The Central Park: Original Designs for New York's Greatest Treasure

Excellent Book, though be warned that it contains more architecture than it does landscaping and horticulture.

Absolutely great book and a truly valuable resource. Fascinating background and very well researched and written.

A quality book delivered quickly

When you open up this book you are greeted with an incredible wealth of drawings. This was from a time when architects drew with their hands with the thought of making things aesthetically pleasing.

I'm a licensed NYC tour guide who has studied Central Park extensively. This book certainly added to whatever knowledge I previously had of the Park.

As a landscape architect, I enjoy this book for personal interest in and appreciation of Central Park

Beautiful drawings you rarely see.

I am very pleased that this book was written. It is extremely thoughtful and insightful. Many people are aware of the general Greensward Plan, but few are aware of the many features/artifacts within the park. The book illustrates some of the before and proposed views of the Greensward submittal and is an excellent example of how graphics and photography were important in planning/design communication, even back then. In some ways little has changed from the time of using ink, white paint, colored paper, watercolors, and oil (from the 1850s to the 1950s), to the work with makers, technical pens, and colored pencils in the 1960s, to now much of the work being done digitally, yet with the same general approach (even back to the times of Humphry Repton) -- layers of color, a focal point, the washing of other details. For example, the graphic on page 82 follows principles that designers of today use in digital rendering -- layers of color and emphasis. The hand and the eye remain important.I have admired Calvert Vaux for a long time as he seemed to be the introverted designer working with the extroverted Olmsted. Olmsted could communicate orally very well and Vaux knew how to communicate visually. It illustrates the teamwork that is often present and necessary in offices today. Page 25 and 26 present how Olmsted considered the division of the work and vision between Olmsted and Vaux -- both were indispensable. I greatly appreciate how the author of the book includes and describes the contributions of others such as Jacob Wrey Mould, Jervis McEntree, and Mathew Brady. Most projects require the contributions of many and this was the case for the Greensward plan. For scholars, students, and planners/designers, this is an excellent book that should be carefully read, reread, and studied.The book does focus heavily upon the objects/built features of the site. As cultural anthropologists tell us, this is common in Western culture. It is nearly impossible for anyone one book to cover everything and the author focuses upon the things that are familiar in her general training. But I am a landscape architect, and desire to learn more about the broad vistas, what they looked like pre-construction, the proposal's vision, and the current conditions. I find page 21 contain presentation board number 5, and the landscape rendering (ink, watercolor and pencil on paper) on pages 154-155 most interesting. In many ways the rendering on pages 154-155 is how landscape architects including Repton saw/see the environment, not through the architectural/engineering/portrait painting lens of the framed Italian Golden Rectangle, but through a series of broad vistas and discovery (something in common with Chinese landscape painters). I wish I could have seen the extensive watercolors by Vaux, but the collection is dispersed and weakly/partially documented (and it is not the author's fault-- she did exceptionally well selecting what she presented). Still I am hungry to learn more, because I believe Calvert Vaux is greatly underrepresented and unappreciated by my profession (although there are some biographies in print about Calvert Vaux). It is said that Vaux's advice concerning designing the built environment was landscape first, landscape second, and landscape third, finally adding some architecture or engineered object. He was an unusual architect and one could understand how Andrew Jackson Downing invited him to come to the United States. Olmsted understood the philosophy but Vaux knew how to do it. Olmsted was impressed in the Uk by another architect Joseph Paxton, the designer of Birkenhead Park, across the Mersey River from Liverpool. Paxton also seemed gifted at creating landscape.I believe the author has opened the door to the collection of material in the New York City Archives (and other sources), and it is a good beginning. I hope others utilize the archives and reveal more of the story. Like many great Italian designers who fell out of favor hundreds of years earlier only to be rediscovered and appreciated (such as Pietro Perugino), I suspect that same might become of individuals like Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould. The content and holdings of private collectors may also reveal more, but this process often takes hundreds of years to eventually tell the story. In addition, I would like to know more about the plants employed in the design, what remains today, and what has been added. There is still much to learn and for someone to write about.Cynthia S. Brenwell should be congratulated upon her fine discourse and presentation. I am very grateful. For those landscape architects around the world who teach environmental history, this book is a must for the personal library collection. The book has provided much more insight than many documents on the subject. In my list of publications for 2019, this book merits award winning.