The Forests and Wetlands of New York City

Most people marveling about and public pleasure afforded by Central Park think that the credit for its utility and beauty today belongs solely to the nineteenth-century icon of architectural genius Frederick Law Olmsted. Credit is rarely given to the British architect Calvert Vaux, who had designed homes in the Hudson River Valley before asking Olmsted to partner with him in the 1857 design competition that resulted in their “Greensward Plan,” the entry that became the blueprint for the construction of the Park. Thanks to landscape design historian Francis Kowsky and the not-for-profit publisher Library of American Landscape History, a biography of Vaux now exists. As a board member of the LALH, I was pleased when our president, Robin Karson, asked me to give a celebratory party, which I was happy to do on May 28, 2026 in my apartment overlooking Central Park. A speech by me to welcome my guests was in order, and I was happy to give one on this occasion. Here, to learn what I had to say as I sat beside a coffee table on which I had placed several interrelated landscape-design-history books that brought Kowsky’s into focus. If you would kindly accept my invitation to join me at this post-party date, you can learn what I had to say if you pretend that you are in the living room of my apartment on a high floor facing midtown Manhattan and the lower half of Central Park. You may have to sit on the floor since thirty-seven guests have gathered in a large circle around the chair where I am sitting beside a coffee table and imagine yourself now, wine-glass in hand.

“A landscape of buildings and streets” – this is a visual definition of urbanism. Connecting one with the other in order to accommodate pedestrians who seek to reach desired destinations on foot while absorbing impressions by eye must be taken into consideration. Therefore, the word “sidewalk” can be defined as a pedestrian path comprised of identical ground-level slabs of limestone that form a continuous route to a series of geographically linked human constructions. To be precise, a sidewalk is a pedestrian pathway adjacent to one side of a street or roadway with a linear curb to separate the surface for vehicular movement from an adjacent ground-level pathway designed for pedestrian mobility, a statement that implies that this form of outdoor hallway may also run alongside a group of contiguous commercial and residential buildings or individual public or private institutions, such as schools, hospitals and museums, and fenced public recreation spaces, such as parks and playgrounds. Based on the property linkage of individual homes within a residential community, sidewalks provide an opportunity for sociability among neighbors and the establishment of routes for children who walk to school.