Hamilton Fish Park Play Center (New York City, New York)

 pavilion, locker room / lockers, Beaux-Arts (architecture)

Designed c. 1900 in the Beaux Arts style by Carrère & Hastings based on Charles Girault's 1895 Petit Palais in Paris. The park's mission was to help assimilate new immigrants into the life of the city and the nation. It was felt that nature, like reading, could nurture citizenship, and architecture could help provide access to it. The building is now used as a community center.

The play center dates from 1900 and was the park’s gymnasium and the only surviving element from the original park design. The play center is a richly-detailed Beaux Arts structure clad in brick and limestone. It is one story with a Mansard roof and two monumental, arched entrance porticos, one on Pitt Street and the other facing the park. Each façade of the free-standing building is composed of repeating arched bays flanked by heavy piers. Above each arched bay, the stone cornice has a pedimental form with sculpted lion heads above each pier below.

www.nytimes.com/1992/09/06/arts/architecture-view-a-new...