New York City is filled with labyrinths — if you know where to look

When you ask a person about their first labyrinth, their speech slows down, voices get quieter. It’s not dissimilar to the way walking through a labyrinth disrupts pace: it forces deceleration, and adds some magic to the mundane act of putting one foot in front of the other.

Labyrinths are ancient, enigmatic patterns with a history going back at least 4,000 years — and they are all around New York City, often hidden in plain sight, until you know how to look for them. There are a few dozen in the greater metro area and a passionate community of labyrinth enthusiasts that traverse them. The city’s labyrinths can be found in churches, parks, even painted on sidewalks.

The biggest misconception about a labyrinth is that it's the same as a maze, a structure designed for confusion. A labyrinth has only one path — making it unicursal, as opposed to a multicursal maze. There are no choices to make in a labyrinth, and it's often painted or set into the ground, with no walls.

“A maze is meant to make you lose your way and a labyrinth is meant to help you find your way,” said Kathryn McLean, the research chair of the nonprofit Labyrinth Society.

Although you can see the labyrinth’s center, its path takes you on a circuitous journey.

“The best designs have elements of mystery about them,” said Jeff Saward, a labyrinth expert who runs the website Labyrinthos with his wife Kimberly, produces Caerdroia: The Journal of Mazes & Labyrinths, and manages the World-Wide Labyrinth Locator. “How am I going to get from here to there?”

For this reason, labyrinths are often used today as contemplative or meditative tools; installed in churches and hospitals. People report feeling calmer during and after labyrinth walks, and there’s even a labyrinth at the National Institute of Health’s Clinical Center. But since their use spans thousands of years, there isn’t a singular explanation for a labyrinth’s purpose.

New York’s oldest labyrinth, built in 1928, can be found at Riverside Church on the Upper West Side.

“I have at least six or seven different labyrinths on display in my living room,” said Mace Anderson. “I’m a labyrinth man.”

Anderson has been a member and volunteer at Riverside for more than three decades. His first labyrinth was at a church in the Bronx, and he's also visited the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, but he calls Riverside and its labyrinth his homebase. According to Anderson, the church was paid for in large part by the Rockefellers, who sent their architects to Chartres Cathedral in France to study the design of its medieval labyrinth from the early 13th century. They installed a smaller version at Riverside’s high altar.

In April 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. stood on that labyrinth while giving a speech about ending the Vietnam War. And in 1996, opera singer Jesse Norman hosted a fundraiser for AIDS attended by Whoopi Goldberg, Maya Angelou, and Toni Morrison. The choreographer Bill T. Jones also performed a dance solo in the center of the labyrinth. “Some people think it’s New Age,” Anderson said. “No, it’s really old age.”

The oldest labyrinth with definitive dating is from around 1200 B.C.E, etched on the back of a clay tablet from the Mycenaean palace at Pylos in southern Greece, preserved by the fire that destroyed the palace. The front of the tablet depicts a goat delivery, while the back features a doodle of a square labyrinth. Saward said there are other labyrinths in Southern Europe, particularly in Spain, that are assumed to be at least 1,000 years older — but they’re harder to date with certainty.

Many are familiar with labyrinths from the Greek legend of King Minos of Crete, who built a labyrinth to trap the minotaur, a beast that was half-man, half-bull. This labyrinth was described to be confounding and dangerous — more like a maze — though true labyrinth symbols referring to the myth have been used on coins and in graffiti. These inconsistencies probably stem from the fact that it was a fable, Saward said. No labyrinths have been found at the Minoan palace or temple complex at Knossos, though some fragments of labyrinthine designs were seen in wall frescoes.

“You’re arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin,” Saward said. “It never existed in the strict sense. It's a mythological construct.”

There are more pressing questions that haunt labyrinth enthusiasts about the real labyrinths scattered all over the world: Why do they all have the same design? How did they get to remote hilltops in the Baltic, or islands in Arctic Russia, and why?

“There are still big questions unanswered,” Saward said. “Indeed, the biggest one will never be answered: Where was the first labyrinth created? Because, it's so far back in time that nobody bothered to write it down.”

For the first 2,000 years of their history, nearly all labyrinths had the same design, or a close variant of it, probably because people used and shared a simple mnemonic drawing technique to draw them. Think about how the “cool S” is derived from six short lines. For labyrinths, the starting “seed pattern" is a cross with angles in the four corners and dots; if you connect the lines and dots, a labyrinth shape emerges.

Medieval labyrinth designs were developed during the ninth and 10th centuries — such as that of the Chartres Cathedral Labyrinth —  and are the ones often emulated in churches like Riverside today.

We don’t know the original purpose of labyrinths, Saward said, despite our contemporary habit of walking them. For instance — we know that priests would do a dance through the labyrinth (called the pelota) on Easter, while throwing a ball back and forth.

W.H. Matthews, the author of the 1922 book, “Mazes and Labyrinths: A General Account of their History and Development,” wrote that in a unicursal turf labyrinth in Yorkshire, children would run to the center and press their heads to the ground “to hear the fairies singing.” There are stories about labyrinths being apotropaic, or having protective magical properties. Fishermen in Scandinavian countries would walk labyrinths before they went to sea, and shepherds used labyrinths to protect their sheep from wolves.

