The Central Park Mall is a pedestrian

esplanade An esplanade or promenade is a long, open, level area, usually next to a river or large body of water, where people may walk. The historical definition of ''esplanade'' was a large, open, level area outside fortress or city walls to provide cl ...

Central Park 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, covering . It is the most visited urban park in the United States, with an estimated ...

, in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. The mall, leading to

Bethesda Fountain Bethesda Terrace and Fountain are two architectural features overlooking the southern shore of the Lake in New York City's Central Park. The fountain, with its ''Angel of the Waters'' statue, is located in the center of the terrace. Bethesda T ...

, provides the only purely formal feature in the naturalistic original plan of

Frederick Law Olmsted Frederick Law Olmsted (April 26, 1822August 28, 1903) was an American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator. He is considered to be the father of landscape architecture in the USA. Olmsted was famous for co ...

and

Calvert Vaux Calvert Vaux (; December 20, 1824 – November 19, 1895) was an English-American architect and landscape designer, best known as the co-designer, along with his protégé and junior partner Frederick Law Olmsted, of what would become New York Ci ...

for Central Park.

Description

The Mall was designed so that a carriage could disgorge its passengers at the south end, then drive round and pick them up again overlooking Bethesda Terrace, whose view of the Lake and Ramble formed the "ultimatum of interest" in Olmsted and Vaux's vision. With no need for redoubling their steps, fashionable New Yorkers, who in the first decades of the park's existence drove through it in their carriages but rarely ''walked'' in it, had their chance to mingle with the less affluent, a mix that was considered thoroughly "American" and picturesque enough to be illustrated repeatedly in the watercolors of

Maurice Prendergast Maurice Brazil Prendergast (October 10, 1858 – February 1, 1924) was an American artist who painted in oil and watercolor, and created monotypes. His delicate landscapes and scenes of modern life, characterized by mosaic-like color, are ...

and

Ludwig Bemelmans Ludwig Bemelmans (April 27, 1898 – October 1, 1962) was an Austrian-American writer and illustrator of children's books and adult novels. He is known best for the ''Madeline'' picture books. Six were published, the first in 1939. Early life ...

. To the east of the Mall, the

wisteria ''Wisteria'' is a genus of flowering plants in the legume family, Fabaceae (Leguminosae), that includes ten species of woody twining vines that are native to China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Southern Canada, the Eastern United States, and north ...

pergola parallels the Mall at the top of a slope. It was originally created as a seating area for visitors attending concerts on the Mall. It now provides screening and separation from the Mall for another outdoor concert stage in New York's Central Park,

Central Park SummerStage Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object. Central may also refer to: Directions and generalised locations * Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known as ...

Naumburg Bandshell

Facing onto the Mall near its upper end is the neo-classical half-domed Naumburg Bandshell (designed by William G. Tachau in 1916, built 1921-23); it was named after Elkan Naumburg. It is Central Park's only neo-classical building. A "Ladies' Refreshment Salon", later called the

Casino A casino is a facility for certain types of gambling. Casinos are often built near or combined with hotels, resorts, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships, and other tourist attractions. Some casinos are also known for hosting live entertai ...

with great improvements by Joseph Urban, stood behind it. The Naumburg Orchestral Concerts, founded in 1905 and the world's oldest, continuous free outdoor classical music concert series take place there as a gift to the public, each summer. The Naumburg Bandshell replaced Vaux's cast-iron and wooden construction of 1860, where nineteenth-century concerts evolved partly into open-air popular dances as the evenings fell. The bandstand fell into disrepair by 1912, and new designs were invited by the Parks Department at that time. The architectural firm of

Carrère and Hastings Carrère and Hastings, the firm of John Merven Carrère ( ; November 9, 1858 – March 1, 1911) and Thomas Hastings (March 11, 1860 – October 22, 1929), was one of the outstanding American Beaux-Arts architecture firms. Located in New York City ...

made the first submission, but the proposal was rejected as blocking views west towards

Sheep Meadow Sheep Meadow is a meadow near the southwestern section of Central Park, between West 66th and 69th Streets in Manhattan, New York City. It is adjacent to Central Park Mall to the east, The Ramble and Lake to the north, West Drive to the we ...

. Then Tachau's successful Naumburg Bandshell design was submitted for its location on the east side of the Concert Ground, centrally nestled between the two projecting scenic overlooks, and it was accepted. The bandshell has deteriorated over the years and was considered for demolition in 1989. As of early 2021, it is being restored by the

Central Park Conservancy The Central Park Conservancy is a private, nonprofit park conservancy that manages Central Park under a contract with the City of New York and NYC Parks. The conservancy employs most maintenance and operations staff in the park. It effectively ...

