AMERICAN MASTERPIECES 



the facts to say that this piece of work 

 opened to him his career as a landscape 

 gardener. Whatever this opportunity may 

 have made of the land between 59th Street 

 and Croton Reservoir, it made a world- 

 renowned landscape architect of Olmsted. 

 This in itself might entitle the project to 

 rank as a masterpiece. 



Yet, with all its defects, Central Park 

 has many good qualities. After all deduc- 

 tions have been made, it is still a rural 

 park. It brings the important qualities and 

 some of the sentiment of wild nature into 

 the center of the most sophisticated city in 

 America. Moreover, it is actually one of 

 the most useful of parks. Probably more 

 people see it in a year than any other piece 

 of park property in America, — perhaps in 

 the world. For a large majority of these 

 people, Central Park meets a very urgent 

 need. It is more than recreation to them, — 

 it is help and even health or life itself. 



Every student of landscape architecture 

 ought carefully to consider Central Park. 

 He ought to consider the conditions under 

 which it has been made. These conditions 

 are typical, even when most depressing. 

 The student ought to consider the principle 



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