The Complexity of Central Park Research Paper

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telling the story of what has come to be known as Central Park in New York City. Indeed, very few parks in the world are as iconic and story-filled as that park. The words in this report will not just be a recitation of the history of the park. There will also be stories told about the people that planned, envisioned and constructed the site. There will also be some focus on those that have used the park for whatever notable purpose. This report will very much be an encapsulation of the people that brought Central Park to life and have kept it at the glorious standards that it still meets today. The author of this report will make use of historical and scholarly sources to make the important points to be made. While there are certainly architectural and landscaping marvels, both in the United States and around the world, there are not a lot of areas of the world that are as breathtaking and story-filled as New York's Central Park.

The city of New York and its significance has been known for quite a long time. Indeed, this was figured out and established as far back as 1800. It was clear that its future as a major commercial hub of what is now the northeastern part of the United States was going to be extensive. This was due to things like it's "well-protected and year-round harbor" and its strategic location at the mount of the Hudson River [footnoteRef:1]. As the city began to expand and grow, there was an eventual turn to a green space or park that could be inserted somewhere on the main island of New York. However, there were a lot of twists and turns that happened before the final location and size of the park was settled upon. It was initially settled on that there would be about a dozen north/south streets and that were one hundred feet wide each. There would also be about 155 east/west streets. About ten percent of those (15) would be the width of the avenues while the others would be narrower. This was done with a purpose as houses and neighborhoods based on right angles are easier to maintain and develop. If the original plan for New York park space, as authored in 1811, had been approved, it would have been massive in addition to being a true "central" park in the area. The total acreage to be dedicated was about five hundred in total with about 239 acres residing between Twenty-third and Thirty-second Streets and Third and Seventh avenues. This plan was quickly shot down was that the open space was entirely too big for what was desired and sacrificed entirely too much area that could and should be used for commercial development and/or homes for residents. Over the 1810's and 1820's, the city continued to expand at a very rapid pace. However, people started to complain that the amount of park space was entirely lacking and that this condition should be remediated [footnoteRef:2]. [1: Hecksher, Morrison H. "Creating Central Park, "Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 65, 3 (Winter 2008): 6-74.] [2: Hecksher, Morrison H. "Creating Central Park, "Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 65, 3 (Winter 2008): 6-74.]

Part of the demand for parks was resolved by the land donated by Samuel Ruggles that would eventually become Gramercy Park. The Stuyvesant family gave land for a square that would later be named after them. By 1838, there were about 170 total acres' worth of parks. However, there was a want and desire for more. This is when the two major advocates of what would become Central Park came to the table. Indeed, those two people were William Cullen Bryant and Andrew Jackson. Rather than being politicians, they were instead from the arts and letters sphere. Bryant grew up in Massachusetts and practiced law before moving to the New York area in 1829 to enter the world of newspapers. He was also a renowned poet and became a highly influential editor for the New York Evening Post. He made his case for a park in 1844 when he wrote an editorial that included a statement that implored the need for "an extensive pleasure ground for shade and recreation." He further said that there was "no finer situation for the public garden of a great city." The latter quotes was a reference to an area known as Jones' Wood. This was a heavily forested tract of land along the East River [footnoteRef:3].

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[3: Hecksher, Morrison H. "Creating Central Park, "Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 65, 3 (Winter 2008): 6-74.]

Downing has his own two cents when it came to the need for a bigger and better park. He wrote a series of screeds that mostly focused on a "lament" that there as a stunning lack of parks around the country. These letters and other offerings continued for about a decade running from 1841's A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adopted to North America to some letters he wrote from 1848 to 1951. When the initial plans for the Jones' Wood tract came to pass, the initial indications were encouraging. However, there was soon some major blowback in the form of the Democrats taking over the City Council and a number of lawsuits from landowners that did not want the plan to go forward. Downing was then drawn to assert in another writing that five hundred acres was the absolute minimum that New York should dedicate to its planned Central Park. Everything finally came to a head when the Central Park Act was passed on July 21st, 1853. This started the process of preparing the area including the acquisition of the land areas involved and so forth. The passage and implementation of this law represented one of the two biggest public works projects to date with the other one being the Croton Aqueduct. One person that was pivotal to the Central Park coming to pass was a man named Viele. For a time, he was using his spare time to do surveying and other work related to the park and he did this without payment for quite a long time. Indeed, he was very dedicated to getting the park planned and prepared and he took more than a slight gamble in committing to the project whilst there was still a lot of infighting and squabbling about how the park would evolve and change as it was being planned and built. This squabbling and ambiguity about the park's future finally seemed to subside in April 1857 when the governing structure under which the park would be built was finally completed. Much of Viele's work before this resolution was eventually rejected but the newly appointed board overseeing the project retained Viele for the work that was to be done now that the governing structure was finalized. Further, a man named Calvert Vaux was to have been part of the project had he not died in 1852 in a steamboat accident. Vaux's view of Viele's plan was not positive and this is probably what led to Viele's plan being disregarded, even if they kept him on as part of the project [footnoteRef:4]. [4: Hecksher, Morrison H. "Creating Central Park, "Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 65, 3 (Winter 2008): 6-74.]

Even with Vaux shooting down Viele's prior vision of the park, he still emerged as being one of the two major architects of the park. Viele was a graduate of West Point. After his unpaid stint, which lasted about three years, turned into a chief engineer post, he enlisted four surveyors to complete the job. He divided the area for the park in fifty square foot blocks. He also commissioned things like geological profiles, drainage schemes and the overall layout of the park which included pathways and so forth with a central parade ground being the overall nexus of the park. This was in part the plan that was rejected. The position of Chief Engineer was eventually claimed by the eventual and final chief of the project and that was a man by the name of Olmsted. There were nearly three dozen (33) entries when it came to the design competition for Central Park. A dozen of them came from park employees and these included engineers John Rink, Roswell Graves Jr., and George E. Waring. Viele was in the mix as well and he actually resubmitted the same plan that was rejected prior. Olmsted came to power because his vision was the one selected by the commissioners on April 28. Olmsted's proposal is significant because it had significant contributions from the aforementioned Vaux, who has died about four years prior to the plan's acceptance. The Olmsted/Vaux proposal came to be known as the Greensward plan. The guiding idea behind the Greensward plan was that the park designed was more than just a sum of the parts that made.....

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