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 natu...