MULTISENSORY: Central Park’s secret cave

They don’t know it, but this couple, rowing leisurely in Central Park’s lake on a summer Sunday, is about to float past one of the park’s lesser-known features: a cave, hidden beneath a tumble of boulders on the shore of a leaf-shrouded inlet.

The cave is not easy to find, though it’s hardly undiscovered; it took me nearly half an hour of wandering the Ramble’s labyrinthine paths and hopping fences and scaling boulders to spot the narrow stone staircase heading down into the underbrush. As I descended into the woods, the ambient temperature dropped and a new, private breeze seemed to ruffle the leaves. The air was redolent with the mineral bite of schist and the acrid tang of leaf decay, with an undercurrent of stagnant lake algae. I could see one of the original entrances to the cave at the base of the stairs, a narrow slot between the boulders that had been bricked over.

The story behind the Ramble Cave is a mysterious one. According to some accounts, the cave was discovered around September 1857; as a New York Times article from that month reported:

The Central Park Conservancy website states that Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux intended the thirty-six-acre woodland area surrounding the cave, now known as the Ramble, to be the park’s “wild garden.” The preexisting cavern was unearthed when their crew was excavating soil from the area. Realizing its future interest to children and adventurous park-goers, Olmsted and Vaux arranged boulders around the entrances and built a narrow stone staircase to access it.

But not long after, allegedly, sinister events began to unfold within its depths. It was allegedly used as a hideaway for at least one Upper West Side teenage runaway, not to mention the homeless, as well as a site for robberies, suicides, and numerous instances of harrassment, if not worse. In the 1930s, both of the cave’s entrances, one by the lakeshore and one adjacent to to the Ramble Arch, were blocked off. On the afternoon of my visit, the only evidence of unsavory goings-on were some torn condom wrappers and a black nylon glove.

Sticks had been erected beneath the rock overhang near the old entrance, suggesting some recent cave-dwellers might have made more of an enclosed shelter there, or even lit a campfire hidden from sharp-eyed guards.

Perched on a rock in the shade, I could see and hear park walkers on paths above me, but I savored the delightful knowledge that no one could see me. A teenager paused for a moment to lean against the metal railing and look out over the lake, whistling, with no idea that I was just a few feet beneath him. This was his view.

A pair of millennial girls in crop tops pass by, discussing the pros and cons of real estate brokers and how to negotiate security deposits. Another woman, on her cell phone, exclaimed,  “But I thought you were dating a lawyer!?” Two new parents and a set of grandparents passed by the lookout, pushing an empty stroller and passing the mewling newborn between them. I gazed out at the inlet of sparkling water, watching a turtle’s head popping in and out of the scrim of algae. The sun cast dappled shadows on the swampy shore. This was my private view of the park, shared by no one.

From somewhere across the water, I heard the thumps of a drum circle, laughter. A bird took flight, shaking the leaves. The rockface was sharp and cool and gritty under my palms as I inhaled the smell of lake water, then clambered up the ancient staircase, scaled the fence, and looked back to where I had been, now hidden by rocks and leaves, almost as if it had never been there at all.