CHAPTER III
ARCHITECT-IN-CHIEF OF CENTRAL PARK

1858–1859

Olmsted Exercised broader powers and accomplished more during 1858 and 1859 than at any other time during his twenty years of involvement with Central Park. Directing a force of as many as 3,800 men, and empowered to hire and fire workers, he pressed hard to speed up construction of the park. By late September 1859 so much of the basic engineering work and planting had been completed that he could write his father, “I have fixed what I most cared for on the park beyond reconsideration . . . .”

The documents in this chapter suggest the difficulties he encountered in the process. His letters to Richard Grant White and his May 31, 1858, communication to the park board tell of the challenge to the Greensward design raised by Commissioner Robert J. Dillon. Captivated by the new Croton receiving reservoir, Dillon wanted to make it the central feature of the park. He proposed to run a straight, formal promenade directly to the reservoir from the entrance at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street by crossing the lake with an elegant suspension bridge, and to build another formal promenade from the reservoir to Bogardus Hill in the northwestern corner of the park.

The letter to Commissioner John Butterworth of September 12, 1859, and that to the park board dated December 28, 1859, indicate the aggravation the commissioners caused Olmsted by demanding that he honor their requests for patronage appointments. The remarkable document that set forth the “Rules and Conditions” for park keepers shows how determined Olmsted was, in the face of such demands, to create a thoroughly disciplined force for the protection of the park and its users.

During this period Olmsted wrote several documents explaining the[190] evolving park design to the commissioners and the public. One of those presented here is his “Description of the Central Park,” which contains a number of important statements about the site and the Greensward plan that were not in the original report of 1858. Two others are the letter to the park board of September 9, 1858, describing the system of walking paths in the park, and the letter of July 5, 1859, describing changes made in the Greensward plan as construction progressed.

The final two documents in the chapter describe the private estates and public parks that Olmsted visited in the British Isles and on the Continent during his two-and-a-half-month trip in the fall of 1859. They indicate the professional knowledge of park design and administration he gained during the trip. They also record his unfavorable reaction to the increased use he observed of the decorative “gardenesque” style of planting in the English landscape garden.