Central Park (literally Central Park ) is an green area of a surface of 341 hectares (3,41 km ², approximately 4 km out of 800 m), located in the Borough of Manhattan at New York. It is managed by Central Park Conservancy (committee of safeguard of Central Park) which has an annual budget of 200 million dollars, and is maintained as well as the other green areas the city by the New York City Department off Parks and Recreation (Department of the green areas of the town of New York). Central Park constitutes more green big space of the town of New York, if one takes into account only the five large boroughs of the city. Completed in 1873 after thirteen years of construction, according to the plans of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux (also at the origin of the Prospect Park of Brooklyn), Central Park represents an oasis of greenery in the middle of the forest of Gratte-ciel S of Manhattan, even if it is located at the north of the island where the buildings are less low. It is delimited by the 110e street in north, the Eighth avenue in the west, the 59e street in the south and the Fifth avenue in the east. These streets are respectively baptized Central Park North , Central Park West and Central Park South , and the park is framed by two residential districts: the Upper East Side (in the east) and the Upper West Side (in the west). With on average 25 million visitors per annum, Central Park is the park more visited with the the United States.
Its natural aspect is the result of an important landscape work: the park contains several lakes artificial S (whose most important, The Reservoir extends on 0,43km ²), of the footpaths, two tracks of ice-skating on ice, a protection zone of the wild life and lawns to practice sports and plays of outdoor. The park is moreover a “sanctuary” for the migratory birds, where many observers come to discover them. A 9,7 km length road, relatively little attended by the motorists, surrounds the park. It can be borrowed by the pedestrians, the long-distance runners, the cyclists or the followers of the Roller, especially the weekend and in week after nineteen hours, when the motor vehicle traffic is completely prohibited there.
History
Project and context
Need for a green big space
Central Park is the first large public park to be arranged in an American city. The project of a green big space located in the middle of New York did not form part of the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 , large cadrastal map at the origin of the current cutting of the streets. In 1830, New York becomes more the big city of the the United States, with approximately 200 000 inhabitants. Towards 1850, the majority of the New Yorkeans resident in the south of the 38e street in over-populated and noisy districts and the inhabitants have only some green areas arranged at the time, very often of the Cimetière S, like the Green-Wood Cemetery with Brooklyn.When the town of New York starts to extend towards north from the island from Manhattan at the 19th century, several voices rise to claim the creation of a space of greenery, with the image of the Bois de Boulogne to Paris (completed in 1852) or of Hyde Park with London. Among those which claim the construction of a park, one finds the Paysagiste Andrew Jackson Downing, and of the writers like George Bancroft and Washington Irving. The poet and journalist of the New Evening Post William Cullen Bryant, which is one of the supports for the project, require thus that: The municipality opens a park, a large park, a true park, which, by the healthy entertainment of the people, moves away it from alcohol, the play and the defects, to educate it with the moralities and the ordre. He then proposes in 1850 which the municipality buys a piece that he describes as “uncultivated land, ugly and feeling reluctant” on which the project can be born.
In 1853, the legislature of the State of New York decides of its site beyond the 42 {{E}} street, then limits northern of New York. The authorities rule for a space of 2,8 km ² of the 59e street to the 106e, between the 5 {{E}} and the 8 {{E}} which occurred, at a cost of more than 5 million dollars, for the purchase of the only ground. This point of view of Olmsted was undoubtedly due to its many voyages in Europe during the years 1850, during which he had visited many parks, and had been very impressed by the Birkenhead Park of the Wirral, opened in 1847, and which was the first public park completely built in the world. Sculptural arrangement returned to Jacob Wrey Mould, and Andrew Haswell Green became the president of the commission of Central Park in 1857 station which it occupied until in 1871. In spite of its lack of experience (it had a formation in Droit), it played a great part in the installation of the New Yorkean park: in 1858, it negotiated the acquisition of 26 hectares additional to develop the project of origin. Thanks to him, Central Park increases towards north, up to the level of the 110e street, whereas the park was not to exceed the 106e street in the beginning.
