A 150-Year-Old Map of Central Park Still Comes in Handy Today New York Times
“It is the most important work of American art of the 19th century,” Sara Cedar Miller said.
She was referring to Central Park, not to the 3-foot by-8-foot pen-and-ink map over her shoulder. But the two are inseparable. The enormous map depicts “Greensward,” the plan by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux that won the park-design competition in 1858.
In honor of its sesquicentennial, the original plan is being exhibited publicly for what may be only the third time in its history. Besides the painstaking craftsmanship of it, with hundreds of thousands of stipple points for vegetation (“I picture Olmsted and Vaux and all of their friends stippling at the last moment,” said Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner), the map is astonishing because it is simultaneously so modern and so antique. Read the rest of this story . . .
See the 1930 Olmsted plan for parks, playgrounds and beaches for the Los Angeles region, by the firm started by Olmsted’s sons. New York made the Olmsted vision come true. Tragically, Los Angeles has not.
