6. Central Park Café Pavilion

In 1964, a bill was introduced in the Assembly that prohibited the construction of the Huntington Hartford sidewalk cafe in Cen­tral Park. Huntington Hartford, heir to the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company fortune, originally offered to build a two-level cafe at the southeast corner of the park as a gift to the city. Robert Moses accepted the offer on April 27, 1960, and received $862,500 from Hartford to build the cafe. Several civic groups, including the Park Association of the City of New York and the Municipal Art Society, argued that the pavilion would set a precedent for construction of other build­ings in the area and harm Central Park as an institution.