Bethesda Terrace was conceived as the great meeting point of Central Park, the place where the walk culminates before the lake. In designing it, the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and the English architect Calvert Vaux set the paths of those on foot apart from those travelling by carriage, so that the visitor descends to the fountain along a ceremonial terrace without ever crossing the traffic at the same level.

The arcade that opens in this image belongs to that route and holds in its ceiling a rarity, since it is the only suspended ceiling in the world faced with encaustic tiles from the English manufacturer Minton, whose golden glow comes down over those who pass beneath.

In the distance, framed by the arches, appears the fountain with the sculpture "Angel of the Waters", which the American sculptor Emma Stebbins conceived in 1873 to celebrate the arrival of clean water in the city through the Croton Aqueduct, which since 1842 had replaced the unhealthy well water New York used to drink. The work was the first major public art commission entrusted to a woman in New York.