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 Central Park -- the first public park built in America -- takes
up 843 acres of prime Manhattan real estate. The park runs from
59th Street for two and half miles to 110th Street, bordered by
Fifth Ave. on the east and Central Park West on the west; it
contains 58 miles of pedestrian paths, 4.5 miles of bridle trails,
and 6.3 miles of drives. The location was chosen in the late 1850s
because of centrality; a small community of a few hundred settlers
had to be relocated and their buildings razed.
Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won the design
competition in 1857 for creation of the park because they included
the idea for transverse roads, among other things. Part of what
made their ideas so innovative were that they proposed park roads
be slightly sunk below a hill to separate traffic from
tranquility. Workers moved nearly 5 million cubic yards of stone,
earth and topsoil to construct the park. They built 30 bridges and
arches and 11 overpasses across the sunken transverse roads.
Species of flora in Central Park include: American Elm, London
Plane, Norway Maple, Ginkgo, Yoshino cherry trees, the Golden Rain
Tree, the suphore, crabapple, tulip trees, maple trees, oak,
hickory, sassafras, honey locust, hawthorne, forsythia, etc.
Major park restorations occurred in the 1930s under Mayor
LaGuardia and Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, then beginning in
1980 under the guidance of the newly formed private Central Parks
Conservancy in a landmark public-private partnership with the
City’s Department of Parks & Recreation. Since 1980, this
unique and model partnership has restored more than half of the
park’s landscapes and historic structures, with the help of
several grantmaking foundations as well as public tax dollars.
Central Park became a National Historic Landmark in 1965 and a
New York City Landmark in 1974. Currently, more than 15 million
visitors enjoy Central Park each year. And now you can enjoy it here online...
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