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Overview
Central Park, America's first public park, is a paragon of nineteenth-century landscape design and one of the world's great urban spaces. Marking the park's 150th anniversary, Central Park, An American Masterpiece is a definitive illustrated history that celebrates the splendor and significance of this national treasure. The park has just undergone a nearly three-hundred-million-dollar restoration that took more than two decades, and it has never looked more beautiful. Author Sara Cedar Miller, the official historian and photographer for the Central Park Conservancy, draws on extensive research to tell the captivating story of the park's creation and provides surprising and fresh insights into its design. Fascinating period views and original plans and drawings -- many previously unpublished, including two competition entries thought to be lost -- are complemented by Miller's breathtaking photographs, which reveal the rejuvenated park in all its glory. Placing Central Park in the context of nineteenth-century American art and social history, Miller's lively text illuminates the roles of its stellar designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, explores how the original plan was modified in the course of construction, and traces the evolution of the park over the decades. She also gives long overdue credit to the designers' associate Jacob Wrey Mould, whose extraordinary sculptural program for Bethesda Terrace is an artistic achievement of the highest order.Readers are led from the gates at Grand Army Plaza, along the Mall and its formal allee of elms, to the heart of the park, Bethesda Terrace and Fountain, whose iconography is explored in detail. The tour continues through each of the park's distinctive landscapes -- among them the pastoral Sheep Meadow, North Meadow, and Harlem Meer; the picturesque Ramble and Ravine -- which are prime exemplars of aesthetic trends in nineteenth-century landscape design. These landscapes appear to be totally natural but were, in fact, entirely man-made through the arduous process of blasting stone outcrops, carting in millions of cubic yards of soil, and planting vast areas of trees, shrubs, and flowers for special effects of texture and color. Readers also visit the park's architectural highlights such as Belvedere Castle and the Dairy, stopping along the way to admire its fanciful bridges -- no two alike -- its outstanding assortment of rustic shelters and furniture, its enchanting gardens such as Conservatory Garden and Shakespeare Garden, and its superb and varied public sculptures. Offering the rich experience of an in-depth tour of the park, this book will delight New Yorkers and visitors alike.
Synopsis
Every New York City tour bus stops at Strawberry Fields; countless movies have been filmed at Bethesda Terrace; and concerts from the Great Lawn are broadcast throughout the nation. These places are all part of Central Park, America's first public park and a paragon of 19th-century landscape design. Marking the park's 150th anniversary, this first definitive history celebrates the splendor and significance of this national treasure.
Sara Cedar Miller, the official historian and photographer for the Central Park Conservancy, draws on extensive research to tell the captivating story of the park's creation, placing it in the context of 19th-century American art and social history and illuminating the roles of its designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux and their associate Jacob Wrey Mould. Fascinating period views and original plans and drawings, many previously unpublished, are complemented by Miller's breathtaking new photographs, which reveal the restored park in all its glory.
About the Author:
Sara Cedar Miller has been the photographer for the Central Park Conservancy since 1984 and its official historian since 1989. Her photographs have been published in books and periodicals around the world. Miller lectures extensively on the history of Central Park and serves as a park spokesperson on radio and television. She received an M.A. in art history from Hunter College and an M.F.A. in photography from Pratt Institute. Miller lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
The New Yorker
In 1863, at the peak of the Civil War, a package turned up on President Lincoln's desk containing stereoscopic images of the municipal wonder taking shape up in New York: Central Park. These high-tech photographic scenes were intended to soothe the President's nerves, just as the Park has calmed New Yorkers for generations. This summer is the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the state's wise decision-influenced by the preëminent nineteenth-century landscape designer Andrew Jackson Downing-to set aside a giant chunk of swampy Manhattan ground for the creation of the first major landscaped public park in the United States. Central Park, An American Masterpiece, by Sara Cedar Miller, the Park's official historian, is itself a welcoming oasis, teeming with photographs of lush meadows, rustic pergolas, whimsical bridges, and Catskills-inspired ravines. The Park's eight hundred and forty-three acres, we learn, are easily discernible by shuttle astronauts; its sunken transverse roads were the prototype for the modern highway system; and its Great Lawn, originally a reservoir, was filled in with rubble from the Rockefeller Center construction site. The park we know today-featuring Balto the sled dog, Cleopatra's Needle, and Wollman Rink-descends from design entry No. 33, the famous "Greensward" plan of architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. The University of Massachusetts Press has reprinted Walks and Talks of An American Farmer in England, Olmsted's engaging account of his 1850 ramble around England and Wales, including his fateful encounter with Birkenhead Park, near Liverpool. "This magnificent pleasure-ground," Olmsted wrote, "is entirely, unreservedly, and for ever the people's own.
( Mark Rozzo)Editorials
The New York Times
Miller's history is as clear and sprightly as Huddlestone Cascade (uptown, near Lasker Rink), at 15 feet the highest waterfall in the park. — Eric P. NashThe New Yorker
In 1863, at the peak of the Civil War, a package turned up on President Lincoln's desk containing stereoscopic images of the municipal wonder taking shape up in New York: Central Park. These high-tech photographic scenes were intended to soothe the President's nerves, just as the Park has calmed New Yorkers for generations. This summer is the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the state's wise decision-influenced by the preëminent nineteenth-century landscape designer Andrew Jackson Downing-to set aside a giant chunk of swampy Manhattan ground for the creation of the first major landscaped public park in the United States. Central Park, An American Masterpiece, by Sara Cedar Miller, the Park's official historian, is itself a welcoming oasis, teeming with photographs of lush meadows, rustic pergolas, whimsical bridges, and Catskills-inspired ravines. The Park's eight hundred and forty-three acres, we learn, are easily discernible by shuttle astronauts; its sunken transverse roads were the prototype for the modern highway system; and its Great Lawn, originally a reservoir, was filled in with rubble from the Rockefeller Center construction site. The park we know today-featuring Balto the sled dog, Cleopatra's Needle, and Wollman Rink-descends from design entry No. 33, the famous "Greensward" plan of architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. The University of Massachusetts Press has reprinted Walks and Talks of An American Farmer in England, Olmsted's engaging account of his 1850 ramble around England and Wales, including his fateful encounter with Birkenhead Park, near Liverpool. "This magnificent pleasure-ground," Olmsted wrote, "is entirely, unreservedly, and for ever the people's own.( Mark Rozzo)