Hi dear Xxxx Xxxx it's excellent you asked the group a question such as this. It's my experience that the hive mind opinions of an online group of very diverse people can really help in so many practical ways in life.
I'm an elder and hospice caregiver. And am an old fart myself though still able to help those older or more physically fragile than I am. Many elders struggle with getting a good long, restful sleep. Over the years of helping elders these are the tips I have found helpful.
Not getting a sustained sleep can be caused by many things. Overweight with the fat causing sleep apnea. Pre-diabetes, diabetes or weak bladder/kidneys can cause a person to get up one or multiple times a night to pee. Anxiety depression can be another major cause. Restless leg syndrome. Noise, too much light, too much visual or mental stimulation before sleep time. Lack of healthy sleep discipline and sleeping at odd hours that a natural sleep time does not develop. Jet lag.
This sleep issue needs to be thought about by you in detail, for you to really look at your life around sleep time.
I suggest that you for a month keep a sleep diary. Look at your body, mind and life around sleep, so you can pinpoint the issues that you can be aware of and so you can remedy. Or get the right professional medical help that does a sleep study on you.
For anxiety depression: I would like to second Xxxx Xxxx's recommendation for Trazodone. It's an antidepressant, prescribed by a doctor. In low doses, such as 50mgs to 100mg, it's used to help a person both go to sleep and stay asleep.
For overweight sleep apnea: Shed 20 pounds, see if that helps sleeping
For overweight, sleeping in a recliner, partially sitting up can be very effective.
For overactive bladder: pumpkin seed oil capsules, three times a day for two weeks then once an evening around dinner are remarkably effective. Pumpkin seed oil can be used for cooking. It's cheap. It's great for the hair and skin. But specifically for overactive bladder I recommend 1000mg three times a day with meals.
For general anxiety or feeling hyper L-Theanine, an amazingly effective deep sleep aid. It's also cheap. One scoop mixed in with anything before bed can be exceptionally helpful. it's gentle, no side effects.
Everything other people have said about sleep discipline, turning off the electronics, turning away from that intense light of an electronic screen makes huge practical sense. Seconding others' thoughts around warm feet, magnesium, ashwaganda and tart cherry juice which also helps gout.
I often need to get up in the night to help the elders I work for and when I do it can be hard to fall asleep again. I developed a system for myself using an ipad next to my bed on a flippy pillow with volume turned medium low. I pick a gentle romantic comedy film and put it on halfway or toward the end. For me it acts like a film lullaby. The films I use are Falling For Figaro on NetFlix and this episode of Pride and Prejudice on DailyMotion. Soothing, reassuring, gentle.
When I was about 12 years old in 1966, I used to go by myself to spend time near what became known as "the Fountain" in Central Park. It's located right in the middle of the park at 72nd Street. There is a large bronze statue of an angel standing on the top of a round fountain. Around the fountain are red bricks laid out in a terrace.
There are two grand stone stairways leading down onto the terrace and a colonnaded tunnel with arches between the stairways.
It's an elegant and captivating looking place. Thousands of photo shoots for weddings, tv and films have taken place there.
Beyond the terrace is the boat pond, where people can rent dinghies and row around. Nearby to the west is John Lennon's Imagine mosaic. Nearby to the east is the boat house restaurant and where one can rent dinghies. A little further east is the sailboat pond where people who have sailboat toys can sail them and the amazing, large Alice In Wonderland bronze statue looking on.
To the south is the Naumburg Bandshell where many concerts of all kinds have played and still play. Just beyond that is The Mall and Literary Walk, a walkway between tall elm trees. And near The Mall is the huge open lawn, known as Sheep Meadow, where there have been all kinds of gatherings, up to 100,000 people.
Scattered around the Fountain are many different stretches of lawn, often on gentle hillsides, perfect for lolling, people watching but also great for frisbee and touch football.
It's a great part of Central Park. It became in the 1960s where all kinds of people gathered to hang out together. A place of friendship, community, belonging, fun, dance, music, playing frisbee, skateboarding, touch football. It was where people smoked pot, took their LSD trips, shared info about political rallies, learned about where concerts were happening, found girlfriends, boyfriends, lovers, had conversations of all kinds.
This post is focused on the designer, Jacob Wrey Mould, who came up with the decorative details that embellished the stone work that framed the Fountain.
Walking around the Fountain, the grand stairways, the colonnaded tunnel, the balcony that overlooks the Fountain, there are these charming and beautiful works of art in stone created by Jacob Wrey Mould, embedded in the columns and walls.
