To this date, this remains the only known specific public meteorological observing site in the United States to be initiated by the act of legislation. On May 5, 1869, legislation was passed in New York State that authorized the erection and maintenance of a weather observatory in Central Park, along with the Museum of Natural History and an astronomical observatory. In 1868, the annual cost for the observatory was stated as $1005 in labor and $135.06 for materials. Observations officially were taken on the roof of the Arsenal Building on 5th Avenue in Central Park East. Daniel Draper, was appointed on December 28. The first and only director of this New York Meteorological Observatory, Dr. Daniel Draper, the first and only director of the New Yorkīy 1868, the Central Park Board of Commissioners made an application to the State of New York to establish a permanent meteorological observatory in Central Park to serve New York City. These were published in the 1867 Annual Report of the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park as data collected at the “Central Park Observatory”. In 1867, the Central Park Meteorological Department was created and took the first daily weather observations. Located about midway in Central Park, atop one of the highest points of land around, the whereabouts of Belvedere Castle are rather atypical when compared to the urbanized canyons of the rest of the city.īack in 1866, the annual report of the Board of Commissioners of Central Park discussed an intent to maintain a system of meteorological observations to obtain facts that would be of general scientific interest. Remarkably, on Januthe official New York City station reached 100 years at its current location at Belvedere Castle in Central Park. As a result, the primary climate stations in most cities today are at airports, often miles from where the core of a city’s population lives or works. As these offices were moved, continuing a climatological record in the ‘city’ largely ceased, as finding suitable land for locating equipment or observers for taking these observations proved a challenge.

Outside of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Atlantic City, Charleston, and New Orleans, most other cities across the country lost their downtown or urban center weather stations to airports back in the 1940s and 1950s, when the Weather Bureau relocated most offices to airports to serve the growing needs of the aviation community. New York City remains an anomaly of sorts, in that the primary long-term climate station is located not in an airport – but in a park. Editor's Note: The information in this story was first presented by Christopher Stachelski before the American Meteorological Society (AMS) 100th Annual Meeting in January, 2020.

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