Central Park is an urban park in middle-upper Manhattan,
New York City. Central Park is the most visited urban park in the United States
as well as one of the most filmed locations in the world.
It was established in 1857 on 778 acres (315 ha) of
city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, two
soon-to-be famed national landscapers and architects, won a design competition
to improve and expand the park with a plan they titled the "Greensward
Plan". Construction began the same year and the park's first area was
opened to the public in the winter of 1858.[5] Construction continued during
the American Civil War further south, and was expanded to its current size of
843 acres (341 ha) in 1873.
It was designated a National Historic Landmark (listed by
the U.S. Department of the Interior and administered by the National Park
Service) in 1962. The Park was managed for decades by the New York City
Department of Parks and Recreation, and is currently managed by the Central
Park Conservancy under contract with the municipal government in a
public-private partnership. The Conservancy is a non-profit organization that
contributes 75 percent of Central Park's $65 million annual budget and is
responsible for all basic care of the 843-acre park.
Description
Central Park's size and cultural position, similar to
London's Hyde Park and Munich's Englischer Garten, has served as a model for many
urban parks, including San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, Tokyo's Ueno Park, and
Vancouver's Stanley Park. The park, which receives approximately 35 million
visitors annually, is the most visited urban park in the United States. It is
also one of the most filmed locations in the world.
The park is maintained by the Central Park Conservancy, a
private, not-for-profit organization that manages the park under a contract
with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, in which the
president of the Conservancy is ex officio Administrator of Central Park.
Today, the conservancy employs 80% of maintenance and operations staff in the
park. It effectively oversees the work of both the private and public employees
under the authority of the Central Park administrator (publicly appointed), who
reports to the parks commissioner, conservancy's president. As of 2007, the
conservancy had invested approximately $450 million in the restoration and
management of the park; the organization presently contributes approximately
85% of Central Park's annual operating budget of over $37 million. The system
was functioning so well that in 2006 the conservancy created the Historic
Harlem Parks initiative, providing horticultural and maintenance support and
mentoring in Morningside Park, St. Nicholas Park, Jackie Robinson Park, and
Marcus Garvey Park.
The park has its own NYPD precinct, the Central Park
Precinct, which employs both regular police and auxiliary officers. In 2005,
safety measures held the number of crimes in the park to fewer than one hundred
per year (down from approximately 1,000 in the early 1980s). The New York City
Parks Enforcement Patrol also patrols Central Park. There is also an
all-volunteer ambulance service, the Central Park Medical Unit, that provides
free emergency medical service to patrons of Central Park and the surrounding
streets. It operates a rapid-response bicycle patrol, particularly during major
events such as the New York City Marathon, the 1998 Goodwill Games, and
concerts in the park.
While planting and land form in much of the park appear
natural, it is in fact almost entirely landscaped. The park contains several
natural-looking lakes and ponds that have been created artificially, extensive
walking tracks, bridle paths, two ice-skating rinks (one of which is a swimming
pool in July and August), the Central Park Zoo, the Central Park Conservatory
Garden, a wildlife sanctuary, a large area of natural woods,[58] a 106-acre (43
ha) billion-gallon reservoir with an encircling running track, and an outdoor
amphitheater, the Delacorte Theater, which hosts the "Shakespeare in the
Park" summer festivals. Indoor attractions include Belvedere Castle with
its nature center, the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theatre, and the historic
Carousel. In addition there are seven major lawns, the "meadows", and
many minor grassy areas; some of them are used for informal or team sports and
some set aside as quiet areas; there are a number of enclosed playgrounds for
children. The 6 miles of drives within the park are used by joggers, cyclists,
skateboarders, and inline skaters, especially when automobile traffic is
prohibited, on weekends and in the evenings after 7:00 pm.
Art
and architecture
Sculptures
A total of 29 sculptures by sculptors such as Augustus
Saint-Gaudens, Emma Stebbins, and John Quincy Adams Ward have been erected over
the years, most donated by individuals or organizations. Much of the first
statuary placed was of authors and poets, in an area now known as Literary Walk.
Some of the sculptures are:
·
Alice in Wonderland Margaret Delacorte Memorial
(1959), a sculpture of Alice by sculptor José de Creeft, landscape architect
Hideo Sasaki, and designer Ferando Texidor at the Central Park Conservatory
Pond.
· Angel of the Waters at Bethesda Terrace by Emma
Stebbins (1873), the first large public sculpture commission for an American
woman.
·
Balto (1925), a statue of Balto, the sled dog
who became famous during the 1925 serum run to Nome (also known as the Great Race of Mercy).
·
Duke Ellington Memorial (dedicated in 1997), by
sculptor Robert Graham, near Fifth Avenue and 110th Street, in the Duke
Ellington Circle.