Installation of the ground
Towards 1850, the indicated ground was covered with marshes, strewn with large rocks and occupied by many squatteurs, who raised in particular goats and pigs, and which used sometimes space like a discharge. The first work consequently began only in 1857, date on which Olmsted was named superintendent of Central Park. They on the whole lasted nineteen years and the 150e birthday of the park was celebrated in 2003. 300 had thus to be destroyed; 000 cubic meters of rocks to the explosive, to drain the marshy ground and to bring three million cubic meters of ground. 1.500 workmen worked fourteen hours per day in order to plant some 500.000 trees.
During the construction of the park, Olmsted was in constant disagreement with the members of the Central Park Commission , of which the majority were affiliated with the Tammany Hall, abstract organization democratic. In 1860, it was thus évincé of its station of Superintendant of Central Park, and was replaced by Andrew Haswell Green former president of the New York City' S Board off Education , which was named president of the commission. In spite of its relatively limited experiment, this last however managed to accelerate construction, and to negotiate the acquisition of the additional piece of 26 hectares, in the north of the park. The role of Olmsted decreased thus in the construction industry, and this last worked then with the realization of the Prospect Park, with Brooklyn.
Evolution and decline of the park
Central Park became after its installation one of the centers of activities and leisures favorite of the New Yorkeans: at the end of the 19th century, it was a place of parade. The zoo of Central Park opened its doors in this context in 1864: it is oldest besides of the country. In 1880, the Metropolitan Museum off Art, drawn by the architect Richard Morris Hunt, settled in the east of the park. But Central Park very quickly had problems, in particular because of the disinterest of the Tammany Hall, left abstract to democratic tendency very influential to New York the end 18th century to the Années 1960.
The beginning of the 20th century was also marked by the appearance of new challenges for the park. The invention then the development of the Automobile led to a change of mentalities, offering to the inhabitants of the city more possibilities of escape, and thus to a désamour for the park. Central Park became then more a meeting place sporting, or an entertaining place, with a deterioration of its original quality of lung of “ Big Apple ”. The dissolution of the Central Park Commission after the departure of Andrew Haswell Green in 1870, the death of Calvert Be worth, father of the project in 1895 accelerated the decline of the park, which maintenance was nothing any more but summarily assured. The dead trees were not replaced gradually any more, and the bushes and the plants started to swarm on old big spaces with greenery. During several decades, the authorities did not do anything to protect the park from a growing vandalism, as well as accumulation of the refuse, in what became gradually a public dump.
At the XXe century
Central Park and the Great Depression
The town of New York was struck of full whip by the Crise of 1929 which appeared with Wall Street. The misfits of the Grande Depression then gradually sheltered in the old park the old tank of the View-point became even true a Bidonville, baptized in an ironic way Hooverville in reference to the president Herbert Hoover, with the head of the country of 1929 with 1933, and indicated like the large person in charge of the crisis.
In 1934, the republican Fiorello LaGuardia was elected mayor of New York, in full crisis period. It arrived then in a devastated city, and undertook a vast policy of rebuilding. The revival of Central Park belonged to its objectives, even if the situation of the park were disastrous: the old large lawns, not maintained, had become the ground big spaces, strewn by places with tufts with grass and bad deformed grasses; at the time of the hot seasons, the park was covered with dust, whereas for the wet periods it was covered with mud. The old alleys paid they also the price of the years of waste land, and the benches which bordered them for the majority turned over and were vandalisés.
Revival with Robert Moses
To face this situation, which does not touch that Central Park but it quasi totality of the green areas of the city, the new mayor started by unifying the five departments in load of the parks. He then entrusted to Robert Moses the responsibility to rehabilitate Central Park and other public gardens of the agglomeration. Moses wished to make park a place dedicated to the leisures and the sports. It succeeds in profiting from the program of the New Deal of Roosevelt and obtained also the contribution of a public finance. It thus ensured the park a new youth, under the protection of a powerful defender: the town of New York and its inhabitants.In only one year, Moses managed to rehabilitate not only Central Park, but also the other green areas of the city: the lawns and of the flowers were replanted, the replaced trees and dead bushes, the renovated walls and bridges. Major changes were even operated in the plan and the configuration of the park. Thus, old the Croton Reservoir was filled to arrange current the Great Lawn (large lawn). The original project of “ Greensward Plan” of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux of an idyllic space combines perfectly with work of Robert Moses: nineteen playing fields, and twelve grounds of Baseball and Handball are built.
