MAP OF THE CENTRAL PARK APRIL 20TH, 1871
from Annual Report of the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park
Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux (landscape architects)
W. H. Grant (supporting engineer)
New York: 1871
Color-printed lithograph
9.75 x 36.5 in.
Long horizontal map of Central Park done at a scale of 400 feet to the inch showing it at its state of near completion as of April 1871. The map was probably based on the original 1858 pen and ink design of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux's Greensward Plan for Central Park. A comparison with that drawing shows that by 1871 various changes had been made. The map depicts both major features and subtle details, including roads, walkpaths, reservoirs, rocks, buildings, and trees.
Central Park came into being beginning with an act passed on July 21, 1853 by the New York City Common Council authorizing the construction of a public park bounded by 59th and 106th Streets, Fifth and Eighth Avenues. The park was conceived to provide recreational open space for citizens of the growing city, which then had few open squares. The site that was destined to become Central Park was then "a bleak, rubbish-strewn area littered with squatters' shacks." (Dek) Central Park opened in 1857, and in 1858, the job of improving and expanding it, transforming the area into a pastoral oasis for the "toiling masses," was awarded to Calvert Vaux, a young British architect, and Frederick Law Olmstead, an American farmer and magazine editor. Reconstruction began that same year and was completed in 1873.
"There was a staggering amount of work to be done to transform the area into a blend of pastoral and woodland scenery. This involved the design and construction of roadways, tunnels, bridges, arches, stairways, fountains, benches, lamp posts, gates, fences and innumerable other artifacts. It also involved the supervision of an army of about five thousand laborersOlmsted, to whom most of the credit goes, insisted on seeing the multidimensional project as a single work of art, which he was mandated to create. For this purpose, he ventured to assume to himself the title of 'artist.'" (Dek)
The original 1858 pen and ink drawing of the Greensward Plan on which this map was probably based is now in the collection of the New York City Department of Parks, The Arsenal, and was included in The Greatest Grid, an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York (December 2011 through July 15, 2012) of maps documenting the development of the grid system of mapping Manhattan. The drawing is also illustrated and described in the book accompanying the exhibition.