·
King Jagiello, a bronze monument on the east
end of Turtle Pond.
Structures and exhibitions
Cleopatra's Needle is a red granite obelisk. The
"Cleopatra's Needle" in Central Park is one of three; there also is
one in Paris and one in London, which is one of a pair with the New York
obelisk. Each obelisk is approximately 68–69 feet tall and weigh about 180
tons. They originally were erected at the Temple of Ra in Heliopolis in Ancient
Egypt around 1450 BC by the pharaoh Thutmose III. The hieroglyphs were
inscribed about two hundred years later by pharaoh Rameses II to glorify his
military victories. The obelisks were all moved during the reign of Roman
emperor Augustus Caesar when Ancient Egypt was under the control of Rome. They
were brought to Alexandria and erected as tribute to Julius Caesar, in front of
the Caesarium, a temple originally built by Cleopatra VII of Egypt in honor of
Mark Antony, thus the name "Cleopatra's Needle.
There are two versions of how the Central Park Cleopatra's Needle made
its way to Central Park: either it was a gift from the Khedive of Egypt,
Isma'il Pasha, or it was stolen through the machinations of William H.
Vanderbilt who paid the tab to have the obelisk shipped to New York and
erected. The obelisk arrived in New York in July 1880; it took thirty-two
horses hitched in sixteen pairs to pull the obelisk to the park. It was erected
in an official ceremony on January 22, 1881.
Strawberry Fields: On October 9, 1985, on what would have been
John Lennon's 45th birthday, New York City dedicated 2.5 acres to his memory.
Countries from all around the world contributed trees, and Italy donated the
iconic Imagine mosaic. It has since become the sight of impromptu memorial
gatherings for other notables and, in the days following the September 11, 2001
attacks, candlelight vigils were held there.
The Gates: For sixteen days in 2005 (February 12–27),
Central Park was the setting for Christo and Jeanne-Claude's installation The
Gates. Although the project was the subject of very mixed reactions (and it
took many years for Christo and Jeanne-Claude to get the necessary approvals),
it was nevertheless a major, if temporary, draw for the park.
Lakes
Central Park is home to seven bodies of water, all artificial. The main
lake is the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, so named since 1994. Its
construction lasted from 1858 to 1862. Covering an area of 42.9 hectares (106
acres) between 86th and 96th Streets, the reservoir reaches a depth of more
than 40 feet (12 m) in places and contains about 1 billion US gallons (3.8
billion litres) of water. The Reservoir is best known to New Yorkers for the
jogging track around it. The Reservoir is by far the largest lake in Central
Park, surpassing the other three artificial lakes.
The Ramble and Lake south of the Great Lawn covers nearly 7.3 hectares (18 acres). Built on a former swamp, it was designed by Olmsted and Vaux to accommodate boats in the summer and ice skaters in winter. The Lake was opened to skaters in December 1858, while the rest of the park was still under construction. At the northern end of the park, at 110th Street, the Harlem Meer, named in honor of one of the first communities in the region, covers nearly 4.5 hectares (11 acres). A wooded area surrounded by oak, cypress, and beech trees, it was built after the completion of the southern portion of the park. Harlem Meer also allows visitors to fish, provided that they release the fish later. In the southeast corner is the Pond, with an area of 1.4 hectares (3.5 acres). The Pond is located near one of the busiest entrances to Central Park and is under sea level, which helps mitigate the different sounds of the city, and create a startling atmosphere of calm in the heart of New York.
Wildlife
Flora
Central Park, home to over 25,000 trees, has a stand of
1,700 American elms, one of the largest remaining stands in the northeastern
U.S., protected by their isolation from the Dutch elm disease that devastated
the tree throughout its native range.
Fauna
Birds:
The first official list of birds observed in Central Park
was drawn up by Augustus G. Paine, Jr.. Paine was an avid hobby ornithologist
and, together with his friend Lewis B. Woodruff, drew up a list of birds
counting 235 species. This was regarded as the first official list and was
published in Forest and Stream on June 10, 1886. An article in The New Yorker
on August 26, 1974 calls attention to this early list. Over the decades the
list has been updated and changed.
The park is frequented by various migratory species of
birds during their spring and fall migration on the Atlantic Flyway. Over a
quarter of all the bird species found in the United States have been seen in
Central Park. One of these species is the red-tailed hawk, which re-established
a presence in the park when a male hawk known as Pale Male for his light
coloration, nested on a building on Fifth Avenue, across the street from the
park in 1991. He became a local media celebrity and a prolific breeder.
Central Park was the site of the misguided unleashing of
European starlings in North America, a native of Eurasia which has become an
invasive species. In April 1890, eighty birds were released by Eugene
Schieffelin, and the following March another eighty; these one hundred and
sixty birds are the progenitors of the flocks which now span the United States
and parts of Canada.
