Central Park - an unusual place: the green array of length 4 kilometers framed by Manhattan skyscrapers. Park is well-groomed, shady, plenty of living creatures in it, and all this - a few steps away from the seething streets.

Its history began in the first half of the XIX century, when the population of New York grew rapidly, and there was no place for people to relax. On weekends, while walking in cemeteries - some greenery in the city was not. New York needed something like the Bois de Boulogne Paris or London's Hyde Park.

In 1853, the legislature of the city planned to build the park in Manhattan. Was arranged a design competition, won a journalist and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux British architect. Allotted 280 acres for the park lying between the then New York and Harlem Village. The area was not deserted: there lived about 1,600 poor people - free blacks (it was before the Civil War, during which abolished slavery), the Irish. To free up the land, they were paid compensation by specially adopted law on expropriation of private property.

The landscape has been completely redesigned, created hills and lakes (for their formation used more gunpowder than in the famous Civil War battle at Gettysburg). Because the future of the park have taken more than ten million cartloads of earth and stone. Instead, they brought fourteen thousand cubic meters of fertile soil from New Jersey, landed more than four million shrubs and trees.

The park was great, but immediately after the opening, he began to decline: the then dominant in New York, the Democratic Party has not shown interest in it. Everything changed in 1934 when the mayor of the city elected a Republican Fiorello LaGuardia. He was able to quickly clear debris from the park, to restore bridges and lakes. There were sports facilities. In the sixties, Mayor John Lindsay, himself an avid cyclist banned cars from entering the park on weekends. But after that came the twenty-year period of decline: the park was destroyed by vandals, in the dark it was dangerous to appear here.

The revival began in the eighties. Today, Central Park - one of the most attractive places in New York. His visit approximately thirty-five million people a year. There are extensive hiking and equestrian trails, a zoo, wildlife reserve, an outdoor theater and many other attractions. The local shale cliffs attract climbers. In winter, open two rollers, there are fields for baseball, volleyball, lawn bowling, cricket. The park is set twenty nine statues, including a monument to Duke Ellington by Robert Graham. Nearby you can see the monument to dog Balto, which in 1925 saved the city of Nome, Alaska, taken there in the terrible cold of diphtheria serum.

There in Central Park and historical rarity: "Cleopatra's Needle", "sister" granite obelisks in Paris and London. The ancient Egyptian obelisk standing here since 1881.

In the park grow more than twenty five thousand trees, including elm, Amur and Japanese maples. It is home to 235 species of birds (even a rare red hawk). Park - located in the spring and autumn migration of birds on the Atlantic transit-way. They live here and do not seem very much afraid of people raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, opossums.