Central Park, nestled in the middle of Manhattan, New York City, is the most visited urban park in the United States. An estimated 40 million people per year walk its 843 acres, visiting its many attractions, including the Central Park Zoo, Metropolitan Art Museum, skating rinks, fountains and leisure meadows. Today, the park is one of the greatest attractions in all of America, having appeared in over 240 films since 1908, but did you know it’s entirely man-made?
New York City’s population quadrupled between 1821 and 1855. Many residents requested a park be built to escape the noise and bustle of their daily lives. In 1853, the New York City government set aside an area stretching from 59th street to 106th to create such a park.
In 1857, the city held a design contest to find a developer for the land. Architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won with their “Greensward Plan” which mirrored the great European urban parks like London’s Hyde Park and Paris’ Bois de Boulogne. Before construction could begin, the city had to remove the 1,600 residents who had set up small houses and shanty towns in the unoccupied city lands.
Construction was an immense project. In order to create the cobbled roads that still span the park, 30 feet of bedrock had to be removed. Thousands of workers were employed using the most powerful explosive of the time, gunpowder. In fact, more was used to clear the land than was consumed through the entirety of the Battle of Gettysburg. Other parts of the build included digging out the multiple entirely man-made lakes which could be drained and filled by steam power engines. The island’s rocky soil was so infertile that over 18,500 cubic yards of soil was hauled in from New Jersey to sustain the 190,000 trees being planted there. Over 1,500 different species of shrubs, flowers and trees were transported to the park. It’s main attraction, Central Park Zoo, finished construction in 1859 with the majority of its exhibit animals coming from wealthy donors’ private menageries. The original construction project finished in 1873, making it the first entirely man-made park in the United States.
Improvements didn’t stop there. In 1895, architect Robert Moses added 19 playgrounds and 12 baseball fields to the park. He also added the Conservatory Garden in 1937. The central park carousel was installed in 1951. In 1962, George T. Delacorte, Jr. donated the money to build a permanent amphitheater for the growing yearly Shakespeare festival. In 1966, Mayor John V. Lindsay banned cars in the park on weekends, bringing a whole host of cyclists, skateboarders and hobbyists back to the park.
There are countless sites to see on a visit to Central Park. The zoo alone could take all day to traverse its four habitats, including a polar bear pool, penguin house and aquarium. The newly reopened The Tavern on the Green restaurant welcomes diners once again after being close for nearly five years of renovations. There are also tons of free entertainment opportunities too, like the yearly New York Shakespeare Festival, special concerts and sporting events. To see everything in one day, you might want to employ one of the many horse drawn carriage tours or sign up for a guided tour.