Years 1960 to 1980
In 1960, Robert Moses left his station of Park Commissioner . After its departure, the park knew a period of degradation again. Nobody was able to compensate for this loss, because Moses had not only given the park in state, but had also initiated many other projects, which all could not be completed. The number of crimes and offenses did not cease thereafter increasing: vandalism, garbage dump and Graffiti S multiplied. In parallel, the financings were done increasingly rare; benefitting from the absence of public lighting and monitoring, the Gang S invested the alleys of Central Park gradually.
However, in the years 1960-1970, Central Park remained a gathering place of the New Yorkeans for the New Year's Eve, the steps of the pacifist and the Hippie S: the demonstrations against the Guerre of Vietnam proceeded on the Great Lawn and Sheep Meadow, but in a Central Park to which the state was close to that preceding work by Moses.
Despite everything, the demonstrations persisted; thus, the annual festival Shakespeare in the Park was founded 1962 and invests the Delacorte Theater. The Philharmonic orchestra of New York and the Metropolitan Opera organize estival concerts on the Great Lawn. Several gigantic concerts are organized thereafter there like those of Barbra Streisand in 1967 (150 000 spectators) and of Simon and Garfunkel, which gathered 500 000 people in 1981.
In the middle of the Years 1970, several associations made pressure on the mayor Edward Koch and the Commissioner time, Gordon Davis, in order to reform the administration of the park. The Central Park Conservancy was then founded in 1980, chaired by Bill Beinecke and managed by Betsy Barlow Rogers. The association of residents, of which Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis formed part, took care of the restoration of the park and the return of safety. In a score of years, 320 million dollars of private donations allowed the financing of work.
The park since 1980
As of the formation of the Central Park Conservancy , the founders refused to found a new organization, because of the high costs that would imply. In the place, they decided to call upon the voluntary ones, in order to sensitize the New Yorkeans, in their making understand that the park belonged to the identity of the city.The Central Park Conservancy will coopéra with the Park Commissioner , by taking all the responsabilities for maintenance and the restoration for the park, by publishing in 1981 an article entitled Reconstruire Central Park for the Années 1980 and with beyond , starting point of a vast policy of restoration.
The article laid down three principal tasks, considered to be essential in the optics of a durable restoration of the park. Initially, the architectural heritage of the park was to be restored (not only landscape and environment, but also bridges, buildings, and the various structures victims of negligence during twenty years). In addition to that, the text envisaged to resow grass, and to ensure an equal maintenance of all the parts of the park. The third objective was to improve safety especially the night, in order to attract more tourists, whose attraction for the park had been largely faded by the increasing insecurity which reigned there.
With the passing of years, of many structures were restored, after many hours of voluntary help. In 2004: 32000 work hours were listed, in particular for work of restoration of the Heckscher playground , space of 12 hectares including/understanding a building, several spaces of lawn, as well as rock exposures. In 1995, it was with the tower of the Great Lawn to profit from the Central Park Conservancy which gave again its glare to him.
Elements of Central Park
Meadows and gardens
Central Park east made up of several big spaces of lawn, on which tourists, and the New Yorkeans, are accustomed to coming to spend their spare time. But the park is also marked out gardens. More big space of lawn of the park is the Great Lawn (literally large lawn) which is located in the middle of Central Park, on the level of the Metropolitan Museum off Art, and of the American Museum off Natural History, two of the most famous museums of the city. The Great Lawn , very frequently photographed occupied of hundreds of people, takes again the major part of the rectangular space formerly covered by the Lower Reservoir , of a surface of fourteen hectares.
On the level of the 72e street, i.e. opposite the Dakota Building, the Strawberry Fields Monument, honor returns to the singer of the Beatles John Lennon, assassinated near the Dakota Building by Mark David Chapman, one unbalanced on December 8th 1980. The Strawberry Fields was inaugurated the day of the birthday of John Lennon, on October 9th 1985, in the presence of its widow Yoko Ono, who had dealt with the project with height of million dollars.
