CENTRAL PARK:
Between Manhattan’s Upper West and Upper East Sides is where you’ll find the urban park known as Central Park in New York City. With an area of 843 acres (341 hectares), it is the fifth-largest park in the city. With an estimated 42 million visits per year as of 2016, it is the most famous urban park in the United States. This park is the most often-used filming location worldwide. A big park in Manhattan proposed in the 1840s. It finally granted in 1853, covering 778 acres (315 ha). With their “Greensward Plan,” landscape designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux took first place in a design competition for the park in 1857. The same year, construction started, and Seneca Village, a predominantly Black community demolished after taken by eminent domain.
The initial parts of the park made accessible to the public in late 1858. It finished in 1876 after more property at the northern end of the Park was bought in 1859. Robert Moses, the parks commissioner for New York City, began a program to clean up the garden in the 1930s. After a deterioration in the early 20th century. Starting in the 1980s, the Park Conservancy restored numerous garden areas to prevent further decline in the late 20th century.
DESIGN AND LAYOUT OF CENTRAL PARK:
Three areas make up Central Park: the “North End” above the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, “Mid-Park” between the reservoir and the Lake and Conservatory Water to the south, and “South End” below the Lake and Conservatory Water. The park’s five visitor centers are the Charles A. Dana Discovery Centre, Belvedere Castle, Chess & Checkers House, the Dairy, and Columbus Circle. The park was nearly fully manicured when constructed in the 1850s and 1860s, giving it natural-looking flora and landforms. It features eight artificial lakes and ponds built by blocking natural springs and flows. There are several lawns, meadows, small grassy areas, and some forested areas. There are 6.1 miles (9.8 km) of roadways and 21 playgrounds for kids.
With an area of 843 acres (341 ha; 1.317 sq mi; 3.41 km2), it is the fifth-largest park in New York City, behind Pelham Bay Park, the Staten Island Greenbelt, Van Cortlandt Park, and Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. This Public Park census tract in the United States has the number 143. According to American Community Survey estimates, over the previous five years, four girls with a median age of 19.8 lived in the park. Although 25 people lived in the census tract as of the 2010 United States Census. Park officials have denied that anyone has lived there permanently.
GATES AND PLAZAS:
A stone wall that encloses the Park measures 29,025 feet long (8,847 m) and 3 feet, 10 inches tall (117 cm); it had 18 unidentified gates at first. The idea to name each gate after “the vocations to which this city owes its metropolitan character,” such as miners, professors, artists, or hunters. The names of the gate accepted by the Public Park commissioners in April 1862. The park expanded to include 20 named gates, four of which may be reach from plazas at each park’s corners. At the intersection of garden West/Eighth Avenue, Broadway, and 59th Street, there is a circular plaza known as Columbus Circle. Columbus Circle constructed in the 1860s and housed the park’s Merchant’s Gate entrance. The 1892 Columbus Monument, its most prominent feature, caused controversy in the 2010s. Just beyond the park’s main gate is the 1913 USS Maine National Monument.
REAL ESTATE AND ECONOMIC INCREMENT:
In the middle of the 1860s, as the park was in process, the value of the nearby land began to rise significantly. Real estate values in the neighborhood rose sharply when Urban Park completed. The value of neighborhoods increased by as much as 700 percent between 1858 and 1870. Additionally, it led to the development of Upper Manhattan’s zoning plan. Following the completion, affluent communities expanded on both sides. Due to the concentration of affluent households on the Upper East Side, a section of Fifth Avenue that borders lower Park dubbed as “Millionaires’ Row” by the 1890s.
Although the Upper West Side took longer to develop. The neighborhood eventually became dominated by row houses and opulent apartment buildings. Some of the neighborhoods were later added to the Central Park West Historic District. Although the majority of the wealthy in the city used to reside in mansions. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they began to move into apartments close to Central Park.