How New York's Central Park is designed. A photo report by Gazeta

**Gazeta Photo Report: The Design of New York's Central Park**

In Uzbekistan, a growing conversation highlights the need for cities to offer more than just newly landscaped plots. Residents require comprehensive public parks, accessible to all and protected from encroaching development.

One of the most celebrated examples of such a space, meticulously conceived and constructed, lies at the heart of New York City: Central Park. While it appears as a natural landscape, virtually every element within it is the result of intentional design by architects, engineers, and gardeners.

Gazeta photojournalist Evgeniy Sorochin spent several hours traversing the park, capturing its key areas and defining characteristics.

By the 1840s, New York was experiencing rapid expansion. A diverse population, already comprising descendants of Dutch, English, French, Scottish, and Scandinavian settlers, along with African Americans and Jews, was further augmented by increasing numbers of Irish and German immigrants.

As the city's density grew, the scarcity of public spaces became increasingly evident. Existing parks and squares were often private, accessible only to New York's more affluent residents.

Journalists, architects, and civic reformers voiced their opposition to this situation, advocating for the city to establish a large public park, open to everyone regardless of their income or background.

New York, USA, December 2025.

In 1853, the New York State Legislature authorized the park's creation. The city began acquiring land from owners between 59th and 106th Streets in Manhattan. A design competition followed in 1857.

The winning entry, chosen from 33 submissions, was the Greensward Plan, put forth by writer and farmer Frederick Law Olmsted and young English architect Calvert Vaux. Their proposal envisioned transforming the site's rocky, swampy terrain into a carefully designed landscape crafted to mimic untouched wilderness.

Central Park's construction spanned 16 years, commencing in 1858, with a workforce exceeding 20,000 individuals. They leveled hills, drained swamps, and used gunpowder to blast through protruding rock outcrops, reshaping the terrain to align with the architects' plans.

A primary engineering challenge involved concealing the city within the park itself.

Four transverse roads, facilitating east-west traffic at 66th, 79th, 86th, and 96th Streets, were sunken below ground and obscured by embankments and dense plantings. A person crossing a lawn just a few feet above cannot perceive the activity below.

This same principle—keeping one type of movement separate from another—guided the design of the park's remaining infrastructure. Thirty bridges and arches were built. Some separate pedestrian, equestrian, and vehicular traffic to prevent their convergence; others serve no purpose beyond the aesthetic view they provide. They are constructed from a variety of materials, including cast iron, granite, stone, brick, and wood, each chosen to complement its surrounding scenery.

Dalehead Arch, a stone structure in the park's southern section, was built between 1860 and 1862 based on a design by architect Calvert Vaux.

The park's distinctiveness stands in stark contrast to the surrounding Manhattan grid. That layout, dating to the early 19th century, is rational and efficient but largely disregards the island's original hills and streams. Central Park became its most significant exception, a landscape of winding paths and natural forms replacing straight lines.

Today, the park encompasses 341 hectares. Approximately 20,000 trees, representing over 170 species, grow on its grounds. These include native oaks, elms, maples, sycamores, and species specifically imported from other regions.

Its ponds and lakes are home to five turtle species and various fish. Fishing here is permitted only on a catch-and-release basis.

Roughly 2,400 squirrels inhabit the lawns, a figure confirmed by the Central Park Squirrel Census conducted in 2018.

A major bird migration route passes through the park, accounting for more than 200 recorded species, including hawks, owls, woodpeckers, ducks, and geese. Their primary attraction is The Ramble, a 15-hectare wooded area featuring winding paths, boulders, and streams.

The Ramble draws not only tourists but also birdwatchers from across the city. They spend hours observing migratory birds that choose this spot, Manhattan's "wildest" corner, for rest.

Day-to-day maintenance is handled by the Central Park Conservancy, a private nonprofit organization that manages the park in partnership with the city government. It covers approximately 75% of the park's funding through private donations, with the city providing the remainder.

Landscape historian and architect Elizabeth Barlow Rogers founded the organization in 1980, alongside a group of New York activists, in response to the park's deterioration. By the late 1970s, lawns had degraded into barren dust, and graffiti covered monuments, bridges, and rock formations. This decline resulted from years of municipal underfunding, particularly during New York's fiscal crisis of the 1970s, compounded by general neglect and poor management.

The Conservancy now employs around 400 full-time staff. They maintain the lawns, trees, and water bodies, prune tree canopies, and treat diseased plants.

