Ruby Washington/The New York Times After refurbishing, cannons that sank in the East River in 1780 will be on display in Central Park.Central Park is bringing back its big guns.
For most of the 20th century, two 18th-century cannons graced a bluff in the park that overlooked Harlem Meer. They survived a mysterious sinking off Hell Gate of a British frigate reputedly laden with gold, the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and a fire at a museum near the Conservatory Garden. But during the city’s 1970s fiscal crisis, the weapons fell victim to vandalism and neglect.
Hustled off to a warehouse on Randalls Island, the cannons have not been seen by the public for decades. Now, Central Park’s only heavy artillery is being conserved and is expected by this summer to be installed, once again, at the promontory overlooking Fifth Avenue at 106th Street.
The reconstruction of Fort Clinton and Nutter’s Battery Overlooks, by the Central Park Conservancy and the parks department, was approved recently by the city’s Design Commission. While the histories of those former military fortifications were fairly well established, the provenance of the cannons was considerably murkier.
They were originally thought to have been installed to protect the city from a British invasion launched from Long Island Sound during the War of 1812. But an authoritative account by Sara Cedar Miller, a historian for the conservancy, dates the big guns back more than 240 years to the 28-gun HMS Hussar commissioned in England in 1763. (Actually, only one is an actual cannon. The other is a cannonade or mortar.)
Attached to the British fleet in New York, the Hussar ran aground in treacherous East River currents in 1780 and sank. Because it was believed to be carrying an army payroll made up of gold, for more than two centuries the ship has attracted salvage efforts, which retrieved no gold but, among other artifacts, the two cannons, which â€" after languishing in salt water for as long as 80 years â€" were anonymously donated to Central Park in 1865 while it was still under construction.
The artillery was originally displayed at the Arsenal, now the Parks Department headquarters on Fifth Avenue at 64th Street, and later at a museum in the former chapel of the Mount Saint Vincent convent at 105th Street. The museum burned in 1881. The cannons survived, although their whereabouts for the next two decades is uncertain.
They re-emerged in 1905 when the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, founded by Andrew Haswell Green, persuaded the parks department to install them at the site of Fort Clinton. This was originally called McGown’s Pass, a British fortification built during the Revolutionary War and then rebuilt during the War of 1812, when it was renamed to honor Mayor DeWitt Clinton.
The cannons perched on a granite base (with a plaque that wrongly attributed their origin to the War of 1812) until the 1960s or ’70s.
“The empty chunk of granite where they had been positioned symbolized and coincided with the loss of New York City’s fiscal power to maintain its park and its historic monuments,†Ms. Miller wrote.
The Central Park Conservancy retrieved them in 1996. Last January, while removing centuries of rust, two restorers discovered that the mortar contained a cannonball and live ammunition. The police bomb squad was summoned.
The cannons will be reinstalled at Fort Clinton. Even though that is not where they originated, their placement, within sight of where the Hussar sank, seems appropriate.
“Indeed,†Ms. Miller wrote, “British soldiers probably viewed that disaster through their spyglasses from the very spot where the cannon and mortar will once again be placed.â€
A version of this article appears in print on 03/24/2014, on page A17 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Big Guns Will Return to Defend Central Park.