The Ramble and Lake, Central Park - The Formed Landscape

The Formed Landscape

The Park's most varied and intricately planted landscape was planted with native trees— tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica), American sycamore, white, red, black, scarlet and willow oaks, Hackberry and Liriodendron, — together with some American trees never native to the area, such as Kentucky coffee tree, Yellowwood and Cucumber magnolia, and a few exotics, such as Phellodendron and Sophora. Smaller natives include Sassafras. Aggressively self-seeding Black cherry and Black locust have come to dominate the Ramble.

The 20-acre (81,000 m2) Lake unified what Calvert Vaux called the "irregular disconnected featureless conglomeration of ground". It was excavated, entirely by hand, from unprepossessing swampy ground transected by drainage ditches and ramshackle stone walls. Through the low-lying site the Sawkill flowed sluggishly from sources under the present American Museum of Natural History and in the prospective park south of Seneca Village, originally exiting the park under Fifth Avenue about East 74th Street, where Conservatory Water lies today, on its way to the East River. To create the Lake the outlet was dammed with a broad, curving earth dam, which carries the East Carriage Drive past the Kerbs Boathouse (1954), at the end of the Lake's eastern arm, so subtly that few visitors are aware of the landform's function. After six month's intensive effort, the Lake was ready in the winter of 1858 for its first season of ice-skating. Its center was seven feet deep, with terraced shorelines to lower levels for skaters' safety. Originally, in other seasons a tour boat picked up and dropped visitors at five landings with rustic shelters: four have been rebuilt and rowboats are rented at the boathouse.