COMPLETION OF CENTRAL PARK 



park which still remain unfinished after some 

 fifty-seven years of effort on the part of citizens, 

 superintendents, landscape architects, and com- 

 missioners: notably the territories from 79th 

 Street to 86th Street, east side; from 96th Street 

 to 100th Street, east side; all along the west side 

 from 110th Street to 100th Street and from 81st 

 Street to 77th Street. Indeed it may be said that 

 the border plantations and grading need in a 

 great many places throughout the park, not only 

 restoration, but actual completion in order to carry 

 out properly the ideas of the designers. 



Central Park well deserves all the reputation 

 it has. But these lovely bits of landscape, both 

 open meadows and sylvan dells, have not been 

 brought together with the artistic skill which the 

 original designer intended. So beautiful, how- 

 ever, has the park appeared in the eyes of the 

 general public and the disbursers of the public 

 funds that from the early days of the park down to 

 about 1890 or 1895 little thought was given to the 

 completion of the entire design of the park. It 

 is doubtful whether even to-day any considerable 

 number of those who visit the park realize how far 

 it still is from completion. 



So long was this lack of completion delayed 

 that finally, after scores of years had passed, a new 

 condition appeared, increasing twofold the park's 

 imperfection. This was that the trees and shrubs 

 finally reached the limit of their span of life, a 

 necessarily short one in the poor soil and unnatural 

 conditions of a large city. The lovers of the park, 



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