Central Park
Central Park is one of the urban wonders of the world, a green oasis in the
great concrete, high-rise landscape of New York City. This entirely man-made
Park is so naturally part of the Manhattan environment, and a place where all
of us can escape from the frenetic rhythms that make New York the most exciting
city in the world.
Facts
Central Park stretches from 59th street to 110th street and from Fifth Avenue
to Eighth Avenue. It has 843 acres or 6% of Manhattan's total acreage: 150
acres in seven waterbodies, 250 acres of lawn and 136 acres of woodland. It is
twice as large as Monaco.
There you can find 36 bridges and arches one can walk over and under and seven
ornamental fountains as well as 125 drinking fountains.
58 miles of pedestrian paths spread throughout the Park with 8,968 benches,
which would stretch 7 miles placed end to end.
26,000 trees, of which 1,700 are American Elms, grow in Central Park and 275 of
the 800 species of birds found in North America live there.
More than 20 million people visit the Park each year. They go jogging, rowing,
cycling, skating, take a sunbath, visit Central Park Zoo, visit the many events
that take place in the Park, listen to a concert or just go sightseeing.
History
843 acres of swampy, muddy terrain were transformed into the world's largest
premier public spaces.
Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux were the designers of the park and
created their "Greensward Plan" in 1858. It was a master plan for the first
major park entirely intended for public use. They wanted it to be a healthy
refuge from the over-crowded living sections in southern Manhattan. (The city
had only been developed to 38th street when the construction began at 59th
street.) The designers were romantics, they "trusted in the power of nature to
lift man's spirit above the drudgery of city life".
They could not have imagined that skyscrapers and high-rise apartment buildings
provide the backdrop for so many Park views, and that a quarter of a million people
stream into Central Park on a spring weekend.
Today the Park is saved by a unique public/private partnership between the City
of New York and the not-for-profit Central Park Conservancy.
Birds
Songbirds either come down to from more northern climes to feed on tree seeds
in Central Park or they live in the Park all year round.
There are bird feeders stocked with birdseeds throughout the winter and all
people who like these animals feed them under street trees or in backyards
throughout the season of ice and snow.
If the winter is not too cold and the lakes, rivers and ponds are not frozen
you can find a number waterfowl Canada geese and mallard ducklings in the Park.
