The surprising thing about Frances A. Rosenfeld’s extremely tall map of New York City is that the lake in Central Park is not first or second or even third. It is merely No. 4.

Dr. Rosenfeld’s white-on-light-chocolate map shows the chronology of ice skating in the city by location. It turns out that the lake in Central Park came late to a craze that had captivated early Dutch and English settlers, and so No. 1 on Dr. Rosenfeld’s map is the colonial-era canal that was covered over for what New Yorkers now call Broad Street. No. 2 was a pond in Lower Manhattan, and No. 3 was another pond, on what later became fashionable Fifth Avenue.

But — oh! — No. 4, the see-and-be-seen magnet that fixed skating in the city’s consciousness. Dr. Rosenfeld, who has documented the pastime for a new exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York, says that the Central Park lake pulled in the crowds when the still-unfinished park opened in December 1858, wintry temperatures having done what wintry temperatures will do to 18 acres of water.