This is a bird's eye view of the Fountain. The rowboat pond at the bottom and the skyline of Central Park South above.
For many young kids who were runaways, like I was, the area around the Fountain was a refuge, a place where for those who came regularly it felt like a found family. Many, many of the kids who gathered there came from seriously dysfunctional families. Those dysfunctional families could be fabulously rich, famous, powerful but also corrupted by alcoholism, drug and sex addiction. The dysfunctional families could be middle class or poor.
Lots of kids came to hang out near the Fountain from the various schools in the city. Private schools with only boys or only girls, public schools, alternative schools, like Quintano's or Performing Arts. Fashion designers came, lots and lots of photographers came, filmmakers came, political activists came, actors and actresses came, roving minstrels came, mimes, people with bongos, with guitars. People who would never have met otherwise because they lived in what became known as Soho, the Village, Harlem, the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, Stuyvesant Town. All came together at the Fountain and the areas around the Fountain.
These are some of the kids I met and hung around with then. Photo credit: Peter Niede, a photographer who also hung around there:
David Monroe, Philip Andrews, Billy Bennett, Ralph Ferucci,
Tommy Straw, Jimmy Christie All of the people in this photograph are no longer living, except possibly Ralph.
I spent 4 years of my life, from early 1966 to the end of 1970 going to the Fountain almost every day. It was my refuge from a severely dysfunctional 'home'.
Initially pot was mostly the only recreational drug used by most of the kids there. Maybe Dexedrine (prescription speed) as many of the mothers in dysfunctional families were prescribed Dexedrine to eat less, be thinner. Then came various types of LSD, Orange Sunshine Owsley, Blue Cheer sold in increments of 500 "mics"(micrograms). Then, in 1969 heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, DMT and various prescription medications, barbituates, Quaalude etc flooded NYC. Many, many young kids became addicted. One could see right away that kids who were playing touch football or frisbee just a few months ago had lost several teeth, looked haggard or obviously like junkies. It was heartbreaking.
It was then I decided to leave NYC and went on my own as a runaway to live in England.
But before I left, I came to know that part of Central Park intimately. What I did not know until decades later was about the architects and designers of the area around the Fountain.
The statue, the Angel of the Waters, represents healing. She was created by Emma Stebbins, the first woman commissioned to do a public sculpture in New York City. Vaux wanted the statue to suggest “both earnestly and playfully the idea of that central spirit of ‘Love’ that is forever active, and forever bringing nature, science, art, summer and winter, youth and age, day and night, into harmonious accord.”
One of the two grand stairways that leads down to the Fountain.
Photo credit: Brittany Petronella
Here are some of the gloriously sumptuous stone embellishments designed by
While Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted are recognized as the masterminds behind Central Park, one figure is often overlooked: Jacob Wrey Mould. Architect and Green-Wood permanent resident, Mould played a pivotal role in introducing High Victorian Gothic architecture to New York City, notably seen in the design of the Central Park’s Belvedere Castle and the intricately carved decorations and mosaics embellishing Bethesda Terrace. Join Francis R. Kowsky, author of Hell on Color, Sweet on Song: Jacob Wrey Mould and the Artful Beauty of Central Park, as he discusses Mould’s talents, idiosyncrasies, and impact on some of New York City’s most revered landmarks.
Jacob Wrey Mould was the designer behind some of New York's most revered landmarks
Photo credit: Victor Prevost on September 10, 1862
Jacob Wrey Mould (1825-86) was one of a number of English architects who emigrated to the US in the 19th century, though he was unusual in having personal reasons to leave the country.
In London in 1841, Mould was apprenticed to Owen Jones, an architect best known as an authority on coloured decoration, who designed the colour scheme of the Great Exhibition building in 1851 and in 1856 published the influential Grammar of Ornament. Wanting more varied architectural experience, Mould joined the office of Lewis Vulliamy (1791-1871), and worked on the designs for R.S. Holford’s palatial Dorchester House (built 1853) in Park Lane. His passion for music and friendship with musicians led him to translate many opera libretti. (Mould’s description of himself as “hell on colour” and “sweet on song”—the title of this new biographical and architectural study—refers to his great interest in music.) He married, but got a shock when his wife’s sister turned up with her little niece. Who the child’s father was never emerged, but relations between Mould and his abusive wife became so fraught that he decided to emigrate, despite Jones’s warning that “the Americans will wring you out like a wet rag, then drop you like a hot potato”.