The south-east of the park shelters moreover the Central Park Zoo, managed by the Wildlife Conservation Society. This last is divided into three climatic zones, of which one reconstitutes a wet tropical forest. The zoo shelters more than one hundred different species. The Conservatory Garden , botanical garden drawn by Gilmore D. Clarke as for him is located at the north of the park. Its entry is on the 5th avenue, on the level of the 105e street. Moreover, since 1916, the Shakespeare Garden , inaugurated three centuries after the death of the writer shelters the various plant species which appear in its parts.
Water levels
Central Park shelters several water levels, energy of the simple pond to the true artificial lake. The principal water level of Central Park is the Reservoir, which bears the name of Réservoir Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis since 1994. Its construction was spread out of 1858 with 1862 and it covers a space ranging between the 86e street and the 96e street. Of a surface of: 42.9 hectares, it reaches by places a depth of more than twelve meters, and contains several billion liters of water. The Tank is especially known New Yorkeans for the track of jogging of: 2.54 km which surrounds it, and which accommodates each day of the thousands of sportsmen who make the turn of it.
The Tank is by far the greatest water level of Central Park, in front of three other artificial lakes. To the south of the Great Lawn , The Lake extends on close to: 7.3 hectares. Built on an old marsh, he had been imagined by Olmsted and Vaux to accommodate boats in summer, and skaters on ice in winter. The Lake was thus opened to the skaters in December 1858, whereas the remainder of the park was still in construction. To the extreme North-East of the park, on the level of the 110e street, the Harlem Meer (lake of Harlem in Dutch, baptized in the honor of the one of the first communities established in the area) extends on close to: 4.5 hectares. Very wooded, the lake, surrounded by Oak S, Cypress and Beech S, was built only after the completion of the south of the park. Harlem Meer has moreover the characteristic to authorize the visitors to be fished, on the condition of slackening fish thereafter. Finally the third principal water level is located at the south-eastern corner. It is about the Pond (literally the pond), of a surface of 1,4 hectares. The Pond , whose form points out that of a comma, is located at the level of the most borrowed entry Central Park, under the sea level, which makes it possible to attenuate the various noises of the city, and to generate an atmosphere of calm seizing in full heart of New York.
Buildings and monuments
Several constructions, more or less important and more or less famous, mark out Central Park.
- most important of them is the Belvedere Castle, located on the Vista Rock . It is about true a Château, built in a Scottish style in 1869. The building accommodates today installations of the weather observatory of New York, but it also is very snuffed tourists because of panorama to 360 degrees which it offers on the park and its surroundings. Moreover, inside the castle, the Henry Luce Nature Observatory offers a sample of fauna and flora present in the park;
- the Fountain Bethesda, located on the Bethesda Terrace at the top of the Lake;
- the memorial Strawberry Fields, dedicated to the memory of the musician John Lennon.
Events
Sport
Central Park is a very appreciated place of the sportsmen. The perimeter of the park is of 9,65 kilometers, and of many tracks inside the park (the West Drive , the East Drive , and especially the Reservoir Running Track (track of jogging of the Tank), long 2,54 km) a paradise for the runners, cyclists, and others constitute skaters. Races take place almost every weekend, the majority being organized by the New York Road Runners , an association which counts more 40 000 members, and is also in load of the Marathon of New York, which is completed besides each year in Central Park, on the level of the Tavern one the Green , a very snuffed restaurant. But many other professional races are organized in the park each year. Moreover, the park has a long tradition of place of practice of the Iceskate, and horsemanship, this last activity being maintained during the years thanks to the Claremont Riding Academy (academy of Claremont horsemanship) founded in 1892.
Entertainment
The Philharmonic orchestra of New York in the open air gives a concert each summer on the lawn of the park and the Metropolitan Opera presents two works to it. Concerts of pop music are also organized there regularly. One can quote the media reformation of the duet Simon and Garfunkel, on September 19th 1981, which took place in the park at the time of a free concert to which more 500 assisted; 000 spectators and who gave place to an album live. Diana Ross also sang there in 1983.
Each summer, the Public Theater produced there free representations, which often put in scene actors and actors of reputation. A great number of parts belong to the repertory of William Shakespeare. Moreover the Summerstage festival in the open air presents June to August of many artists of the whole world at the time of concerts.
