01-24-2013 Agenda and Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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position as the chief engineer for a time but soon had a new superior: the park’s ﬁrst superintendent, Olmsted. The design competition attract- ed 33 entries, 12 of which came from park employees, including the engi- neers John Rink, Roswell Graves, Jr., and George E. Waring, Jr. The persis- tent Viele also resubmitted his plan. The proposals reﬂected a variety of competing visions for the park. Some imagined a pastoral setting, while others emphasized fountains, build- ings, and formal gardens. Still others saw the park as a cultural destination and wanted to ﬁll the landscape with zoos, museums, and other attractions. On April 28, 1858, the commission- ers awarded ﬁrst prize to a naturalis- tic entry jointly submitted by Olm- sted and the English architect Calvert Vaux. Their proposal, the Greensward Plan, has since been recognized as a masterpiece of landscape architecture. The Greensward Plan distinguished itself largely because it was conceived as a coherent work of art—a whole that amounted to more than the sum of its parts. Olmsted and Vaux, strongly inﬂuenced by the aesthetic views of Andrew Jackson Downing, envisioned a scenic landscape more sug- gestive of the English countryside than a formal garden. Their Central Park would be less an extension of the city than an escape from it. Inside the park, in fact, the buildings and bustle of the city would virtually disappear from view, at least until the rise of modern skyscrapers, which Olmsted and Vaux could not have foreseen. A few competing proposals offered a similar vision, but the Greensward Plan held an advantage in its innovative approach to transportation. All entries in the design competition were required to provide for the ﬂow of crosstown trafﬁc. Olmsted and Vaux knew, however, that ordinary roads across the park would destroy the continuity of the scenic landscape. They solved the problem by placing their four transverse roads some 8 ft below grade. In this way, trafﬁc between the eastern and western sides of the park would remain unimpeded and be largely invisible to park users, who would pass over the roads on inconspicuous land bridges. In a way, Olmsted and Vaux’s sunken crosstown corridors presaged the city’s subway system. The board of commissioners embraced the concept of below- grade transverse roads, but some of its members were unhappy with other aspects of the plan. Two commissioners in particular, Robert Dillon and August Belmont, insisted that the design- ers add several miles of bridle paths and fully separate the car- riage roads, bridle paths, and pedestrian paths from one another. Olm sted and Vaux complied without sacriﬁcing the park’s sce- nic vistas by including numerous bridges to carry the roads and walkways over one another. The separation of the various types of paths, although not an original element of the Greensward Plan, became one of the park’s most celebrated features. The plan may have been naturalistic, but the process of implementing it would be anything but natural. Olmsted JANUARY 2013 Civil Engineering [41 ] The Greensward Plan distinguished itself largely because it was conceived as a coherent work of art—a whole that amounted to more than the sum of its parts. Olmsted and Vaux, strongly inﬂuenced by the aesthetic views of Andrew Jackson Downing, envisioned a scenic landscape more suggestive of the English countryside than a formal garden. Frederick Law Olmsted codesigned and administered the plan that made Central Park the jewel of Manhattan.