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.
Claremont Park station (New York Central Railroad) the vicinity of 172nd Street/Wendover Avenue as far back as the late-1860s. Originally named Central Morrisania station, it was built at surface level along with the rest of the tracks. Realizing the railroad was causing suburban sprawl within what was then southern Westchester County, the New York City Parks Department acquired the site of the former Claremont Mansion one block to the west, and converted it into a park in 1881. The station was renamed for that park roughly around the time Claremont Park station was rebuilt by New York Central in the late 19th century, as part of a