NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- An entrance to Central Park will be named “The Gate of the Exonerated” in honor of the Central Park Five, the five men whose convictions in the notorious 1989 rape of a jogger were all thrown out more than a decade later.
The new name will be on a gate near the northeast entrance to the park in Harlem, where the five men, who were teens at the time, entered on the evening of April 19, 1989, the New York Times reported Monday.
The entrance, which was previously unnamed, is just north of the Charles A. Dana Discovery Center.
The city’s Public Design Commission gave final approval for the naming in a vote Monday.
Workers for the Central Park Conservancy have already begun chiseling away at the sandstone sections of the wall ahead of an unveiling ceremony planned for Dec. 19.
The conservancy said it would cover the cost of updating the gate, which is estimated to be up to $100,000.
The entrance is reportedly the first of Central Park’s dozens of entrances to be newly named since the 1860s.
The teens that came to be known as the “Central Park Five,” and later the “Exonerated Five,” were convicted in the rape and assault of Trisha Meili, a 28-year-old white investment banker.
They served from six to 13 years in prison before their convictions were thrown out in 2002 after evidence linked a convicted serial rapist and murderer, Matias Reyes, to the attack. Reyes told investigators he alone had been responsible for Meili’s assault.
Prosecutors who reviewed the case had concluded the teenagers’ confessions, made after hours of interrogations, were deeply flawed.
The exonerated men went on to win a $40 million settlement from the city and inspire books, movies and television shows.
“This is about giving recognition to something that should have never happened,” Yusef Salaam, one of the men, told the Times. “The gate is just one example of healing, and how our path to healing is continuous.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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