Rumsey Playfield

Rumsey Playfield, a small venue and

bandshell In theater, a shell (also known as an acoustical shell, choral shell or bandshell) is a curved, hard surface designed to reflect sound towards an audience. Often shells are designed to be removable, either rolling away on wheels or lifting into ...

for

concerts A concert is a live music performance in front of an audience. The performance may be by a single musician, sometimes then called a recital, or by a musical ensemble, such as an orchestra, choir, or band. Concerts are held in a wide variet ...

, is located just east of the Mall. Located southwest of the intersection of Terrace and East Drives, it is operated by

City Parks Foundation The City Parks Foundation is the only independent, nonprofit organization to offer programs in parks throughout the five boroughs of New York City. The organization works in over 750 parks citywide, presenting a broad range of free arts, sports ...

. Rumsey Playfield is also known as "the SummerStage" for the series of free corporate-sponsored concerts of the same name involving local and national talent that take place there every summer, and is also the site of the televised Friday morning summer concert series for the

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster ** Disney–ABC Television ...

morning program '' Good Morning America''.

History

The Mall, designated the "Promenade" in Olmsted and Vaux's

Greensward Plan 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, covering . It is the most visited urban park in the United States, with an estimated 42 ...

of 1857, was called the "open air hall of reception" in the text that accompanied the plan in the competition. "A 'grand promenade' was 'an essential feature of a metropolitan park', the designers acknowledged, yet its formal symmetry— like all architecture in the park— must be rendered 'subservient' to the natural 'view as the ultimatum of interest.'" Grading the Promenade and the Center Drive that swept along its western flank offering views over the Sheep Meadow was done in 1858. By 1860, with slender elm saplings growing in turf, it was ready for the first of the open-air concerts, in Calvert Vaux's octagonal bandstand with its eight-sided bell-shaped roof. The ''New-York Tribune'' encouraged hesitant New Yorkers of the better sort: "We saw no conduct which would have been out of place or inconvenient to the most scrupulous or delicate nerves in the private garden of a gentleman." Still some preferred to hear the tunes from a little distance, in an open carriage, "without the inconvenience of descending" a contemporary ''Guide'' phrased it, and, as the park's modern historians noted, "looming over the heads of the rest of the crowd, symbolizing and reinforcing the class hierarchy Central Park was supposed to transcend". Two flanking avenues of

American Elm ''Ulmus americana'', generally known as the American elm or, less commonly, as the white elm or water elm, is a species of elm native to eastern North America, naturally occurring from Nova Scotia west to Alberta and Montana, and south to F ...

s were planted to give the high-arched shady canopy that was becoming the mode for prime residential streets in affluent towns of

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the Can ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

and

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

; the elms are gone from America's Elm Streets, victims of

Dutch Elm disease Dutch elm disease (DED) is caused by a member of the sac fungi (Ascomycota) affecting elm trees, and is spread by elm bark beetles. Although believed to be originally native to Asia, the disease was accidentally introduced into Americas, America ...

, but the Central Park elms, isolated from contamination from neighboring elms and closely watched by the gardeners of the Central Park Conservancy, now form one of the largest remaining plantations of the trees. Olmsted was strongly opposed to punctuating the carefully planned rural aspect of the park with statuary, but the pressure to memorialize cultural heroes has resulted in the Mall becoming a kind of "Literary Walk". The first sculpture to be sited here was in commemoration of the New York society poet

Fitz-Greene Halleck Fitz-Greene Halleck (July 8, 1790 – November 19, 1867) was an American poet and member of the Knickerbocker Group. Born and raised in Guilford, Connecticut, he went to New York City at the age of 20, and lived and worked there for nearly fo ...

, but more than half of the sculptures erected in Central Park in the nineteenth century were projects financed and promoted by ethnic associations of the more recent immigrants: "immigrant New Yorkers were emphasizing their status as 'cultivated' people by honoring leading cultural (not political or military) figures in the city's most 'cultivated' space". The statue of

Christopher Columbus Christopher Columbus * lij, Cristoffa C(or)ombo * es, link=no, Cristóbal Colón * pt, Cristóvão Colombo * ca, Cristòfor (or ) * la, Christophorus Columbus. (; born between 25 August and 31 October 1451, died 20 May 1506) was a ...

centered at the south end of the Mall was financed by the elite New-York Historical and Genealogical Society; however, it "could be seen as an 'ethnic' assertion by native-stock Americans who felt beleaguered in a city more and more dominated by immigrants."

Gallery

File:Prendergast Maurice In Central Park New York 1900-03.jpg, View looking up the Mall, with Vaux's original bandstand, watercolor by

, File:Prendergast Maurice The Mall Central Park 1901.jpg, Bethesda Terrace stairs at the end of the Mall, watercolor by

, 1901 File:USA-NYC-Central Park-The Mall.JPG File:USA-NYC-Central Park-The Mall0.JPG File:USA-NYC-Central Park-The Mall1.JPG File:USA-NYC-Central Park-The Mall2.JPG

References

External links

* {{Central Park Central Park