Morning journal and courier., 1889-06-06
A Now Resort In Central Park.

Calvert Vsux, the landscape artist of the New York parks, has finished the plans for new resort in Central Park, which will be surprise to many of those who are most familiar with the hooks and corners of the park. This new feature is in the oldest part of the park. Between the Fifth and Sixth avenue entrances the lower lake lies in e lit. tie hollow. Its western shore rises abruptly two hundred feet above the surface. If the | lake were on 8 level with the street the ton of the hill would overlook the row of tall ! flats which front the park, and rise nearly to the altitude of the white marble spires of St. Patrick's cathedral, few blocks away.
 ! The streets in the neighborhood have been ! filled in to their present grade, leaving this portion of the park a little valley, from which the hill rises with all the proportions of mountain in miniature. The walks and drives wind around the hill half way up its sides, but during the last twenty-five years the hill itself has been shut off from the 1 world, although in the heart of the city, and ! has been visited only by the boys who have eluded the observation of the police, crept through the bushes and climbed to the top. The hill top is the highest point of the park below the Belvedere, and group of pine trees springing out Of the rocky soil is the only vegetation on it's crest. These trees carry out the illusion of 8 small mountain. Although hardy and vigorous with a quarter of centurys growth, they are dwarfs, not
 
 The hill itself is the only portion of lower Central Park which has been unimproved for park purposes, and this bit of landscape re. mains as it has been, and as Manhattan Is- land was for hundreds of years, with the ex- ception of the group of dwarf pines. When Mir. Vaux, with Frederick Law Olmsted, laid out Central Park, at his suggestion nothing was done to the hill top. The surrounding l park was transformed, the lake made at the foot of the hill and the roads and bridges built around it. The top was then bare and the pines were set out and left to themselves. Some of them died in the barren soil, but portion of them, as MT. Vaux expected, became thrifty young dwarfs.
 After twenty-five years Mir. Vaux has again the direction of the landscape of Cen tral Park, and he finds that nature has car ried out the artistic effects which he had ex- pected on this little mountain. The work men and gardeners are now following out his plans by laying walk from the foot of the hill up the side to 8 little plateau near the top. A summer house is building here and \ the plateau will be planted with foliage and \ flowers and made one of the pretty, unex- peoted hooks of the park. The top of the hill rises nearly fifty feet above the plateau, and that will continue to be shut off from the public. The top is simply a long, nar- row ridge of rock which shows how centu- ries of erosion have cut down the land. It ! carries out the landscape effect of the hill, which is appreciated better by view from a \ distance, but would be destroyed if the sum- init were also thrown open to the public. The force of workmen which is engaged on | this work now will, it is expected, have all ' finished this month