Central Park | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

The first major public example of landscape architecture, Manhattan's Central Park remains the greatest illustration of the American park, a tradition that would become part of nearly every community following the 1860s. This grand park offers a facility for recreation and peaceful contemplation, a solution to the enduring American search for a "happy medium" between the natural environment and human civilization.

Initially, the construction of parks responded to utilitarian impulses: feelings began to develop in the early 1800s that some urban areas were becoming difficult places in which to reside. Disease and grime were common attributes attached to large towns and cities. Of particular concern, many population centers possessed insufficient interment facilities within churchyards. The first drive for parks began with this need for new cemeteries. The "rural cemetery" movement began in 1831 with the construction of Mount Auburn outside of Boston. Soon, many communities possessed their own sprawling, green burial areas on the outskirts of town.

From this point, a new breed of American landscape architect beat the path toward Central Park. Andrew Jackson Downing designed many rural cemeteries, but more importantly, he popularized and disseminated a new American "taste" that placed manicured landscapes around the finest homes. Based out of the Hudson River region and operating among its affluent landowners, Downing designed landscapes that brought the aesthetic of the rural cemetery to the wealthy home. His designs inspired the suburban revolution in American living. Downing became a public figure prior to his untimely death in 1852 through the publication of Horticulturalist magazine as well as various books, the initial designs for the Mall in Washington, D.C., and, finally, his call for a central area of repose in the growing city on Manhattan Island.

Wealthy New Yorkers soon seized Downing's call for a "central park." This landscaped, public park would offer their own families an attractive setting for carriage rides and provide working-class New Yorkers with a healthy alternative to the saloon. After three years of debate over the park site and cost, the state legislature authorized the city to acquire land for a park in 1853. Swamps and bluffs punctuated by rocky outcroppings made the land between 5th and 8th avenues and 59th and 106th streets undesirable for private development. The extension of the boundaries to 110th Street in 1863 brought the park to its current 843 acres. However, the selected area was not empty: 1,600 poor residents, including Irish pig farmers and German gardeners, lived in shanties on the site; Seneca Village, at 8th Avenue and 82ndStreet, was one of the city's most stable African-American settlements, with three churches and a school.

In 1857, the Central Park Commission held the country's first landscape design contest and selected the "Greensward Plan," submitted by Frederick Law Olmsted, the park's superintendent at the time, and Calvert Vaux, an English-born architect and former partner of Downing. The designers sought to create a pastoral landscape in the English romantic style. In order to maintain a feeling of uninterrupted expanse, Olmsted and Vaux sank four transverse roads eight feet below the park's surface to carry cross-town traffic. From its inception, the site was intended as a middle ground that would allow the city's life to continue uninterrupted without infringing on the experience of park goers.

The park quickly became a national phenomenon. First opened for public use in the winter of 1859 when thousands of New Yorkers skated on lakes constructed on the site of former swamps, Central Park opened officially in 1863. By 1865, the park received more than seven million visitors a year. The city's wealthiest citizens turned out daily for elaborate late-afternoon carriage parades. Indeed, in the park's first decade more than half of its visitors arrived in carriages, costly vehicles that fewer than five percent of the city's residents could afford. Olmsted had stated his intention as "democratic recreation," a park accessible to everyone. There would be no gates or physical barriers; however, there would be other methods of enforcing class selectivity. Stringent rules governed early use of the "democratic" park, including a ban on group picnics—which discouraged many German and Irish New Yorkers; a ban on small tradesmen using their commercial wagons for family drives in the park; and restricting ball playing in the meadows to school boys with a note from their principal. New Yorkers repeatedly contested these rules, however, and in the last third of the nineteenth century the park opened up to more democratic use.

Central Park's success fueled other communities to action. Olmsted became the park movement's leader as he tied such facilities to Americans' "psychological and physical health." Through Olmsted's influence and published writing, parks such as Central Park were seen to possess more than aesthetic value. The idea of determining the "health" of the community through its physical design was an early example of modernist impulses. However, the park movement's attachment to traditions such as romanticism gave parks a classical ornamentation. Olmsted's park planning would lead to the "City Beautiful" movement in the early 1900s and to the establishment of the National Park system.

As the uses of Central Park have varied, its popularity has only increased. In the 1960s, Mayor John Lindsay's commissioners welcomed "happenings," rock concerts, and be-ins to the park, making ita symbol of both urban revival and the counterculture. A decline in the park's upkeep during the 1970s stimulated the establishment of the Central Park Conservancy in 1980. This private fund-raising body took charge of restoring features of the Greensward Plan. By 1990, the Central Park Conservancy had contributed more than half the public park's budget and exercised substantial influence on decisions about its future. Central Park, however, continues to be shaped by the public that uses it: joggers, disco roller skaters, softball leagues, bird watchers, nature lovers, middle-class professionals pushing a baby's stroller, impoverished individuals searching for an open place to sleep.

Blackmar, Elizabeth, and Roy Rosenzweig. The Park and the People. New York, Henry Holt, 1992.

Schuyler, David. Apostle of Taste. Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

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