In 1852 Mould and his mother arrived in New York, welcomed by his uncle. He put forward a scheme for the decoration of the New York Crystal Palace, which was not accepted, but in 1853 he received an important commission for a new church for a Unitarian congregation moving north in Manhattan. In the Romanesque style, with a dome, it was remarkable for its alternating stripes of cream Normandy stone and red Philadelphia stone. It became known as “the Church of the Holy Zebra” (a taunt later levelled at Keble College, Oxford). Francis Kowsky gives an authoritative account of this striking building. Sadly its tall tower remained unbuilt, the congregation moved out in 1929 and the church was destroyed by fire in 1931. Mould later built several other churches, most of which have gone, but the grand First Presbyterian church at Bath, New York, survives, as do the charming little timber Unitarian Church at Yonkers and the pretty Episcopal church at Lake Luzerne, both also in New York State. His domestic work has also largely disappeared, though the Trinity Chapel Schoolhouse in New York is an effective piece of urban Gothic.
However, his work in Central Park is rightly emphasised by Kowsky, who has benefited from access to the detailed research undertaken by the late Lucille Gordon, a Central Park docent. Mould’s input was mostly done in collaboration with Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, and principally concerned the decoration of Bethesda Terrace, with the Angel Fountain, the richly carved piers, and above all the remarkable polychrome decoration of the “arcade”. Here he showed himself a true disciple of Jones. He made a considerable number of other designs for the park, some of which remained unexecuted.
A Peruvian interlude
In 1860 Mould married again, but in 1866 his first wife arrived in New York and began proceedings for divorce. Mould was ordered to pay alimony, which worsened his already calamitous financial situation. Furthermore, several of his acquaintances refused to believe that he was really married to his new partner and ostracised him.
There was a curious interlude in Mould’s career when he spent four years (1875-79) in Peru, working in the Office of Public Works under the patronage of the crooked railway entrepreneur Henry Meiggs. He was well paid, which had not been the case in New York, but his only substantial architectural work was the large Casa Dubois in Lima. Meiggs’s death in 1877 led to his decision to return to New York.
Mould died in 1886, having achieved less than he might have done. Even so, he well deserves Kowsky’s careful and perceptive account of his life and works. As the author of books on Vaux and on Olmsted, Vaux and the Buffalo Park System, as well as a biography of Frederick Clarke Withers (another architect who emigrated from Britain to New York), Kowsky is qualified for his subject.
• Francis R. Kowsky with Lucille Gordon, Hell on Color, Sweet on Song: Jacob Wrey Mould and the Artful Beauty of Central Park, Fordham University Press, 304pp, 120 colour and b/w illustrations, $39.95, published 30 May
Born in Chislehurst, Kent in 1825, Mould attended King's College School in 1842. For two years, he studied the Alhambra in Spain under Owen Jones, the "master of polychromy,"[4] with whom he later co-designed the "Turkish Chamber" of Buckingham Palace. Mould's subsequent designs were often influenced by his appreciation of the Moorish style of architecture.
Though described as eccentric and ill-mannered,[11] Mould was hired full-time as an assistant city architect in 1857, and from 1870 to 1871 was architect-in-chief for the Department of Public Works.[3] In the 1860s, he had also built two notable country homes in Long Island on Hempstead Bay, both of which were lavish and ornate buildings for rich clients from New York.[3] Mould also collaborated with Vaux on the design of the original Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History, and designed the fountain at City Hall Park (1871).[12]
Mould's reputation was severely damaged in 1861 when it became public knowledge that he was living with a woman who was not his wife. Many of his friends stopped associating with him, including well-known lawyer and civic leader George Templeton Strong. Despite facing rejection from his old social circles, Strong and others tempered their criticism of Mould's character with acknowledgements of his artistic talent. Fortunately for Mould, the scandal did not damage his professional relationships with Olmsted or Vaux.[13]
In 1874, Mould went to Lima, Peru, with Henry Meiggs, where he helped design a public park. He returned to New York in 1879, and resumed his duties for the Department of Public Works until his death in New York City on 14 June 1886.[3] He built the Morningside Parkpromenade in 1883, and his final design in the United States was a temporary tomb for President Ulysses S. Grant in Riverside Park, replaced later by the permanent monument known as Grant's Tomb.[14]
Besides being an accomplished architect and designer, Jacob Wrey Mould was an avid pianist and organist, and employed his talent for language in translating numerous foreign opera librettos into English.[15] He is interred at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.
Jacob Wrey Mould's Cherry Hill Fountain - Central Park
Early in the development of Central Park, designer and architect Jacob Wrey Mould was hired as a part-time assistant to Calvert Vaux. Mould, who had arrived in New York from London in 1852, was already a master of bold color and exotic design, having worked for years under the preeminent Owen Jones. The arrangement was successful and in 1857 Mould was hired full-time as an assistant city architect.
