Central Park Conservancy | Herbert Minton | Bethesda Terrace Arcade | Calvert Vaux

Go ahead and stare at Central Park's restored Bethesda Terrace Arcade - you're in good company. • Photographs by Beth Perkins

There's a new crowd magnet in Central Park. True, it's a ceiling, but it's not just any ceiling. The Minton tile ceiling in the Bethesda Terrace Arcade is the architectural centerpiece of the 843- acre park, which was created by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. Originally installed in 1869, the 15,876 elaborately patterned tiles designed by Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould lasted longer than a century. But by 1983, the tiles had become stained and cracked, and they were falling from the 16- foot-high ceiling. "Restoration was beyond the park's budget at the time," says Central Park Conservancy project director James Reed. "So the tiles were crated and put into storage in 1984 while the newly formed Conservancy [worked to] acquire the expertise, staff, grants, and private funding necessary to do the job." This past March, 23 years later and after a $7 million makeover, the ceiling has made its long-awaited comeback and has regained its status as the world's only suspended encaustic-tile ceiling.

A lost art, the making of encaustic tiles was developed by Cistercian monks in the twelfth century and revived in England by Herbert Minton in the 1840s. Encaustic tiles are unique because their pattern is inlaid rather than created with a surface glaze. Blank clay tiles are embossed, and the resulting slips are filled with colored clay and fi red, one shade at a time. Minton encaustic tile was chosen for both the floor and the ceiling of the 5,292-square-foot columned chamber. The floor tiles lasted only about 40 years - they were removed in 1912 and replaced with the existing quarry-tile floor, which has proved to be far more durable.