Description of the attraction
Central Park is an unusual place: a green massif 4 kilometers long, framed by Manhattan skyscrapers. The park is well-groomed, shady, it has a lot of living creatures, and all this is just a stone's throw from the bustling streets.
Its history began in the first half of the 19th century, when the population of New York was growing rapidly, and people had nowhere to rest. On weekends at that time they walked in cemeteries - there was no other greenery in the city. New York needed something like the Parisian Bois de Boulogne or London's Hyde Park.
In 1853, the city's legislature planned the construction of a park in Manhattan. A design competition was held, with journalist and landscape architect Frederick Olmsted and British architect Calvert Vox winning. The 280 hectares set aside for the park lay between what was then New York and the village of Harlem. The territory was not deserted: about 1600 poor people lived here - free African Americans (it was before the Civil War, during which slavery was abolished), Irish. To free the land, they were paid compensation under a specially adopted law on the compulsory alienation of private property.
The terrain was completely redesigned, hills and lakes were created (they used more gunpowder to form them than in the famous battle of the Civil War at Gettysburg). More than ten million carts of earth and stone were removed from the future park. In return, they brought in fourteen thousand cubic meters of fertile soil from New Jersey, planted more than four million shrubs and trees.
The park was magnificent, but immediately after opening it began to decline: the then dominant Democratic Party in New York showed no interest in it. That all changed in 1934, when the Republican Fiorello La Guardia was elected mayor of the city. He managed to quickly clear the park of debris, restore bridges and lakes. Sports facilities appeared. In the 1960s, Mayor John Lindsay, himself an avid cyclist, banned cars from entering the park on weekends. However, this was followed by a twenty-year period of decline: the park was destroyed by vandals, it was dangerous to appear here in the dark.
The revival began in the eighties. Today Central Park is one of the most attractive places in New York. It is visited by approximately thirty-five million people a year. There are extensive hiking and horseback riding trails, a zoo, wildlife sanctuary, outdoor theater and a host of other attractions. The local slate rocks attract rock climbers. In winter, two skating rinks are open, there are fields for baseball, volleyball, bowling on the lawn, and cricket. Twenty-nine sculptures are installed in the park, including a monument to Duke Ellington by Robert Graham. Nearby you can see a monument to the dog Balto, who in 1925 saved the city of Nome in Alaska by delivering serum from diphtheria there in a terrible cold.
There is also a historical rarity in Central Park: "Cleopatra's Needle", the "sister" of the granite obelisks of Paris and London. An ancient Egyptian obelisk has been standing here since 1881.
More than twenty-five thousand trees grow in the park, including elms, Amur and Japanese maples. There are 235 bird species here (even the rare red hawk). The park is a spring and autumn bird migration site along the Atlantic Flyway. Raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, possums live here and, it seems, are not very afraid of people.
