Central Park, in the borough of Manhattan in New York City , is one of the most famous city parks in the world. It was the first landscaped public park in the United States. New Yorkers have long treasured the park as an escape from the hectic pace of the city.
Central Park covers 843 acres (341 hectares). It runs from 59th to 110th streets between Fifth Avenue and Central Park West. It separates Manhattan’s Upper East Side and Upper West Side. The park is bounded by Midtown to the south and Harlem to the north. Attractions in the park include a zoo, ice rinks, a boathouse, and Cleopatra’s Needle , an obelisk (stone pillar) from ancient Egypt. The park also has performance spaces, playgrounds, sports fields, and paths for running, cycling, skating, and horse-drawn carriage rides.
In 1853, the New York state legislature authorized New York City to acquire land for a large public park in the middle of Manhattan. On April 28, 1858, the landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a competition to design Central Park. The architects’ “Greensward Plan” called for rolling meadows with winding paths, offset by forested areas, gathering spaces, lakes, and formal gardens. They wanted the park to provide an escape into nature, and a place for people of different backgrounds to come together.
To prepare for construction, the city drained swamps and cleared out communities of free blacks and low-income Irish residents within park boundaries. Under the architects’ direction, workers transformed the landscape. They planted more than 270,000 trees and shrubs, moved huge amounts of soil, and dug ponds and a large new city reservoir. They blasted ridges with gunpowder to create picturesque bedrock outcroppings.
The first section of the park made accessible to the public was a part of a lake opened for ice skating in December 1858. More areas soon followed. Construction of the park encountered delays during the American Civil War (1861-1865) and during political squabbles after the war. The park was expanded in 1863. Since 1980, the Central Park Conservancy and the City of New York have maintained the park through a private-public partnership. Today, the park hosts many cultural events, including “Shakespeare in the Park” and free concerts by popular musicians.