Much of Mould's earlier work in the park were the decorative elements of Vaux's buildings and ornamental features--the sculptural details of The Terrace, for instance, and smaller items like lampposts and drinking fountains. But by the 1860s he was designing features on his own, like the 1862 Music Pavilion. In 1867 he began work on the Cherry Hill Fountain, a park feature that would be patently Mould.
Located east [incorrect, it is west of Bethesda Terrace] of Bethesda Terrace, Cherry Hill was named for the many ornamental cherry trees planted there. Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted laid out a circular carriage turn-around branching off the Terrace Drive. In its center was to be an ornamental "Drinking Fountain for Horses."
Mould's intricate plans for the finial show the basin and stem in less detail. Blue watercolor streams of water spurt into the individual bird cups. No lamps were included in the original designs. from the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.
Mould designed an elaborate fountain in which water flowed from eight spouts into decorative saucers in which birds could drink or bathe. These, in turn, overflowed over a polished granite, egg-shaped portion of the base that caused the water to fall in sheets into the basin.
Mould's meticulous attention to detail and color is exemplified by his design of one of the Cherry Hill Fountain porcelain bird cups, almost universally mislabeled as a wall sconce. from the collection of the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.
Mould specified that the upper portion of the fountain be executed "in pure light bronze," and decorated the stem with colorful Minton tiles.
The "drinking fountain for horses" was complete in 1870. According to Francis R. Kowsky's 2023 book Hell on Color, Sweet on Song, Jacob Wrey Mould and the Artful Beauty of Central Park, "Mould added the pleasurable sight and sound of moving water to the charm of this popular resting spot. The fountain attracted people and their steeds to what was one of Mould's most cheery park furnishings."
The late 20th century was not kind to Central Park. On June 14, 1976, New York Magazine wrote, "Cherry Hill is one of the park's main viewing stations. Although it is now used as a parking lot, in bygone days horses were watered at the fountain while carriages paused to let their passengers admire the vista across the lake." Jacob Wrey Mould's fountain, no longer functioning, sat dry and in desperate need of restoration. The article noted, "the necessary plumbing and stonework repair would cost $25,000."
Clement and Elizabeth Moore provided $20,000 towards a full-scale restoration. Finally, on August 7, 1998, the water flowed again. The Central Park Conservancy's website says, "As a part of this work, the Conservancy realized Mould's original design with the bird cups and lamps." When the lamps became part of Mould's design is perplexing, for they are obviously absent from the 1867 original plans. Nevertheless, they are convincingly Mould in flavor.
After he turned the underground valves to activate the fountain, Peter Champe, the Central Park Conservancy's director of conservation and sculpture talked to Douglas Martin of The New York Times. Martin reported, "Mr. Champe sees the fountain's creation in the 1800's as something of a lark. He imagines the architect Calvert Vaux, one of the designers of Central Park, going to his associate Jacob Wrey Mould and saying: 'Jacob, why don't you go out and design a horse trough. Make it look nice.'"
Martin added that, while the fountain had been restored, "one thing, though, has changed: horses are no longer permitted to drink from what was once their own fountain."
Bethesda Terrace Arcade is the arched, interior walkway in the center of Central Park that links the Mall to Bethesda Fountain and the Central Park Lake.
Designed by Jacob Wrey Mould and created in the 1860s, the Arcade features a stunning tiled ceiling with more than 15,000 colorful, patterned encaustic tiles from England’s famous Minton Tile Company. These elaborate tiles were originally used on the floors of European cathedrals. Bethesda Arcade is the only place in the world where these special tiles are used for a ceiling!
Over time the 50-ton ceiling weakened and deteriorated. In the 1980s, the tiles were removed for cleaning. The beautifully restored Bethesda Terrace Arcade re-opened to the public in 2007.
Bethesda Terrace in New York City’s Central Park is an architectural marvel featuring two grand stone stairways that lead from the upper terrace down to the lake and fountain named ‘Angel of Waters.” Decorative elements carved into the stone represent nature and seasons and are symbolic of day and night.
In their master plan for Central Park, the 1858 “Greensward Plan,” Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux proposed an architectural “heart of the Park” defined by a sweeping promenade that would culminate into Bethesda Terrace. The entire terrace is constructed primarily of New Brunswick sandstone, paved with Roman brick, and boasts granite steps and landings.
The Terrace Arcade is "Bridge #1" in the Greensward Plan.
Bethesda Terrace before the statue of the angel was included in the fountain
