The Ramble and Lake

Notable buildings and structures of Central Park. Click on the map and then on the points for details.

The Ramble and Lake are two geographic features of Central Park in Manhattan, New York City. Part of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux's 1857 Greensward Plan for Central Park, the features are located on the west side of the park between the 66th and 79th Street transverses.

The 38-acre (150,000 m²) Ramble, located on the north shore of the Lake, is a forested area with highly varied topography and numerous winding walks, designated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation as a protected nature preserve. It was designed as a "wild garden" away from carriage drives and bridle paths, in which to be wandered, or to be viewed as a "natural" landscape. The Ramble includes several rustic bridges, and formerly contained a small cave. Historically, it has been frequented for both birdwatching and cruising.

The serpentine 20-acre (81,000 m²) Lake offers dense naturalistic planting, rocky outcrops of glacially scarred Manhattan bedrock, small open glades, and an artificial stream (the Gill) that empties through the Azalea Pond, then down a cascade into the Lake. At the northwestern corner of the Lake, the ground rises toward Vista Rock, crowned by a lookout and folly named Belvedere Castle. The western shore includes the Ladies' Shelter, the southern shore contains a waterfront porch called Bethesda Terrace, and the eastern shore contains the Loeb Boathouse.