Central Park’s mistaken ‘Gate of the Exonerated’
Gate of the Exonerated”, the first Central Park gate to be named since 1862, was dedicated on Dec. 19 to the “Central Park Five”, exonerated exactly 20 years ago of the April 19, 1989 rape of “Central Park Jogger” Trisha Meili, and other exonerees.
Central Park’s chief architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, believed naming the park gates after occupations that helped make New York City a great metropolis also supported the North’s free labor system over the slave system of the South.
I agree with Olmsted.
The original 18 gate names were for: Artisans, Artists, Boys, Children, Engineers, Farmers, Girls, The Gate of All Saints, Hunters, Mariners, Merchants, Miners, Pioneers, Scholars, Warriors, Women, Woodmen and Strangers’ Gate at W. 106th St., commemorating the prominent role immigrants have played in the city’s development.
Politicizing landmarked Central Park, opened to the public in 1858, was a bad precedent and slippery slope. Lawyers will surely co-opt Gate of the Exonerated, located at the park’s entrance on 110th St. between Fifth and Lenox Ave., as a political backdrop for photo ops with their wrongfully-convicted clients.
The newest park gate, approved unanimously by the city Public Design Commission, had been in the works for more than two years.
Supporters were so excited about the unveiling of Gate of the Exonerated that the Central Park Conservancy began carving the name for the park’s exterior sandstone wall before the commission had voted yea on Dec. 12.
Had I been asked my recommendations for naming the first Central Park gate since Abraham Lincoln was president 160 years ago, I would not have suggested Gate of the Exonerated. Instead, I would’ve offered a list of gate names to honor distinguished Harlemites and war heroes.
“Harlem Heroes Gate” would recognize recently-deceased Rev. Calvin Butts, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Billie Holiday, Paul Robeson, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Cicely Tyson, Tupac Shakur or Sammy Davis Jr. Statues of Ellington and Frederick Douglass grace the park perimeter at 110th St.
Gates honoring the end of World War I, II or the Civil War would also be more fitting than one immortalizing the Exonerated Five. “Emancipation Gate” would memorialize the Emancipation Proclamation, issued by Lincoln on Jan. 1, 1863, and the 13th Amendment — passed by Congress on Jan. 1, 1865 and ratified on Dec. 6, 1865 — abolishing slavery in the United States.
How about “Olmsted & Vaux Gate” to honor Central Park’s architects? Or “Seneca Village Gate” to permanently mark the landscape along what is now the park’s perimeter from W. 82nd to W. 89th Sts. That was the site of Seneca Village, a community of predominantly African-Americans, many of whom owned property.
Retired NYPD Detective Eric Reynolds was assigned to the Central Park Precinct on the night of the crime. Reynolds arrested three of the Five, aged 14-to-16, near the ravine at 102nd St. where Meili was found beaten, bloodied and sexually violated by Matias Reyes, whose DNA cleared the Five in 2002. By then, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Korey Wise, Raymond Santana and Kevin Richardson had spent between six-and-a-half and 13 years in prison.
The five defendants sued the city of New York for malicious prosecution, racial discrimination and emotional distress; the city settled the suit in 2014 for $41 million. A sixth defendant, Steven Lopez, was exonerated on July 25, 2022 when the Manhattan DA’s office filed a motion to vacate his conviction for robbing a male jogger.
“Trisha Meili should’ve gotten a gate named for her before they did,” Reynolds told me.
“Victims’ Gate” would spotlight victims, like Meili, of violent crime in the park and “Steven McDonald Gate” would pay tribute to late NYPD officer gunned down and paralyzed on July 12, 1986 near the entrance at Fifth Ave. and 106th St.
Councilwoman Gale Brewer, whose district covers the entire 843-acre Central Park, sees merit in both Victims’ Gate and Steven McDonald Gate.
“But,” cautions Brewer, “Gate of the Exonerated is very important to the people of Harlem.”
Karen Horry, chair of the community board’s Exonerated Five and Social Justice Reform sub-committee, would go further than Gate of the Exonerated. She recommends “a permanent, commemorative exhibit to the Exonerated Five and social justice reform” within the park that wouldn’t include Meili.
Horry argues the rape of Meili and the exoneration of the Five were “two different incidents. The Exonerated Five did not commit the crime.”
As I wrote in a May 21, 2021 Daily News column, an inside-the-park recognition of the Five, excluding the victim Meili, is a divisive idea that whitewashes history.
Sorry, Ms. Horry. No one gets a statue, monument or permanent commemorative exhibit in Central Park until they’re dead.