The Frick Collection, a museum of art rich in European paintings of the the Middle Ages at the 19th century and sheltering parts of furniture and sculptures, is just in the east of Central Park, on the 70e street. On the level of 89e street is also the museum Guggenheim gathering collections of modern art and contemporary and presenting prestigious exposures in its famous central propeller.
For the children
In addition to the 21 sports grounds whose park is provided, Central Park proposes very many activities with the children, among whom a puppet theater located in Swedish Cottage, reproduction of a typical Swedish school of the 19th century. The famous horse-gear of Central Park east as for him open since 1870.
Fauna and flora of the park
Flora
With its 341 hectares of greenery, Central Park represents the vastest green area of Manhattan. It has one of the last American plantations of Orme S in the North-East of the United States. There is 1 of it; 700, protected by their insulation from the disease from the Graphiose, caused by a parasitic mushroom which devastated the majority of the American elms since 1928. The park shelters a total of 250 000 trees and bushes. However, the park is completely supervised only up to 9 p.m. Since the park is become again a sure space for the 25 million annual visitors, the majority of the prejudices and the a priori disappeared, and the security measures reinforced since 2005 made it possible to maintain criminality average to less than one hundred acts per annum, whereas one counted some up to thousand per annum in the Années 1980. Moreover, the majority of the crimes which are committed touch now people who know each other already, whereas in the past, the arbitrary aggressions were more numerous.Among the crimes more “the famous” clerks at Central Park, one can quote that of 1986, where an young girl was assassinated during “Preppy Murder” (or murder BCBG), strangled by her lover in East Meadow, that of 1997 where a teenager stabbed a man and threw his corpse in the pond of the south of the park, or that of 1989 where an young woman was found died in the Harlem Meer .
Celebrities
The buildings of the Upper West Side, located at the edge of the park are among the most famous buildings of New York, and also among those whose rent is highest with Manhattan. Among these famous constructions, “The Dakota”, located at the level of the 72e street, was the residence many famous artists, among whom Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland and John Lennon. Other famous buildings are also located near Central Park: the San Remo Apartments, Eldorado, Beresford and Majestic, all built by Emery Roth. John John Kennedy, the son of the President, came to play Frisbee at Central Park). The most known sculptors who have work for the park are Augustus Saint-Gaudens and John Quincy Adams Ward.The most impressive sculpture of the park is the King Jagiello Monument , named with the memory of the former king of Poland, Ladislas II Jagellon, located near the Turtle Pond. In the north of the “river of the sailing ships” (the sailboat lays ) an immense statue represents Alice, the heroin of Alice to the country of the wonders, sitting on a mushroom. On the level of the Fifth Avenue, to the east of the park, an immense monument carried out by Robert Graham in 1997 pays homage to Duke Ellington, celebrates American musician . The Angel of Water ( Angel off toilets ) which throne on the fountain of Bethesda Terrace , carried out by Emma Stebbins in 1873, was the first public contribution of a woman artist sculptor in America.
In 1926 the statue of the husky Balto became very popular, and remains very appraisal of the tourists. This canine hero took part in 1925 in the transport of an anti-diphtheric serum between two towns of Alaska, Anchorage and Nome, where an epidemic had been declared. Central Park also has one of the two “Needles of Cléopâtre”. These works of pink Granite E, tops of a score of meters, are Obélisque S Egyptian going back to 1500 before JC and set up with Héliopolis on the order of Thoutmôsis III (their attribution with Cléopâtre is thus only pure legend). One of these two obelisks is with London, the other was offered to the town of New York by Ismaïl Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, and was installed at Central Park on February 22nd 1881.
Painting, photography and visual arts
- William Merritt Chase painted a sight of Central Park in 1889;
- In 1965, Pierre Alechinsky represents Central Park with the acrylic Peinture;
- the photographer Elliott Erwitt took stereotypes of dogs in Central Park in 1974;
- The Spoil conceived by Christo and Jeanne-Claude in 2004-2005 was introduced during sixteen days of the from February 12th to 28th 2005. It was a course of 37 kilometers through Central Park, punctuated of 7.500 gantries, tops of approximately five meters, placed at 4 meters of interval and tended of a curtain of fabric Vinyle of color orange-saffron. This installation met a great success, although some polemical on its cost (although entirely taken charges some by the artists) or its impact on the image of the park transfer the day.
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