Duke Ellington Circle Duke Ellington Circle Duke Ellington Circle is a traffic circle located at the Northeast corner of Central Park at the foot of Fifth Avenue and of 110th Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The traffic circle is named for the jazz musician Duke Ellington. Formerly named "Frawley Circle", the traffic circle was renamed "Duke Ellington Circle" in 1995. In 1997, a tall statue by sculptor Robert Graham, depicting the Muses — nine nude caryatids — supporting a grand piano and Duke Ellington on their heads was erected in the middle of the shallow amphitheater composing the circle.
Park Avenue of the New York and Harlem Railroad starting in the 1830s. The railroad originally ran through an open cut through Murray Hill, which was covered with grates and grass between 34th and 40th Street in the early 1850s. A section of this "park" was later renamed Park Avenue in 1860, and the name was later applied to the segment between Union Square and 42nd Street. The Harlem Railroad was later incorporated into the New York Central Railroad, and a terminal for the New York Central at 42nd Street, the Grand Central Depot, opened in 1871. But the tracks laid to