Central Park/Greensward Plan, (New York, New York), 1857, English Romanticism

Central Park was the first landscaped public park in the United States. Many wealthy landowners and merchants pushed that New York needed the beauty that the public grounds in Paris and London displayed. Eminent domain was used to authorize the City of New York to claim over 700 acres of land in the center of Manhattan. The lands comprised of swamps and rocky bluffs which were unattractive to land developers. However, to create the park over 1,600 poor people had to be displaced. These people included Irish pig farmers, and German gardeners who lived in shacks on the site. Seneca village, New York’s most stable African American community which consisted of three churches and a school needed to be relocated as well. In 1857, the central park commission held the country’s first landscape design competition and selected the “Greensward Plan” submitted by Frederick Law Olmsted. The design aimed to recreate a picturesque landscape of the English romantic tradition. Open natural seeming meadows and large ponds which contrasted with the structure and planned Ramble and Promenade. The feeling of expanseful nature was not to be interrupted with traffic and crossings. Four transverses were designed sunk below the parks grade as to not be seen by visitors. The circulation through the park was cut up into carriage, pedestrian, and horse paths all of which never intersect one another. Instead, at a crossing point of of the 40 gorgeously designed bridges would be constructed to raise one path above another.

The curvilinear pond placed just north of the rectilinear receiving pond opened in late 1858, and in 1859 thousands of New Yorkers were ice skating on these ponds where swamps once lay. By 1965 the park was receiving over 7 million visitors a year. Many rules governed the use of the parks spaces, and allowed for the discrimination of the middle and lower classes. However in the 1880’s working New Yorkers successfully campaigned to have summer concerts on their only day of rest--Sunday. Gradually the park opened to more democratic uses; The carousel, tennis on the lawns, bicycling on the drives, among many others. The Central Park Zoo, arguably its most popular feature was given permanent residence in 1871. The first playground was donated in 1927, on the southeastern meadow. The old rectangular pond was drained and many debates were held as to what should replace it, with none of these being heard it was converted into what we now call the Great Lawn. Debates on whether deviation from the original Greensward plan should be allowed persist to this day.  

During the depression the park suffered almost falling into total disrepair. After wards Robert Moses, the Park Commissioner received a grant for the restoration of many of the crumbling structures and eroded landscapes. However when he left office the park feel into its second and most devastating state of decline. With the park in a state of decay until the 90s it was starting to look as if the park was going extinct, never to be repaired. Lights, benches, and playground equipment lie broken and forgotten; and the rolling Meadows became dust bowls of the great fields they had once been. The park became a lawless, dangerous place at night with no lights, vandals decimated the once beautiful park. From 1987 to 2008 three successful campaigns to restore Central Park have taken place. Now Central Park is managed very closely as to never allow the park to turn into the scar that it had once been.   

Bibliography:

Rogers, Elizabeth Barlow and John Berendt. Rebuilding Central Park: A Management and
Restoration Plan. Cambridge, MA. MIT Press,1987.

https://www.centralpark.com/visitor-info/park-history/overview/

http://www.centralparknyc.org/visit/park-history.html