The bridges of Central Park are whimsically elegant and practical in their efficiency. Straddling great rock formations, roads, bridle trails, footpaths, and waterways, more than 50 ornate bridges and arches enable over 60 miles of pathways to fit neatly within a 1.3-square-mile recreational space on Manhattan Island. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux's competition-winning Greensward Plan of 1857 enabled Central Park to become the first landscaped public urban park in America. Architects Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould designed the bridges, including some of America's oldest cast-iron spans. These graceful structures provide breathtaking vistas and unique venues for visitors and artisans alike. Standing inconspicuously in most cases and with bold pronouncement in others, they are thoughtfully placed to assure a timeless beauty and ongoing utility. Built at great expense and well integrated with the surrounding natural and engineered terrain, park bridges continue to circulate horseback riders, pedestrians, and horse-drawn carriages effortlessly through the man-made haven. The Bridges of Central Park celebrates the beauty and dimension of these structures, which provide relief for crowded paths and are frequently subjects of the photographer's eye.

A pictorial history of the development of New York City’s Central Park from conception to completion. Drawing on the unparalleled collection of original designs for Central Park in the New York City Municipal Archives, Cynthia S. Brenwall tells the story of the creation of New York’s great public park, from its conception to its completion. This treasure trove of material ranges from the original winning competition entry; to meticulously detailed maps; to plans and elevations of buildings, some built, some unbuilt; to elegant designs for all kinds of fixtures needed in a world of gaslight and horses; to intricate engineering drawings of infrastructure elements. Much of it has never been published before. A virtual time machine that takes the reader on a journey through the park as it was originally envisioned, The Central Park is both a magnificent art book and a message from the past about what brilliant urban planning can do for a great city.

Winner - 2023 John Brinkerhoff Jackson Book Prize, UVA Center for Cultural Landscapes With more than eight hundred sprawling green acres in the middle of one of the world’s densest cities, Central Park is an urban masterpiece. Designed in the middle of the nineteenth century by the landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, it is a model for city parks worldwide. But before it became Central Park, the land was the site of farms, businesses, churches, wars, and burial grounds—and home to many different kinds of New Yorkers. This book is the authoritative account of the place that would become Central Park. From the first Dutch family to settle on the land through the political crusade to create America’s first major urban park, Sara Cedar Miller chronicles two and a half centuries of history. She tells the stories of Indigenous hunters, enslaved people and enslavers, American patriots and British loyalists, the Black landowners of Seneca Village, Irish pig farmers, tavern owners, Catholic sisters, Jewish protesters, and more. Miller unveils a British fortification and camp during the Revolutionary War, a suburban retreat from the yellow fever epidemics at the turn of the nineteenth century, and the properties that a group of free Black Americans used to secure their right to vote. Tales of political chicanery, real estate speculation, cons, and scams stand alongside democratic idealism, the striving of immigrants, and powerfully human lives. Before Central Park shows how much of the history of early America is still etched upon the landscapes of Central Park today.

The year 2008 marks the 150th anniversary of the design of Central Park, the first and arguably the most famous of America’s urban landscape parks. In October 1857 the new park’s board of commissioners announced a public design competition, and the following April the imaginative yet practicable "Greensward” plan submitted by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted was selected. This book tells the fascinating story of how an extraordinary work of public art emerged from the crucible of New York City politics. From William Cullen Bryant’s 1844 editorial calling for "a pleasure ground of shade and recreation” to the completion of construction in 1870, the history of Central Park is an urban epic--a tale not only of animosity, political intrigue, and desire but also of idealism, sacrifice, and genius.