Mammals:
·
Raccoon
(Procyon
lotor): nocturnal tree dwellers that come down to ground level to feed at
night, have become extremely common in Central Park in recent years, prompting
the Parks Department to post rabies warnings around certain areas.
·
Eastern
gray squirrel, or grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), is a
tree squirrel in the genus Sciurus native to the eastern and midwestern United
States.
·
Eastern
chipmunk (Tamias striatus): although not commonly sighted, there
are chipmunks in Central Park.
·
Virginia
opossum (Didelphis virginiana): a nocturnal marsupial that rests
in trees during the day and searches for food on the ground at night.
Arthropods: In
2002 a new genus and species of centipede (Nannarrup hoffmani) was discovered
in Central Park. At about 0.4 inches (10 mm) long, it is one of the smallest
centipedes in the world.
Beetle
infestation: Since the late 1990s, the Central Park
Conservancy, the United States Department of Agriculture, and several city and
state agencies have been fighting an infestation of the Asian long-horned
beetle, which has been reported in Long Island and Manhattan, including some
parts of Central Park. The beetle, which likely was accidentally shipped from
its native China in an untreated shipping crate, has no natural predators in
the United States, and the fight to contain its infestation has been very
expensive. The beetle infests trees by boring a hole in them to deposit its
eggs, at which point the only way to end the infestation is to destroy the
tree. Several thousand trees were infected in the city and later removed,
including 2 trees that have been removed from Central Park; all trees in the
park were examined for signs of the disease in 2002 and these two trees were
removed at that time.
Activities
Hobbies
A wooded section of the park, called the Ramble and Lake,
is popular among birders. Many species of woodland birds, especially warblers,
may be seen in the Ramble in the spring and the fall.
Rowboats and kayaks are rented on an hourly basis at the
Loeb Boathouse, which also houses a restaurant overlooking the Lake. As early
as 1922, model power boating was popular on park waters.
Leisure
tours
New York City has had carriage horses since they were
revived in 1935. The carriages have appeared in many films, and the first
female horse and carriage driver, Maggie Cogan, appeared in a Universal
newsreel in 1967. As such, they have become a symbolic institution of the city.
After the September 11 attacks, in a much-publicized event, Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani went to the stables himself to ask the drivers to go back to work to
help return a sense of normality.
Some activists such as NYCLASS (New Yorkers for Clean, Livable,
and Safe Streets), as well as politicians, have questioned the ethics of this
tradition. The history of accidents involving spooked horses has come under
scrutiny with recent horse deaths. Protests from People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals, and celebrities including Alec Baldwin, Alecia Beth Moore
and Cheryl Hines have raised the issue's profile. Additional media accounts
have corroborated some charges, but they have also shown that the standards
vary from stable to stable.
Both activists and horse owners, who pride themselves on
humane conditions, agree that part of the problem is lack of enforcement of the
city code. Supporters of the trade say it needs to be reformed, not shut down,
and that carriage drivers deserve a raise, which the city has not authorized
since 1989. Paris, London, Beijing, and several U.S. cities have banned
carriage horses. Replacements for the carriage horses may include electric
vintage cars.
Pedicabs operate mostly in the southern part of the park,
the same part as horse carriages. Such vehicles have more recently offered
visitors a more dynamic way in which to view the park; covering three to ten
times the distance of a typical Central Park horse carriage ride, pedicabs have
become very popular with visitors and New Yorkers alike in the last five years;
also, they are being eyed as another replacement for the carriage horses.
Sports
Park Drive, just over 6 miles long, is heavily used by
runners, joggers, pedestrian, bicyclists, and inline skaters.
Most weekends, races take place in the park, many of which
are organized by the New York Road Runners. The New York City Marathon finishes
in Central Park outside Tavern on the Green. Many other professional races are
run in the park, including the recent, (2008), USA Men's 8k Championships.
Baseball fields are numerous, and there are also courts for volleyball, tennis,
croquet and lawn bowling. The park is home to several competitive running
clubs, including Central Park Track Club.
Central Park has two ice skating rinks, Wollman Rink and
Lasker Rink; during summer, the former is the site of Victorian Gardens
seasonal amusement park, and the latter converts to an outdoor swimming pool.
The Park drives are used as the home course for the Century
Road Club Association's racing series. The CRCA is a USA Cycling sanctioned
amateur cycling club.
Central Park's glaciated rock outcroppings attract
climbers, especially boulderers; Manhattan's bedrock, a glaciated schist,
protrudes from the ground frequently and considerably in some parts of Central
Park. The two most renowned spots for boulderers are at Rock and Cat Rock;
others include Dog Rock, Duck Rock, Rock N' Roll Rock, and Beaver Rock, near
the south end of the park.
