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The Victors First prize went to plan 33, the "Greensward" plan, submitted by the park's superintendent, Frederick Law Olmsted, and the English-born architect Calvert Vaux. This decision would later be hailed as a landmark in the history of landscape architecture. And certainly it was. Yet accounts that emphasize its unique genius imply that artistic judgment alone governed the selection of the design. From the commissioners' perspective, more than aesthetics was at stake; politics as much as artistic merit determined just how the nation's first and most famous landscape park would be designed and built. Olmsted and Vaux both had close ties to the Republican park commissioners. Olmsted had been recruited by Charles Elliott in August 1857 to apply to be the park superintendent, with the suggestion, as Olmsted later recalled, that he would be a "Republican the Democrats could live with." Although subordinate to Chief Engineer Viele, a Democrat neither Republicans nor reform members of his own party could live with, Olmsted noted that some commissioners had sought to advance his position at Viele's expense that fall by requesting that he (Olmsted) submit reports on drainage and planting. Calvert Vaux, who had earlier pointed out the artistic limitations of Viele's plan to Republican acquaintances on the board, carried the further cachet of having been the partner of Andrew Jackson Downing, the leading American landscape gardener of the mid-nineteenth century. [Ch456] Empowered to select a design for Central Park, the commissioners had looked to the cultural authority of formal landscape design traditions and rejected the diverting eclecticism of commercial pleasure gardens. The majority voted for a design that most immediately reflected the tastes of those -- mostly affluent -- citizens who, like themselves, would feel at ease in a beautiful "rural" park where they could admire the scenery and one another. The choice of the Greensward plan reflected the preference of the board's Yankee Republican majority for the English naturalistic design tradition as well as for designers they felt at ease with. The contest over Central Park's design did not, however, end with the decision of the commissioners. |
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