Before Central Park

Winner - 2023 John Brinkerhoff Jackson Book Prize, UVA Center for Cultural Landscapes With more than eight hundred sprawling green acres in the middle of one of the world’s densest cities, Central Park is an urban masterpiece. Designed in the middle of the nineteenth century by the landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, it is a model for city parks worldwide. But before it became Central Park, the land was the site of farms, businesses, churches, wars, and burial grounds—and home to many different kinds of New Yorkers. This book is the authoritative account of the place that would become Central Park. From the first Dutch family to settle on the land through the political crusade to create America’s first major urban park, Sara Cedar Miller chronicles two and a half centuries of history. She tells the stories of Indigenous hunters, enslaved people and enslavers, American patriots and British loyalists, the Black landowners of Seneca Village, Irish pig farmers, tavern owners, Catholic sisters, Jewish protesters, and more. Miller unveils a British fortification and camp during the Revolutionary War, a suburban retreat from the yellow fever epidemics at the turn of the nineteenth century, and the properties that a group of free Black Americans used to secure their right to vote. Tales of political chicanery, real estate speculation, cons, and scams stand alongside democratic idealism, the striving of immigrants, and powerfully human lives. Before Central Park shows how much of the history of early America is still etched upon the landscapes of Central Park today.

An authoritative visual survey of New York City’s Central Park, with new photography and updated text. For more than 160 years, Central Park has been the centerpiece of New York City, with more than forty-two million visits each year. In Seeing Central Park, Sara Cedar Miller takes readers through America’s most popular and celebrated park, where natural and manmade features are interwoven into a spectacular work of art. Combining superb research and writing with breathtaking photographs, Seeing Central Park is not only a guide through every significant design feature but also a gorgeous gift book. Since the book was first published in 2009, the Conservancy has completed a number of renovations and opened new areas of the park, including the Hallett Nature Sanctuary, Rhododendron Mile, and Dene Slope. This updated edition features these landmarks alongside revised entries and new photography throughout. With its pastoral and picturesque landscapes, roads and paths, bridges, buildings, structures, and sculpture, Central Park is a living museum of superb Victorian decorative arts and landscape design. From the Pond to Harlem Meer, it’s all covered in Seeing Central Park.

A timeless, “triumphant” (Entertainment Weekly) story of healing and recovery from the victim of a crime that shocked the nation: the Central Park Jogger. Shortly after 9:00 p.m. on April 19, 1989, a young woman jogs alone near 102nd Street in New York City's Central Park. She is attacked, raped, savagely beaten, and left for dead. Hours later she arrives at the emergency room—comatose—she has lost so much blood that her doctors believe it’s a miracle she's still alive. Meet Trisha Meili, the Central Park Jogger. I Am the Central Park Jogger recounts the mesmerizing, inspiring, often wrenching story of human strength and transcendent recovery. Called “Hero of the Month” by Glamour magazine, Meili tells us who she was before the attack—a young Wall Street professional with a promising future—and who she has become: a woman who learned how to read, write, walk, talk, and love again...and turn horrifying violence and certain death into extraordinary healing and victorious life. With “moments of unexpected grace and insights into life’s challenges….Meili’s story—the story the public never knew—is unforgettable” (The Buffalo News).

In Seneca Village, a thriving neighborhood of African Americans and recent immigrants in the middle of New York City in the 1850s, friends Kayla and Sooncy face separation when the city announces that by eminent domain it plans to take their land to build Central Park.

A pictorial history of the development of New York City’s Central Park from conception to completion. Drawing on the unparalleled collection of original designs for Central Park in the New York City Municipal Archives, Cynthia S. Brenwall tells the story of the creation of New York’s great public park, from its conception to its completion. This treasure trove of material ranges from the original winning competition entry; to meticulously detailed maps; to plans and elevations of buildings, some built, some unbuilt; to elegant designs for all kinds of fixtures needed in a world of gaslight and horses; to intricate engineering drawings of infrastructure elements. Much of it has never been published before. A virtual time machine that takes the reader on a journey through the park as it was originally envisioned, The Central Park is both a magnificent art book and a message from the past about what brilliant urban planning can do for a great city.

Delineate the politicians, business people, artists, immigrant laborers, and city dwellers who are the key players in the tale. In tracing the park's history, the writers also give us the history of New York. They explain how squabbles over politics, taxes, and real estate development shaped the park and describe the acrimonious debates over what a public park should look like, what facilities it should offer, and how it should accommodate the often incompatible.

"Explore central park, the heart of New York city and the very first landscape public park in the United States. Central Park Then and Now presents compelling historic and contemporary images of this famous park from throughout its 150 year history and across its 843-acre sylvan landscape filled with a unique urban vitality."--Book jacket.

By 2050, New York City has been encased in a massive terrorist proof shell, and no one can travel in or out. Protected as well from the rising sea, New Yorkers finally feel safe. Few seem to care that the Statue of Liberty has eroded to an unrecognizable stump or that Central Park is just a memory. Within this dark world, Noah, a psychotherapist who has plenty of problems of his own, discovers love in the entirely wrong place, with his brother's wife, Margaret. When people in New York start dying for mysterious reasons, and the Liberty Party silences anyone who speaks out about it, Noah must find a way not only to save his relationship with Margaret, but to save their lives as well.Political satire and aching love story wrapped into one, this powerful, elegantly written novel is a poignant cry to wake up and save ourselves-from individual loneliness and collective environmental catastrophe-before it's too late.