 5 inch x 5 inch square, (12,7 x 12,7 cm.) extruded in saffron color, recyclable, specially designed, (for each gate: 2 vertical 16 feet long (4,87 meter), and one horizontal (varying between 6 and 18 feet, because the width of the walkways varies).

• 15,006 specially designed, recyclable, cast aluminum upper corner reinforcements which held together the 2 vertical poles to the horizontal pole.

• 15,006 base anchor sleeves. Which were bolted to the steel footing weights.

• 15,006 (1/2 inch x 8 inch x 8 inch) (1.27 x 22,8 x 22,8 cm.) steel leveling plates. The leveling plates were installed between the base anchor sleeve and the steel base. Each leveling plate held a pivoting bolt which ensured the perfect verticality of the poles, even when the walkways were inclined.

• 165,132 bolts and self locking nuts. (7,506 x 22)

• 15,006 (8 x 8 x 8 inch) (22,8 x 22,8 x 22,8 cm.) Vinyl leveling plate covers, which hid the bolts.

• 116,389 miles (187,311 Km.) of nylon thread extruded in saffron color and specially woven into 1,067,330 square feet (99,155 square meters) of recyclable, rip-stop fabric, and then shipped to the sewing factory to be cut and sewn into 7,503 fabric panels of various widths. 46 miles (74 Km.) of hems.

The Gates remained in Central park for 16 days. Removal started on February 28, 2005 and was completed on March 11, 2005.

You might wish to learn more about Over The River, Project for the Arkansas River, State of Colorado, started in 1992, a work of art by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, now in progress,