Central Park was not in the plan of New York: what they wanted to build in its place and why they changed their mind

The recognizable Manhattan skyline would have been impossible without a revolutionary urban plan for its era. He surprised his contemporaries with avant-gardeism and continues to remain in many respects a standard in the planning of large cities to this day. How Central Park got there and why it was not originally planned, the newspaper said Voice of America.

Geometric street markings have become a hallmark of New York City planning. The project, approved in 1811, assumed that the whole of Manhattan would be drawn on a rectangle, starting at 14th Street. There was no central park in the plans. In its place, 153 city blocks could be located.

According to the plan for the construction of New York in 1811, 6th Avenue was supposed to pass through the territory of Central Park. Attentive visitors to the park can find a metal bolt in the stone, miraculously preserved from the beginning of the XNUMXth century. It marks the intersection of streets.

Designers marked the entire island with similar markers. But these artifacts survived only in the stones of the park and you need to know where to look for them. In the Museum of New York, a whole separate exhibition is devoted to the construction plan with rare topographic maps of Manhattan, according to which the metropolis was built.

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“The city plan, as you understand, was itself a piece of paper and it was necessary to compare it with the real area. To do this, they hired a surveyor named John Randall Jr., who spent 10 years there, figuring out where and what would happen, ”says New York City Museum curator Sarah Henry.

John Randall's team painstakingly surveyed and marked the entire island of Manhattan, every meadow, village and farm with markers, just like in the park, the places of future intersections were marked throughout the island.

“Surveyors were required to establish landmarks at each intersection. They could find themselves in a field, in a forest, near a private house. And in 10 years they have installed hundreds of these markers, says Henry. “At first they set up wooden ones, but they were quickly kidnapped. Not everyone liked the building plans. Then the markers were replaced with marble markers, one meter long, indicating the street numbers ”.

Metal markers were used in stone boulders, including Central Park, which was marked out, but did not have time to build up, fortunately, for many townspeople.

New York developed so rapidly that by the middle of the XNUMXth century it became obvious: Manhattan needed "lungs" like Hyde Park in London or Bois de Boulogne in Paris.

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This idea was supported by many famous architects. Central Park was easily incorporated into New York's master plan, thanks to the rectangular structure of city blocks, which in the XNUMXth century was criticized by some as being too airtight.

“One of the nice things about the hermetic city plan is that, thanks to its rectangular structure, you can replace part of the layout without disturbing the entire composition,” says the curator of the museum.

Finding artifacts from Rendall's planner team in Central Park has become a bit of fun for many tourists today. There are no exact locations of the markers on the city plans - you will need to combine the old plan with a map of the park with an area of ​​3,5 square kilometers. Those who are lucky are proud to post photos of their finds on social networks and on special pages dedicated to hidden artifacts of the city's history.