Belvedere Castle Renovation, Central Park

Lead Designers Michael Hennes, Renata Gallo

Entry Description

The relighting of Central Park’s Belvedere Castle integrates thoughtful design and technology choices to highlight an 1872 landmark.
The client’s brief required the lighting renovations to touch the structure as minimally as possible. Our solution illuminates the castle using floodlights, mounted on poles that raise the lighting above surrounding foliage that might otherwise shroud these fixtures.
The adjacent wood pavilion’s openness is a counterpoint to the stone castle’s solidity. We lit the pavilion from within, using indirect lighting reflected off its ceilings. This scheme allows the pavilion’s details to read clearly without the light sources being visible and offers a compositional contrast to the castle’s external floodlighting.
Research revealed that lighting poles had existed on the paved plaza between the castle and pavilion since as early as 1900. For this reason, we added pole lights, newly outfitted with 3000K LED sources, back onto the plaza. The resulting design is both historically accurate and very energy efficient.
Resourceful lighting design gives this celebrated destination a renewed sense of place, ushering a beloved landmark into the 21st Century.

Company Description

Cline Bettridge Bernstein Lighting Design (CBB) is dedicated to enhancing the grace, utility, and comfort of architectural spaces with light. The 17-person firm is certified as a Women-Owned Business Enterprise (WBE) - locally by NY State and NY City, and nation-wide by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC).
CBB provides architectural lighting design services for buildings and sites of every type, size, and architectural style. This portfolio encompasses celebrated sites around the world.