page_title: Central Park
section_title: 1870–1876: completion
hierarchical_section_title: Central Park / History / Construction / 1870–1876: completion
caption_attribution_description: English: Identifier: array1875sipe (find matches) Title: The Pennsylvania railroad: its origin, construction, condition, and connections. Embracing historical, descriptive, and statistical notices of cities, towns, villages, stations, industries, and objects of interest on its various lines in Pennsylvania and New Jersey Year: 1875 (1870s) Authors: Sipes, William B., d. 1905 Pennsylvania Railroad. Passenger Dept Subjects: Pennsylvania Railroad Publisher: Philadelphia (Pennsylvania Railroad Co.) Passenger Dept. Contributing Library: Northeastern University, Snell Library Digitizing Sponsor: Northeastern University, Snell Library View Book Page: Book Viewer About This Book: Catalog Entry View All Images: All Images From Book Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book. Text Appearing Before Image: ngdale, be-tween One Hundred and Fifteenth andOne Hundred and Twentieth streets. Thegrounds include about forty acres, hand-somely and tastefully laid out. In location,arrangement, and in all other respects, it furnishes an elegant retreat for its unfortunateinmates. The New York Orphan Asylumis beautifully situated on the bank of theHudson, between Seventy-third and Seventy-fourth streets. Its grounds occupy aboutnine acres, and in its design and appoint-ments it is a noble charity. The Institutionfor the Deaf and Dumb is on WashingtonHeights, and is liberally endowed and wellmanaged. The Institution for the Blindoccupies the block between Thirty-thirdand Thirty-fourth streets and Eighth andNinth avenues, and is a beautiful specimenof architecture. The Cooper Union occupiesthe block bounded by Seventh and Eighthstreets and Third and Fourth avenues. _ Itcontains a large and well-supplied reading-room, a library, an art gallery, and a numberof instruction and lecture rooms, free to all Text Appearing After Image: NEW YORK. 41 Note About Images Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original work.
context_page_description: Central Park is an urban park in New York City located between the Upper West and Upper East Sides of Manhattan. It is the fifth-largest park in the city by area, covering 843 acres. It is the most visited urban park in the United States with an estimated 38 million visitors annually, and is the most filmed location in the world.
  Following proposals for a large park in Manhattan during the 1840s, it was approved in 1853 to cover 778 acres. In 1857, the landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition for the park with their "Greensward Plan". Construction began the same year, and the park's first areas were opened to the public in late 1858. Additional land at the northern end of Central Park was purchased in 1859, and the park was completed in 1876. After a period of decline in the early 20th century, New York City parks commissioner Robert Moses started a program to clean up Central Park. The Central Park Conservancy, created in 1980 to combat further deterioration in the late 20th century, refurbished many parts of the park during the 1980s and 1990s.
context_section_description: The Tammany Hall political machine, which was the largest political force in New York at the time, was in control of Central Park for a brief period beginning in April 1870. A new charter created by Tammany boss William M. Tweed abolished the old 11-member commission and replaced it with one with five men composed of Green and four other Tammany-connected figures. Subsequently, Olmsted and Vaux resigned again from the project in November 1870. After Tweed's embezzlement was publicly revealed in 1871, leading to his imprisonment, Olmsted and Vaux were re-hired, and the Central Park Commission appointed new members who were mostly in favor of Olmsted.
  One of the areas that remained relatively untouched was the underdeveloped western side of Central Park, though some large structures would be erected in the park's remaining empty plots. By 1872, Manhattan Square had been reserved for the American Museum of Natural History, founded three years before at the Arsenal. A corresponding area on the East Side, originally intended as a playground, would later become the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the final years of Central Park's construction, Vaux and Mould designed several structures for Central Park. The park's sheepfold (now Tavern on the Green) and Ladies' Meadow were designed by Mould in 1870–1871, followed by the administrative offices on the 86th Street transverse in 1872. Even though Olmsted and Vaux's partnership was dissolved by the end of 1872, the park was not officially completed until 1876.
caption: Gentry in the new park, c. 1870
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