New York's Famed Central Park

A Day in the life of New York's Central Park

Central Park in New York City

Central Park is a large public, urban park (843 acres or 3.41 km²; a rectangle 2.5 statute miles by one-half statute mile, or 4 km × 800 m) in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. With about twenty-five million visitors annually, Central Park is the most visited city park in the United States, and its appearance in many movies and television shows has made it among the most famous city parks in the world. It is run and operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

Central Park is bordered on the north by West 110th Street, on the west by Eighth Avenue, on the south by West 59th Street, and on the east by Fifth Avenue. Along the park's borders, these streets are usually referred to as Central Park North, Central Park West, and Central Park South, respectively.

The park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, who later created Brooklyn's Prospect Park. While much of the park looks natural, it is in fact almost entirely landscaped and contains several artificial lakes, extensive walking tracks, two ice-skating rinks, a wildlife sanctuary, and grassy areas used for various sporting pursuits, as well as playgrounds for children. The park is a popular oasis for migrating birds, and thus is popular with bird watchers. The 6-mile (10 km) road circling the park is popular with joggers, bicyclists and inline skaters, especially on weekends and in the evenings after 7:00 p.m., when automobile traffic is banned.

Park Activities And Crime:

Each summer, the Public Theatre presents free open-air theatre productions, often starring well-known stage and screen actors, in the Delacorte Theatre. Most, though not all, of the plays presented are by William Shakespeare, and the performances are generally regarded as being of high quality since the start in 1962.

The New York Philharmonic gives an open-air concert every summer on the Great Lawn and the Metropolitan Opera presents two operas. Many concerts have been given in the park including the Simon and Garfunkel reunion; Diana Ross, 1983; Dave Matthews Band, 2003.

One of the many carriage horses present throughout the park. A long tradition of horseback riding in the park is kept alive by the one remaining stable nearby, Claremont Riding Academy.

Although often regarded as a kind of oasis of tranquility inside a "city that never sleeps," Central Park was once a very dangerous place--especially after dark--as measured by crime statistics. The park, like most of New York City, is quite safe today thanks (in the view of many) to Mayor Rudolph Guiliani's efforts against street crime in the late 1990s, though during prior periods it was the site of numerous muggings and rapes. Well-publicized incidents of sexual and confiscatory violence, such as the notorious 1989 "Central Park Jogger" case, dissuaded many from visiting one of Manhattan's most scenic areas.

As crime has declined in the Park and in the rest of New York City, many negative perceptions have waned, and the use of common sense is enough to protect visitors from harm. The park has its own New York City Police Department precinct (Central Park Precinct), which employs both regular police and volunteer citizens. In 2005, such safety measures held the number of crimes in the park—which has more than 25 million visitors annually—to less than one hundred; this very low crime rate has made Central Park one of the safest urban parks in the world. Nowadays a large percentage of crimes, particularly assaults, occur between people who know each other, rather than being random attacks.

This information is taken in whole or in part from Wikipedia. This information falls under the GNU Free Documentation License

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