ABSTRACT
Central Park is a skinny streak of surrogate nature set in the rectilinear grid of Manhattan. Commenced in 1856, it was the first purpose-built public park in North America. It remains a paradigm. Central Park consolidated the concept of public land and gave birth to ‘American Pastoral’ landscape and to the profession of landscape architecture in North America. 1 The park was inspired by socially conscious advocates such as William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) and Andrew Jackson Downing (1815–52) and designed by architect Calvert Bowyer Vaux (1824–95) and landscape architecture novice Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903). Completed through the stringent management of Andrew Haswell Green (1820–1903) and good husbandry of Samuel Browne Parsons (1844– 1923), Central Park was redefined between 1934 and 1960 by Robert Moses (1888–1981) as one of many recreation facilities. Popularized, starved of funds and brought to the edge of destruction in the 1960s and 1970s, it inflamed the idea that parks are dangerous places. It has undergone rehabilitation as ‘a work of landscape art’ since 1980 in a programme directed initially by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers (b. 1936) and largely funded by private money.