Saward started his newsletter around 40 years ago to keep in touch with fellow labyrinth enthusiasts, and began the labyrinth journal in 1980. Other notable labyrinth organizations include the nonprofit Veriditas, formed by the Rev. Lauren Artress in 1995, which trains labyrinth facilitators — of which there are more than 2,500. The Labyrinth Society formed in 1998, and the World-Wide Labyrinth Locator, launched in 2004, is an integral tool to finding any labyrinth nearby.

There are currently more than 6,100 labyrinths listed on the locator, and depending on the radius and ZIP code you choose, there is a sizable collection of labyrinths to choose from in the tristate area.

In 2021, Pastor Chris Shelton added a labyrinth to Broadway Presbyterian on the Upper West Side. “The addition of the labyrinth is a part of a process of trying to create a space that was more centered around a community being on a journey together, rather than being in a space that was very linear, or very performative,” Shelton said.

Shelton’s first labyrinth was made of stone and laid into the floor of an Episcopal church in Dallas. “I am not the most spiritually disciplined person, even though I'm a pastor,” he said. “There have been times in my life when the labyrinth has felt like a really amazing tool.”

Though, the person who has walked the Broadway Presbyterian labyrinth the most is probably Shelton’s first-grade son. “He has raced me through it from time to time,” he said.

Shelton encourages people to take their shoes off, so that they can feel their feet on the floor, and to focus on their breathing.

“I don’t think there’s anything magical or mystical about a labyrinth,” he said. “But it does invite us to slow down. It invites us to have a different pace, a different rhythm.”

There are New York City labyrinths outside of churches, too. From 1999 to 2008, labyrinths by artist Diana Carulli filled the pavements in Union Square. Carulli also installed a labyrinth in East River Park, just north of the tennis courts. The Seed Labyrinth is painted on the sidewalk at 505 Laguardia Place by artist Sarah Jones, as part of the city Department of Transportation’s Urban Art Program. Artist Camila Gelpi added a labyrinth, which hosts a green parrot at its center, to Maria Hernandez Park in Bushwick in 2007. And in 2002, the Labyrinth of Contemplation was installed in The Battery to commemorate 9/11. The path, which stretches 358 feet to the labyrinth’s center, is outlined with 1,148 Belgian blocks.

This was my first labyrinth. I went in February, on one of this winter's unseasonably warm days, with purple crocuses prematurely blooming around the labyrinth's perimeter. I brought a close friend, and we slowly walked the grassy path. It took a surprising amount of time, since it’s not a straight shot to the middle. (In some contexts, people moved through the Chartres Cathedral labyrinth on their hands and knees, and it reportedly took an hour.) My friend said the labyrinth made him think about death, and also life — the shape of your life over the days, months, and years, with all its twists and turns. I reflected on the embodied act of relinquishing control, and what it's like to simply follow the path you’re on.

A labyrinth novice can treat their first labyrinth experience in many ways. They can be viewed as artistic forms, or as spiritual or meditative instruments. They can be a form of urban exploring, and a way to interact with whatever city you’re in.

“You can also just go look at them,” Saward said. “And marvel that what you’re looking at is a design that’s part of a history that goes back 4,000 years and managed to make it from Spain, or the shores of the Mediterranean to a park or a sidewalk in New York.”

There’s no right or wrong way to walk a labyrinth, said Jean Ando, a labyrinth facilitator who helped start labyrinth walks at Marble Collegiate Church in Flatiron, which still holds monthly labyrinth events. “You can walk backwards, you can get down and crawl, you can skip, you can dance, you can run all around it if you like — that's what kids do,” she said.

Since my first labyrinth, I've walked two barefoot, focusing on my breathing, and in a labyrinth at Ascension Episcopal church in Greenpoint, I sat in its center and wrote an email to a friend. Between 1810 and 1850, German and Russian gymnasts ran races through labyrinths. People frequently danced in labyrinths, either alone, or in chains. Museum curator Hermann Kern, the author of “Through the Labyrinth,” believed the original labyrinth pattern was copying dance movements. In Sweden and Britain, some young adults used labyrinthine stone sets for “flirtation games.”

Ando has even used the labyrinth to facilitate divorce ceremonies, including her own. She and her ex-husband went to a labyrinth in Stuyvesant Cove Park, near 23rd Street, where the path was wide enough that they could walk to the center side by side. In the middle, they shared memories from their marriage, wished each other well, and walked out separately, one by one.

“I felt like it did bring some sort of ending to our time together,” she said.

Like it did with Ando’s divorce, for priests throwing a ball, and for children in Yorkshire listening to fairies, the labyrinth can hold whatever you bring to it. “It’s like the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem,” Ando said. “It’ll hold your grief, it’ll hold your joy, your sorrow, your problems, your beliefs.”

Sometimes, you won’t feel anything. But at some point, you might still find yourself swayed by the labyrinth’s path. “You’ll be going down the street a week later, maybe even months later,” Ando said. “Suddenly a thought will occur that you realize you started when you were walking the labyrinth.”

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the location of the Labyrinth of Contemplation. It's located in The Battery.