NEW YORK (AP) – On a typical warm Sunday afternoon in springtime, Central Park draws hordes of people. In stone cold February: Not so much – until this year.

For the past two weeks, in spite of temperatures in the 20s and 30s and occasional biting wind, visitors chatting in several languages and firing thousands of cameras have crowded the park to see “The Gates,” the 16-day public art event that closes today.

Artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude adorned 23 miles of Central Park’s footpaths with 7,500 “gates,” like columns of closely spaced door frames hung with drapes of saffron-colored fabric that waves and flaps in the cold breeze.

“What they’ve done here is just incredible,” Martin Mick of Lake Hopatcong, N.J., said Saturday of the display brightening the winter-brown park. “It adds a dimension, it enriches and enlivens the spirit. And it’s a wonderful way to spend the dreary days of winter.”

But was it art?

“Yes, it’s art. I’m so thrilled,” said his ex-wife, Dannielle, who joined him on a tour of the park. “I embrace the color and the shapes and the fluidity of ‘The Gates’ along the paths – there’s a slight breeze today. Plus, strangers are stopping and chatting.”

Final attendance estimates won’t be available until next week at the earliest, but the Central Park Conservancy estimated more than 1 million people entered the park in the event’s first five days. On Feb. 13, the day after the opening, an estimated 450,000 people visited, more than six times the usual crowd on a February weekend.

“No matter what you think of “The Gates,’ it’s been a rousing success in terms of bringing people to the park,” pedicab driver David Sirk said Saturday.

“It’s just really been a magical two weeks so far,” Parks Commissioner Adrien Benepe said.

The project has been both praised and pilloried.

“Even at first blush, it was clear that ‘The Gates’ is a work of pure joy, a vast populist spectacle of good will and simple eloquence, the first great public art event of the 21st century,” Michael Kimmelman wrote in The New York Times.

But when David Letterman devoted a “Top Ten” list to the project, No. 10 on his list of “Most Common Questions About the Gates” was “Why?” And the weekly New York Observer’s review by critic Hilton Kramer called it “nothing less than an unforgivable defacement of a public treasure.”

Though it’s impossible to determine how many out-of-town visitors have come just to see “The Gates,” Karen Goldberg, director of marketing for the Plaza Athenee, one of several hotels offering special “Gates” packages, said they’ve seen a 10 percent increase in occupancy on weekdays and as much as a 20 percent increase on weekends.

“We wish this would continue,” Goldberg said. “We wish they would come back every February.”

Police said vandalism has been minor, but three young men were charged with criminal mischief for allegedly scrawling graffiti on four gates. Officers said they had no trouble identifying the suspects; they were ticketed for being in the park after the 1 a.m. closing – and they signed their names on their work.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, who financed the entire project themselves – the cost could exceed $21 million – said “The Gates” has exceeded their expectations.

“It is much more rich, much more beautiful, than our wildest dreams,” Jeanne-Claude told reporters. “It is bigger than our imagination.”

The pair will begin the creative process again in August, when they go to Colorado to work on their next project, “Over the River,” which involves stretching fabric above the Arkansas River. They’re already spent more than $2 million on that project.

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