CENTRAL PARK, NEW YORK: A WORK OF ART 



563 



A SPARSELY WOODED SLOPE WITH DRIVEWAY IN THE BACKGROUND. 



tire size and shape of the park. In 

 short, once within, you lose all sense 

 of the boundaries, and are afit'ected only 

 by the park itself. It seems to me that 

 there could be no such grateful relief 

 from the rigid rectangularity of the 

 New York streets, nothing in so pleas- 

 ant contrast with the eternal parallelism 

 of the city plan, as the indefinite lines 

 and surfaces of the park ; its undulating 

 lawns with foliage, the contrasted ver- 

 dure of its grass and trees and bushes. 

 When we get into a large park, we 

 surely want to escape straight lines, 

 not to discover new ones ; to find vege- 

 tation in its natural freedo n, not shorn 

 into the forms of stone and wood. Prob- 

 ably nothing could be more fortunate 

 than that its principal park in the heart 

 of Manhattan Island should be com- 

 posed of lines and forms and textures 

 that recall the best of the country 

 scenes of pasture and wood and water. 

 and provide continual refreshment and 

 solace for those wearied with the ruth- 



less lines and angles and bricks and 

 mortar of the surrounding streets. 



I am inclined to suspect that some 

 of the abuse of the plan of Central 

 Park arises from its appearance on 

 paper, at first glance having little rela- 

 tion to the system of streets around it. 

 But it is dangerous to be misled by the 

 picture plan, with its resolute straight 

 lines running ofi^ into impressive in- 

 finity, and the whole merging into the 

 nebulous unknown. I admit, at once, 

 that the plan of Central Park on paper 

 looks about as vague and shapeless a 

 thing as I know, but then so does a 

 study in anatomy ; and, whatever one 

 nmy think about the park plan, one will 

 certainly not deny that the anatomical 

 ])lan represents a thing quite perfect in 

 design from beginning to end with com- 

 plete connection and coherence between 

 all its parts and with all of them mu- 

 tually interdependent. The structure of 

 the human brain shows no regard for 

 ils appearance on a medical cliart, yet 