Attractions
The current Central Park Carousel, installed in 1951, is
one of the largest merry-go-rounds in the United States. The fifty-eight
hand-carved horses and two chariots were made by Solomon Stein and Harry
Goldstein in 1908. The carousel originally was installed in Coney Island in Brooklyn.
The Central Park Zoo is part of a system of four zoos and
one aquarium that is managed by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), and is
accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). The zoo is home to
an indoor rainforest, a leafcutter ant colony, a chilled penguin house, and a
polar bear pool.
Central Park has twenty-one playgrounds for children
located throughout the park; the largest, at 3 acres, is Heckscher Playground
named for August Heckscher.
Swedish Cottage Marionette Theatre is located in the
Swedish Cottage. The building was originally a model schoolhouse built in
Sweden. Made of native pine and cedar, it was disassembled and rebuilt in the
U.S. as Sweden's exhibit for the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.
Frederick Law Olmsted moved the cottage to its present site in 1877.
Restaurants
Central Park is home to two indoor restaurants.
The famed New York City restaurant Tavern on the Green is
located on the park's grounds at Central Park West and West 67th Street. It was
originally the sheepfold that housed the sheep that grazed Sheep Meadow, built
to a design by Calvert Vaux in 1870. It became a restaurant as part of a 1934
renovation of the park under Robert Moses, New York City's Commissioner of
Parks. In 1974, Warner LeRoy took over the restaurant's lease and reopened it
in 1976 after $10 million in renovations including the addition of a
glass-enclosed Crystal Room overlooking the restaurant's garden (one of several
dining rooms), which doubled the seating capacity to 800. In August 2009, the
New York City Department of Parks and Recreation announced that it had declined
to renew the restaurant's license, and a month later, the restaurant filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States District Court for the
Southern District of New York, citing the Great Recession and the loss of the
restaurant's operating license. On December 31, 2009, the restaurant closed its
doors in what was expected to be a permanent closure, but it reopened on April
24, 2014 after a major renovation.
The Loeb Boathouse restaurant is the other indoor
restaurant in Central Park. Located at the Loeb Boathouse on The Lake, it was
designed in 1874, destroyed in 1950, and rebuilt in 1954 on the East Side
between 74th and 75th Streets.
Entertainment
With the revival of the city and the park in the new
century, Central Park has given birth to arts groups dedicated to performing in
the park, notably Central Park Brass, which performs an annual concert series,
and the New York Classical Theatre, which produces an annual series of plays.
Each summer, there are several events happening in the
park. The Public Theater presents free open-air theatre productions, often
starring well-known stage and screen actors. The Delacorte Theater is the
summer performing venue of the New York Shakespeare Festival, where most,
although not all, of the plays presented are by William Shakespeare, and the
performances are generally regarded as being of high quality since its founding
by Joseph Papp in 1962. The New York Philharmonic also gives an open-air
concert on the Great Lawn yearly during the summer. City Parks Foundation has
offered Central Park Summerstage since 1985, a series of free performances
including music, dance, spoken word, and film presentations around this time of
year as well, often featuring famous performers; the Summerstage facility also
has non-free concerts that are branded under different names. Since 1992, local
singer-songwriter David Ippolito has performed almost every summer weekend to
large crowds of passers-by and regulars and has become a New York icon, often
simply referred to as "That guitar man from Central Park". From 1967
until 2007, the Metropolitan Opera presented two operas in concert each year.
Many popular one-time concerts have been given in the park
including Barbra Streisand, 1967; The Supremes, 1970; Carole King, 1973; Bob
Marley & The Wailers, 1975; America, 1979; Elton John, 1980; the Simon and
Garfunkel reunion, 1981; Diana Ross, 1983; Paul Simon, 1991; Garth Brooks,
1997; Sheryl Crow, 1999; Dave Matthews Band, 2003; Bon Jovi, 2008; and Andrea
Bocelli, 2011. Central Park was the location of the largest concert ever on
record when country superstar Garth Brooks performed a free concert in August
1997, to which about 980,000 had attended, according to FDNY. Its attendance
would have been exceeded by a concert in the summer of 1985 by Bruce
Springsteen, planned to hold a free outdoor concert on the Great Lawn; however,
the idea was scrapped when it was purported that any free show held by
Springsteen would bring an estimated 1.3 million people, crippling the park and
the nearby neighborhoods.
Additional information
Website: http://www.centralparknyc.org/
Address: New York, NY, United States
Area: 3.41 km²
Owners: New York City Department of Parks and Recreation
Phone: +1 212-310-6600
Latitude: 40.782913 Longitude: -73.965398
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