Central Park is an amazing place.
No matter what you do, there will be hundreds of other people all doing it too.
This morning I ran in Central Park with my Galloway group. There were lots of runners out today training for the New York City Marathon, including several other groups of charity runners and the Achillies all on the same 843 acres as bikers and stroller pushers and inline skaters and tai chi classes and children’s birthday parties and hundreds of people waiting line hoping for one of the free tickets to tonights performance of Shakespeare in the Park (The current show is actually the Sondheim musical Into the Woods starring Amy Adams.)
Central Park became a National Historical Landmark in 1963. I’m willing to bet it was the first thing declared a National Historical Landmark after the magnificent 1910 Beaux Arts Penn Station designed by the famous Gilded Age architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White was torn down. I’m sad it was torn down and I’ve never even seen it. All I saw was a couple of photos of it in the Ken Burns PBS documentary about New York City, and the quote: “One entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat.” by Vincent Scully, an architectural scholar critical of the destruction.
So anyway…We still have Central Park.
I love the variety and detail of the Victorian architectural features, bridges and fountains and buildings designed by Olmsted and Vaux, that feed the imagination.