Thousands of private donors also support the park. Through the Adopt-a-Tree program, for instance, contributors can donate $500 toward planting a new sapling or $7,500 to sponsor a mature tree. In recognition of the latter, donors receive a granite marker installed along Literary Walk.

Between 2008 and 2010, nature writer Edward Barnard and designer and birder Ken Chaya collaborated on *Central Park Entire*, a detailed, illustrated guide-map to the park's trees and landscapes.

Over two and a half years, they surveyed the park on foot, manually documenting each tree. Ultimately, they mapped nearly all 20,000 of them. The printed edition was published in 2010. An interactive version is available as a mobile app.

Central Park is sometimes referred to as the world's largest outdoor art museum. The founders initially rejected the European tradition of adorning parks with statues.

Bethesda Terrace became the exception. This architectural complex—a plaza, staircases, a fountain, and an arcade—was conceived from the outset as the park's principal venue for public art.

At the center of this space stands a fountain crowned by Emma Stebbins's sculpture, *Angel of the Waters*. It references a biblical account of water's healing power. It also commemorates the 1842 opening of the Croton Aqueduct, which began supplying New York with clean water.

Bethesda Terrace and its fountain constitute one of the most recognizable filming locations in cinema. In the final scene of *The Avengers* (2012), Thor bids farewell to the team before departing for Asgard. In *John Wick: Chapter 2*, Keanu Reeves's character meets Winston, one of the franchise's key figures. In *Home Alone 2*, young Kevin feeds the pigeons here.

Another distinctive feature of the complex is the Bethesda Terrace Arcade, a covered passage.

Its ceiling is adorned with nearly 16,000 encaustic ceramic tiles, arranged in a geometric and floral pattern. The technique involves pressing colored clay into recessed patterns on the tile's surface, then firing it together with the clay.

Encaustic tilework has been known in Europe since the 13th century. It was particularly common in medieval England, where it decorated the floors of cathedrals and abbeys. In the 19th century, the English firm Minton revived the tradition, producing encaustic tiles specifically for the Arcade.

Another must-see for film locations is Bow Bridge, an elegant cast-iron bridge over the lake, built in 1862. It appears in Woody Allen's *Manhattan* and in *Enchanted*, in the scene where the characters sing and dance atop it. Interest in the bridge surged after *Spider-Man 3*, where Peter Parker plans to propose to Mary Jane, only for her to break up with him instead.

Also noteworthy, the park is dotted with memorial plaques, bas-reliefs, and, most prominently, statues. Private individuals, civic groups, and professional organizations funded many of these through donations.

Immigrant communities commissioned a number of these monuments, seeking to see their own eminent countrymen represented in the park. The German community donated a bust of philosopher and playwright Friedrich Schiller. Scots erected monuments to their national poet, Robert Burns, and to novelist Walter Scott. Italians contributed a bust of the patriot Giuseppe Mazzini. The Irish installed a statue of poet Thomas Moore.

A monument to Polish king Władysław Jagiełło arrived in the park in 1945. It had originally been created for the Polish Pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair. However, Polish-American organizations facilitated its installation here.

Over time, the park evolved into a map, charting New York's cultural and immigrant history.

Visitors can navigate using information kiosks, printed maps, and trailside signage. The most unexpected method, however, involves the lampposts. Each one bears a four-digit code that marks the nearest cross street and indicates which side of the park you are on.

The system was originally created for park employees to locate specific lampposts for repairs. Visitors later adopted it as well. The code can help pinpoint one's location, including in an emergency.

The only place where this system is not applicable is The Ramble, which has no lampposts at all.

Throughout the park, visitors can find benches for resting. There are more than 9,000 of them, many installed in memory of individuals or donated through the Adopt-a-Bench program.

Central Park attracts over 42 million visitors each year.

People come here to walk and picnic, go for a run, ride bikes or boats, and play baseball and other sports.

Twenty-one free playgrounds serve the park's youngest visitors, each with its own design and set of attractions.

The park regularly hosts public events and workshops: summer walks to a secret butterfly garden, chess lectures and tournaments, gardener-led tours of the Conservatory Garden, and introductory birdwatching sessions. Visitors can also take tours of Seneca Village, once New York's largest community of Black homeowners before the park was built.

Most events are free, though some require paid admission. Schedules and details are available on the park's website.