Strawberry Fields is the memorial landscape dedicated to John Lennon, across the street from where he was shot. On December 8, 1980, Lennon was returning home to the Dakota apartment building at 72nd Street and Central Park West when a fan named Mark David Chapman shot him four times in the back as he entered the archway. Lennon was pronounced dead at Roosevelt Hospital.
He had lived in the Dakota since 1973 with Yoko Ono, who still lives there. Ono designed Strawberry Fields in 1985 as a Garden of Peace and donated one million dollars for its maintenance. The circular mosaic in the center, donated by the city of Naples, carries the single word Imagine, the title of Lennon's most famous solo song.
More than 120 countries contributed plants and trees. Flowers and candles appear here almost every day, left by pilgrims from around the world. Look across the street at the dark stone entrance to the Dakota, with its pointed roofline rising above the trees, and consider how quiet this corner was in 1980.