Was Central Park Inspired By…Texas?

NEW YORK CITY – Central Park, arguably the most beautiful piece of Manhattan and certainly one of the world’s most magnificent urban parks, was apparently inspired – in part – by the rolling prairies and live oaks of Texas, according to a new story in Texas Monthly.

If you feel the publication is suspect, think again: it’s none other than longtime Central Park Conservancy historian Sara Cedar Miller who confirmed that Central Park co-architect Frederick Law Olmsted was indeed thinking about the Lone Star State when he created Central Park.

“He had a vision to contrast the infinite with the intimate,” Miller told Texas Monthly. “The infinite are the large meadows like [Sheep Meadow] and the large bodies of water, with the whole idea being that you could see forever. And these contrast with the intimate spaces like the woodlands and streams. You would walk from one to the other, like an art gallery…The views were the thing that rang most deeply with him about Texas.”

‘Arcadian’ Paradise

In fact, Olmsted traveled extensively in Texas in the mid-1850s. His account of these years, “A Journey through Texas: Or a Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier,” describes his expeditions, primarily on horseback, through the rugged Hill Country and along the Guadalupe River, experiences that left a lasting impression:

Since an English plough first broke the virgin sward of the sea-slope of Virginia,
Saxons have not entered on so magnificent a domain. Many times, while making these notes, I have stopped to seek a superlative equal to some individual feature of the scenery to be described, and one is more than ever wanting to apply to the country as a whole. With a front on the highway of the world, the high central deserts of the continent behind, a gentle slope stretching between, of soil unmatched in any known equal area, and a climate tempered for either work or balmy enjoyment, Texas has an Arcadian preeminence of position among our States, and an opulent future before her, that only wanton mismanagement can forfeit.

Olmsted and Calvert Vaux would begin work on Central Park in 1857. Olmsted published “A Journey through Texas” in 1857.

Patch has reached out to the Central Park Conservancy for comment.

Where does Central Park transport you? Email michael.mcdowell@patch.com.