The Park and the People by Roy Rosenzwieg and Elizabeth Blackmar

On October 13, 1857, just two weeks after the park dwellers left their homes, the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park offered prizes of four hundred to two thousand dollars for the four best proposals for "laying out the park." This notice for the first important landscape design competition in the United States elicited thirty-three varied proposals, which revealed the influence of English and continental traditions of landscape design as well as more eclectic vernacular ideas about what would make this public place appealing. But when the commissioners opened the proposals six months later, they found one curious entry. Plan 2 by an anonymous contestant was nothing but a pyramid.

I love Central Park. For a while, I worked basically on its doorstep: two short blocks after work and I was at the beautiful Onassis reservoir. I'm a little farther away now, but a short subway ride in the afternoon takes me to one of many favorite spots: the Loch, a creek of still green water running through the North Woods, or the Ramble, a bird-filled jumble of looping paths designed to let you get lost. These are my spots, but what I've always loved about the park is how it is many things to many people. Someone else might gravitate toward the Great Lawn, or the Sheep Meadow, or the Harlem Meer, or the Bethesda Fountain, or the Nature Sanctuary, or one of the tennis courts of ballfields, or Belvedere Castle or Delacorte Theater, or the zoo, or one of the two world-class museums fit snugly inside of it: the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History. So varied is the immense park that it's almost a surprise to learn just how contested a space it has been since it's very conception, as historians Roy Rosenzwieg and Elizabeth Blackmar show in their history of Central Park, The Park and the People.

Rosenzwieg and Blackmar begin their history with the contentious political battle over the park's location and design. Central Park was very nearly not central at all: early politicos wanted a spot on the East River known as Jones Wood for the city's first park, going so far as snatching it from its wealthy owners by the force of legislative decree, but years of jockeying led to the abandonment of the Jones Wood site in favor of a truly "central" park, then located far uptown from the city center. The design contest that led to the selection of Frederick Olmsted and Calvert Vaux's Greensward plan is the stuff of legend, though Rosenzwieg and Blackmar note that Olmsted had been selected as the park's director before the contest had even begun, putting his thumb on the scale somewhat. Still, Olmsted was a young unknown at the time, and with the development of Central Park, he and his architect partner Vaux basically invented the field of landscape architecture.

In the latter half of the 20th century, the historians note, Olmsted's historical reputation has grown tremendously. And to be fair, much of what is so stunning about the park can be traced back to its original design: when walking through the Ramble, you are walking more or less through the park as it was first design, and the section first opened to the public, tracing history in a literal way. But the historians show how the contested nature of the park space can be traced back even to the rifts between Olmsted and Vaux. Olmsted put more pride in his position as the park's managing director than he did as its designer, and believed that a firm hand was needed in managing the public's use of the park, instituting a number of draconian rules, including a prohibition on walking on the park's grass. Vaux, for his part, had a more generous opinion of the public, and believed that a beautiful space like Central Park would inspire New Yorkers to be the most elevated versions of themselves.

It would be a little too neat to say that Olmsted was the avatar of future park stewards who felt it was their duty to defend the rustic nature of the park against the creep of recreational uses, or that Vaux was the avatar of those who imagined a changing park that reflected the value of public opinion. Both men rejected outright those designs that would turn the park into a popular "pleasure garden," a kind of pre-amusement park that was popular at the time. But Vaux's bohemian spirit seems to me in keeping with the best elements of Central Park, and it is undeniably true, though it really goes unsaid in the book, that Vaux doesn't get nearly enough credit for his contributions to the park's design: the Greensward plan is drawn in Vaux's hand after all, not Olmsted's. Even in his own era Vaux complained to Olmsted time and again that he wasn't being given the credit he deserved, and he seems to have been right.

In any case, both men (and especially Olmsted) remained in official positions at the park for most of the latter 19th century, defending their control, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, against the city's powerful Tammany Hall machine. In the 20th century, Olmsted's strong hand would be rivalled by Robert Moses, who opened up the park to playground and car traffic, and who ruled the city's parks department with an iron fist. In between Olmsted and Moses, the park remained in states of waxing and waning, of being well-funded and well-maintained, then underfunded and in disrepair. In either state, the park's use was always contested: should it host concerts? The Puerto Rican day parade? Political demonstrations? Presidential speeches? Museums? Restaurants? Ice skating and baseball? Horse-drawn carriages? Automobiles? And as Rosenzwieg and Blackmar show, these battles often emerged from larger, competing ideas of what the city should do and be. Even in its very beginning, one sees the specter of American political upheaval in the clearing out of poor New Yorkers (especially the black community of Seneca Village, only belatedly memorialized in the park) to build it.

The Park and the People was written in 1992. When it ends, the boathouse at Harlem Meer is still in disrepair. A shady businessman named Donald Trump has just swooped in to renovate the Wollman Rink. (Though the book mentions the Central Park jogger rape case, no mention is made of Trump's famous "Bring Back the Death Penalty" ad.) The historians wonder what the increasing prevalence of private partnerships for park maintenance will do to the park as a place for all people. (Yeah, how did the privatization push of the 80's and 90's work out for us?) The Central Park Conservancy is barely a decade old. How nice it would be to have an updated version that would trace the last thirty years of Central Park, which doubtless lies at the center of all our conflicts about gentrification and urban renewal. Of course, we might learn only what has always been true: that Central Park is the heart of New York City, for good and bad.