Landscape Design: A Cultural and Architectural History

To say that Central Park is a “Work of Art” is to state the obvious. Think of a great painting in terms of the composition of foreground, background, and middle-ground and their linkage through the range of harmonious colors on the artist’s palette. Central Park’s site was, in large measure, a ready-made scene for a painter’s brush, and its original design can be aptly described as a great work of landscape art. Subsumed within this designation is the fact that, although the park’s original design was fundamentally naturalistic, within the boundaries of its 830 acres, the Park has numerous structures, which are evidence of certain architects’ blueprints according to their original designs and harmony with their surroundings. Architect Jean Phifer and her partners in the firm Buttrick White & Burtis were essential members of the Central Park Conservancy’s first team of landscape restoration professionals as evident here.

To turn my vision of a rebuilt Central Park into a reality when the park was in a state of dire destruction from misuse and rampant vandalism in the 1970s I was fortunate to be able in the early 1980s to find four qualified landscape architects to form a management and restoration planning team under the aegis of the newly formed Central Park Conservancy. Their collaborative congeniality and holistic approach provided the groundwork – in the most literal sense – for the Conservancy’s team of trained landscape architects who are staff members today.