About This Stamp
With this Priority Mail Express® stamp, the Postal Service™ celebrates the Bethesda Fountain, one of Central Park’s most iconic structures. Dedicated in 1873, the fountain is a gathering place beloved by New Yorkers and out-of-town visitors alike.
The stamp art features a stylized depiction of the Bethesda Fountain. The illustration was first rendered as a pencil sketch and then scanned to finish the art digitally.
In 1853, the state of New York set aside 750 acres in Manhattan to create Central Park, one of the nation’s first major landscaped public parks. The winners of the design competition, Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, included a central terrace as part of their proposed plan for the park. Vaux envisioned the terrace as the heart of the park, with the fountain as the “center of the center.”
Architect and illustrator Jacob Wrey Mould designed many of the decorative elements on the fountain, while sculptor Emma Stebbins (1815–1882) was hired to create its central feature: The Angel of the Waters, an eight-foot-tall neoclassical statue of an angel. Stebbins was the first woman to receive a commission for a major public work in New York City, and her sculpture is the only one to have been commissioned as a part of the park's original design. Measuring twenty-six feet high by ninety-six feet wide, the fountain is one of the largest in New York City.
Seeming to bless the waters, the bronze angel holds a lily, which represents purity. The fountain commemorates the 1842 opening of the Croton Aqueduct, built to bring fresh water to New York City, which had previously relied on an inadequate and contaminated water supply. The fountain’s name associates the pure water flowing into the fountain — and into the city — with the biblical story in the Gospel of John (5:2-4) that tells of the healing waters of the pool called Bethesda.
Art director Greg Breeding designed the stamp with original digital art by Dan Cosgrove.
Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer
Greg Breeding
Greg Breeding is a graphic designer and principal of Journey Group, a design company he co-founded in 1992, located in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was creative director until 2013, at which time he began serving as president and continued in that role through 2023.
Breeding’s fascination with modernism began while studying design at Virginia Commonwealth University. His affinity with the movement continues and motivates his ongoing advanced studies at the Basel School of Design in Switzerland most every summer.
As an art director for postage stamp design since 2012, Breeding has designed more than 100 stamps covering a diverse array of subjects, from Star Wars droids and Batman to Harlem Renaissance writers and the transcontinental railroad.
His work has been recognized in annual design competitions held by Graphis, AIGA, PRINT magazine, and Communication Arts.
Breeding lives in North Garden, Virginia, with his wife and enjoys nothing so much as frolicking on the floor with his grandchildren.
Stamp Artist and Typographer
Dan Cosgrove
A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Dan Cosgrove graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1978 with a major in graphic design. After briefly working for the National Park Service in Denver and as a designer at Cato Johnson in Cincinnati, Cosgrove moved to Chicago in 1980 and began a freelance career in digital and traditional illustration.
Cosgrove's designs have appeared in numerous ads, posters, covers, and on packaging. Recent clients include Cunard Line, Dunlop Tire, Fiat, J P Morgan Chase, Miller Brewing Company, Netflix, The New York Times, Shell Oil company, SohoPress, and The Wall Street Journal. In recognition of his work Cosgrove has received awards from Communications Arts and the Society of Illustrators (Gold Medal).
The 2008 Express Mail® and Priority Mail® stamps featuring Mount Rushmore and Hoover Dam were Cosgrove's first projects for the U.S. Postal Service. Since then, Cosgrove has illustrated 27 additional Express Mail and Priority Mail Express stamps. Recent designs include Florida Everglades (Priority Mail) (2023), Great Smoky Mountains (Priority Mail Express) (2023), Monument Valley (Priority Mail) (2022), and Palace of Fine Arts (Priority Mail Express) (2022). He also created the stamp art for USS Missouri (2019).
Cosgrove and his wife live in Clarendon Hills, Illinois.