City on Ice: Skating the Upper West Side, Then and Now  

By Yvonne Vávra

She fell and then got up again. Fell again, got up again. Once more to the ground, and right back up she went. The woman I was watching on the ice at the new Gottesman Rink in Central Park skated like a true New Yorker: daring, falling, and rising, perpetually. In that way, she embodied the spirit of the rink itself, open for its first season at the Davis Center by the Harlem Meer, after the run-down Lasker Rink was demolished in 2021 and the $160-million recreation space rose from the rubble.

There’s something about ice skating in Central Park, especially when you’re just watching.

The backdrop to Wollman Rink, at the southern end of the park, is iconic. It takes your cold breath away. You’re inside a coffee-table book of grand New York, watching small figures circle the ice while the skyline behind them holds its straight lines. Skaters loop and stumble below, while the perfectly posed city watches, just like you. You and the city, out on a date.

The feeling is different at Gottesman Rink. Here, the spectacle is framed by tall, straight trees, in a part of the park left closest to Manhattan’s original topography. The woods on the hill feel almost untamed, the opposite of Wollman’s carefully arranged backdrop, and just as impressive. This is the city with its guard down — less makeup, less manicure.

My favorite backdrop is one I’ve never seen in person. It lives in a photograph from the late 19th century: fashionably dressed New Yorkers skating across the frozen lake in Central Park, the newly built Dakota rising at the corner of 72nd Street behind them. It stands there all alone, watching.

I linger over the men in tailored coats and elegant top hats, skating in pairs and small groups, or simply standing around chatting. In a later photograph, taken around 1900, two women in elaborate hats and long coats with puffy sleeves skate arm in arm. By then, the Dakota has a companion: the Hotel Majestic at the southern corner of 72nd Street, newly opened in 1894 — ten years after its pioneering neighbor.

I recognize the Lake, the Dakota, even the small wooden boat landing where I often sit and look toward the Bow Bridge. And still it feels like somewhere else entirely. Without the buildings that now line the park, it’s missing its familiar frame. The city, as I know it, hasn’t arrived yet. All those huge hats certainly don’t help.

The Lake was the first landscape in Central Park to open to the public in December 1858, and New Yorkers flocked to it. 8,000 of them, on skates. Ice skating was hugely popular at the time, in part because it was one of the few socially acceptable ways for women and men to mingle in the 19th century. According to the Central Park Conservancy, as many as 30,000 New Yorkers from all walks of city life entered the park each day, just to glide across the ice.

Ice skating became so hot that it spilled beyond the Lake. Indoor rinks were a huge hit, and the Upper West Side had several of them. In November 1896, the St. Nicholas Rink opened at 69 West 66th Street, on the corner of Columbus Avenue — until last year the site of the ABC campus. It was one of the first indoor ice rinks in the country to use mechanically frozen ice, made in the basement. Lounging rooms with fireplaces surrounded the rink, along with rooms for reading, smoking, and taking tea.

In 1916, restaurant impresario Thomas J. Healy opened an ice rink at his trendy restaurant on 66th and Broadway. In the afternoon, it was open to the public; at night, Healy put on lavish shows featuring skaters of international fame, delighting crowds far into the morning hours.

The show went on even when New York’s ice controller, Benjamin Odell, ordered all rinks to close on March 1, 1918, citing a wartime shortage of ammonia, which was needed to make ice. Both St. Nicholas Rink and Healy’s defied the order. As reported by The New York Times, St. Nicholas insisted they had enough ammonia to last until the end of the season: “We do not desire any more ammonia.”

Odell didn’t care to be outsmarted. Making clear that the state could potentially seize the gas, he replied, “But perhaps we will need that ammonia — perhaps we will need it to make ice for the babies on the east side this Summer. How about that?”

The rinks didn’t care about the babies, they kept gliding on. But soon, St. Nicholas became primarily a boxing arena, and Healy’s skating spectacles eventually fell victim to Prohibition. By that time, he had already had to shut down his other Upper West Side skating extravaganza, the Crystal Carnival Ice Rink at 95th and Broadway, the corner of today’s Symphony Space. The indoor ice age was over.

Who would want to skate under a roof anyway, when we have Central Park, where sunlight, moonlight, and city lights compete to shine on us? Still, I find myself drawn once more to the edge of the Lake, trying to skate into the past. I can’t. But the way I know her, the city wouldn’t want me to anyway. She expects me to be present, eyes forward, for the whole new New York she can’t wait to show off. If I had one wish, though, it would be to bring back the elaborate hats.

Yvonne Vávra is a magazine writer and author of the German book 111 Gründe New York zu lieben (111 Reasons to Love New York). Born a Berliner but an aspiring Upper West Sider since the 1990s (thanks, Nora Ephron), she came to New York in 2010 and seven years later made her Upper West Side dreams come true. She’s been obsessively walking the neighborhood ever since.

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