Central Park
50 85th St Transverse, New York, NY
New York, NY
A vast, hand-built landscape of meadows, woods, and lakes laid out in the middle of Manhattan, where a whole city goes to breathe.
Central Park is the great green heart of Manhattan, a vast rectangle of meadows, woodlands, lakes, and rock ridges laid out in the middle of one of the densest cities on earth. It looks natural, but almost none of it is: the whole landscape was designed and built by hand in the nineteenth century, its hills shaped, its lakes dug, and its woods planted to create the illusion of untouched country.
Within its borders lie some of the most famous scenes in the city, the grand stairway and fountain of Bethesda Terrace, the tangled woodland of the Ramble, the graceful span of Bow Bridge, and the wide loop around the Reservoir. For New Yorkers it is a backyard, a running track, a concert lawn, and a refuge; for visitors it is the place the city goes to slow down.
What Guests Love
- Miles of paths through meadows, woods, and rock outcrops, all within the city
- Iconic spots like Bethesda Terrace, the Ramble, Bow Bridge, and the Reservoir loop
- The way a few steps inside can hush the roar of the streets
- Rowing on the Lake, ice skating in winter, and free concerts and theater in summer
Worth Knowing
- It is far bigger than it looks on a map, so a full loop is a serious walk
- The park is designed with sunken transverse roads so traffic crosses out of sight
- It is open daily and welcomes everyone, with some attractions inside ticketed
- The northern end is quieter and wilder than the busy south, and worth exploring
Details
New York, NY
Learn about Central Park
A park built by design
In the mid-nineteenth century, as the city climbed northward up Manhattan, civic leaders set aside a great tract of rocky, swampy, uneven land for a public park. A design competition was won by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, whose Greensward Plan called for a naturalistic landscape of meadows, woods, and water, threaded with separate paths for walkers, riders, and carriages, and with cross-town roads sunk out of sight.
The land was not empty. Among the communities displaced to build the park was Seneca Village, a settlement of Black landowners, along with Irish and German residents, that was cleared away in the 1850s. The park was carved from the ancestral homeland of the Lenape, the people of Manhattan, and its creation, like the city's, came at a human cost that the park's own history now works to acknowledge.
The great built landscape
What looks like wild nature is in fact a work of engineering and artistry. Hills were reshaped, tens of thousands of trees and shrubs were planted, lakes and ponds were excavated and lined, and drainage was laid beneath the whole surface. The bare rock outcrops that push up through the lawns are among the few genuinely natural features, ancient bedrock scraped and polished by glaciers.
Olmsted and Vaux designed the park so that a visitor moving through it would meet a constant sequence of scenes, a broad meadow, a shaded ramble, a formal terrace, an open lake, each composed like a painting. That careful staging is why a walk across the park feels like a journey through many different landscapes rather than a single field.
The famous places within
At the park's center, Bethesda Terrace descends past a carved arcade to a fountain crowned by the Angel of the Waters, looking out over the Lake. Nearby, Bow Bridge arches across the water toward the Ramble, a deliberately wild wood of winding paths that is a favorite of birdwatchers during migration.
Elsewhere lie the Sheep Meadow and the Great Lawn for lounging and concerts, the formal Mall lined with American elms, the Reservoir with its famous running loop, and, near the southeast corner, a zoo and a carousel. The wilder, hillier northern end holds a ravine, a waterfall-fed stream, and old fortifications, and draws far fewer visitors.
Season by season in the park
Spring floods the park with blossom, the cherries and magnolias flowering and the songbirds pouring through the Ramble on migration. Summer brings the great lawns to life with picnickers, ballplayers, and the free concerts and outdoor theater the park is famous for.
Fall is many people's favorite, when the woods turn gold and red and the light goes low and warm across the meadows. Winter quiets the park under snow, opens the ice-skating rinks, and reveals the bones of the landscape, the rock outcrops and bare trees, in a way the leafy months hide.
Closest Boutels
The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.
Things to Do Near New York
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
At the park's edge
One of the world's greatest art museums, set right against the park on Fifth Avenue's Museum Mile.
American Museum of Natural History
At the park's edge
The great natural history museum on Central Park West, with its dinosaurs, blue whale, and planetarium.
The High Line
About 3 miles south
An elevated park on a former rail line, running above the West Side streets of Chelsea.
Times Square and Midtown
About 1 mile south
The bright, crowded core of Midtown Manhattan, an easy walk from the park's southern corners.