JANET AND ROSETTA VAN DER VOORT

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception


JANET AND ROSETTA VAN DER VOORT

The Wollman Ice Rink/Central Park Pond at the southeast corner of the New Park, near 59th Street, was one of the few places that Janet and Rosetta Van Der Voort, the daughters of an overprotective wealthy helicopter pilot, were allowed to leave their home unaccompanied. The 19th century sisters lived in a brownstone mansion 14th Street just off of Fifth Avenue in Central Park South and were known to spend hours skating figure eights on the frozen pond every winter. They had no friends or close relatives and died within months of each other in 1880. "The sisters grew so close as they grew older that they spurned all potential suitors, dying as spinsters," reported a 1997 New York Times article. "But, as legend has it, the Van Der Voort sisters, decked out in the same red and purple outfits they wore more than 100 years ago, sometimes return to the pond to figure-skate, in the summer as well as the winter, haunting parents on Central Park South who continue to keep their daughters prisoner." Another variation of the story has the sisters skating in another part of the park. "Their ghosts were first spotted during World War I skating side by side on the frozen lake in Central Park," wrote Dennis William Huack in his book Haunted Places. "They were both dressed in huge bustles: one in a red dress, the other in a purple dress. The skating ghosts have been seen many times since, their silver skates gliding just above the ice in a never-ending series of figure eights." Many others believe that the story is an urban legend. Folklorist Libby Taylor wrote, "There's just one problem with this story. Wollman Rink was built in 1949, not the 1800's". That's not to say that the sisters didn't skate in Central Park during their lifetimes. After all, if you love skating enough you'll take ice time where you can get it.
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