By Dianne Durante As one walks around Central Park, statues, monuments, and memorials pop up left and right. Come along for the ride as the Gotham Center for New York City History explores this history of some of these Central Park landmarks. Adapted from "The Earliest Sculptures In Central Park": August 14, 2018, an article that originally appeared on the Gotham Center blog here.

Edmund Vincent Gillon shot thousands of photographs documenting New York’s architecture and public art from the 1970s to the 1990s. Among Gillon’s rolls, his keen eye for civic sculpture stands out. Admire this set of memorable monuments, part of the Museum of the City of New York’s collection:

William Shakespeare monument, Central Park, ca. 1975. John Quincy Adams Ward (1830-1910) created the sculpture of William Shakespeare located at the south end of the Mall. This was the first sculpture of a writer to be placed on the Mall, which is also known as Literary Walk.