The Mall
Central Park
When landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux designed Central Park in 1858, their Greensward Plan included a grand formal area that they called the Mall or the Promenade. Modeled on the formal allées of the great European parks, like Versailles, it was designed to be the great walkway where the parade of parkgoers, dressed in their "Sunday best," would come to see and to be seen.
The elaborate flower display at the southern end of the Mall, known as the Olmsted Bed, was created in 1972 to memorialize the 150th anniversary of Olmsted’s birth. The lower end of the Mall is known informally as Literary Walk or Poets’ Walk, as four of the five statues memorialize poets and writers: William Shakespeare (1870), Robert Burns (ca. 1880), Sir Walter Scott (1871), and Fitz-Greene Halleck (1876); the fifth represents Christopher Columbus (1892).
In the Greensward Plan, the designers intended the Mall to be the only straight pathway in Central Park. Since the Mall was one of the first areas of the Park to be constructed, the landscape architects were eager to plant large trees in order to provide visitors with a broad canopy of shade as soon as possible. They used American elms, which were the trees chosen to line almost every Main Street and college campus in the country in the 19th century. Unfortunately the large elm trees proved much too large to survive transplantation. Most did not survive their first year. Nonetheless, two English elms to the east and west of the Mall did survive and date from that time. The wall of straight trunks resembling columns and the arabesque branches overhead create an architectural space fit for ceremonies and processions.
The second planting of much smaller trees grew and thrived until the early 1930s, when Dutch Elm Disease was first reported in the United States. The disease began to take its toll on all of the elms in America, and many of the trees on the Mall did not survive. These were replaced in the late 1930s, since which time other trees have been replaced as needed. The elms also line the perimeter of the Park on Fifth Avenue. During the Dutch Elm Disease season of June and July, trees are monitored on a weekly basis; symptoms of the disease are identified and treated promptly.
Strains of music would lead visitors to the northern end of the Mall, where an elaborate cast-iron bandstand once stood on the present site of the bust of Beethoven. The concerts were a popular destination for Park visitors, and thousands of people would attend these open-air performances. To prevent the landscape from being damaged during musical performances, fences that also provided seating for concertgoers were cleverly designed by Calvert Vaux. These benches have been recreated for visitors today.
As the grand finale to this formal promenade, visitors can descend the flight of stairs under the Terrace Bridge to Bethesda Terrace, the heart of Central Park. The realistic carvings and abstracted details representing the flora and fauna of the four seasons were done by English architect, Jacob Wrey Mould. Mould drew on his vast knowledge of ornamental design in order to delight and instruct the urban visitor in the lessons of natural history. The walk culminates in the Angel of the Waters fountain designed by Emma Stebbins. It is a tribute to the pure water system that so enhanced the beauty of the Park and ensured the health of the people of New York City.
Sunday, Apr 04, 1999