San Francisco used to be the only city where tourists would flock to see an orange gate. Not so this winter. The Golden Gate Bridge had some competition. Thousands of tourists filled New York’s Central Park in the middle of February snows to view 7,500, 16-foot-tall gates along 23 miles of walkways in New York City’s Central Park. Saffron-colored fabric panels were suspended from the top of the gates, which were spaced about 12 feet apart. The art display required about 600 workers to set up Feb. 12.
The vivid gates enlivened the snow-covered park and from far away became a bright spot in gray Gotham. The installation remained for 16 days, after which the gates were dismantled and recycled.
The contemporary display took artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude 26 years to complete. They financed the $20 million project themselves.
The project used:
• 116,389 miles of nylon thread specially woven into 1,067,330 square feet of recyclable, ripstop fabric
• 5,290 tons of steel equal to two-thirds of the steel in the Eiffel Tower
• 165,000 bolts and nuts
• 60 miles of vinyl tube
• 40 miles of hem
Part of Central Park’s original design included steel gates at every entrance. They were never installed.
