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360 sheep meadow central park
Sheep Meadow is a 15-acre (61,000 m2) preserve located at the west side of Central Park from 66th to 69th Streets in Manhattan, New York City. It has a long history as a gathering place for large scale demonstrations and political movements. It is currently a favorite spot for families, sunbathers, picnickers, kite flyers, and other visitors to come relax and admire the New York City skyline.
Contents
- 360 sheep meadow central park
- A stroll through the sheep meadow
- Construction
- Usage
- Large scale uses
- Past large events
- Emergency uses
- Features
- In popular culture
- References
The Sheep Meadow is open from April to mid-October dawn to dusk in fair weather. This open area is very popular and can draw up to 30,000 people a day, and in 2009, Doug Blonsky, president of the Central Park Conservancy, stated that there have been lines to get into the meadow.
A stroll through the sheep meadow
Construction
The Sheep Meadow was the largest open meadow feature in the original plan for Central Park, as it was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. The open space had been a requirement of the design competition for Central Park, which specified a parade ground for the civic function of militia drills and military exhibitions. Olmsted and Vaux's winning "Greensward", a nineteenth-century term for broad open lawns, offered a reduced parade ground, sited towards the western side of the proposed park.
When the location of the Sheep Meadow was decided, some small communities of poorer New Yorkers were uprooted: including Irish, Germans and African-Americans. To produce the almost 15 acres (61,000 m2) of "level or but slightly undulating ground" in the specifications, 10 acres (40,000 m2) poorly draining ground was filled to a depth of two feet with fill from New Jersey. Additionally, disruptive boulders and a rocky ridge that stood sixteen feet out of the finished grade were blasted out, and the reshaped landscape was covered with topsoil. Sheep Meadow was the most costly construction undertaken in the new park. Few sunbathers today realize the effort that created this "natural" grassy terrain. This meadow was the largest meadow in Central Park until the old reservoir was emptied in 1929 and made into the Great Lawn in 1935.
After the design competition was over, Olmsted and Vaux managed to convince the commissioners that a quiet park landscape was perhaps not the best place for military displays. After the expansive open area was created, visitors were usually not allowed to walk on it. Olmsted and Vaux believed that the introduction of sheep enhanced the romantic English quality of the park and to re-enforce the quiet nature of the "Greensward", 200 sheep were added in 1864. The flock of pedigree Southdown (and later Dorset) sheep were used and housed in a fanciful Victorian building or "Sheepfold" created by Jacob Wrey Mould under the direction of Calvert Vaux. The animals served a practical purpose as well—they trimmed the grass and fertilized the lawn. A sheep crossing was built across the drive in 1870 and twice a day a shepherd would hold up carriage traffic, and later automobiles, as he drove the animals to and from the meadow.
Usage
Sheep grazed the meadow until 1934, when Robert Moses, the city's parks commissioner, moved them to Prospect Park in Brooklyn; later, they were again transported to the safety of the Catskill Mountains. There was fear for the sheep's safety by hungry folk during the great depression. Officials were concerned that starving men would turn the sheep into lunch. After the sheep had been banished to Brooklyn the Sheepfold was converted into what later became the Tavern on the Green restaurant. In 1992, a consortium of cheese producers brought a flock of sheep to graze on the meadow as a promotional stunt; they also pledged to finance the meadow's maintenance through 1993.
Sheep's Meadow then had two large scale restoration efforts:
A 360-degree panorama of the restoration work results can be seen.
Large-scale uses
Sheep Meadow has held many large scale events and people have gathered for many uses. In the 1960s and the 1970s Sheep Meadow was used for events of unprecedented scale. The large scale outdoor concerts including those of the New York Philharmonic, Vietnam protests, and hippie "love-ins" were attended by hundreds of thousands of people and the lush green grass of the Sheep Meadow became mutilated by the massive crowds.
During this time, the Parks Department, with limited funding, opened the Park to any and all activities that would bring people into it—regardless of their impact and without adequate management oversight or maintenance follow-up. Some events became important milestones, fondly remembered by participants. However, lacking proper maintenance, they also significantly damaged the greensward through erosion and addition of unwanted substances, such as broken glass.
In the 21st century the open space of Sheep Meadow is fenced and protected from overuse. Signs are posted in many locations warn that the following are not allowed: Team Sports, Ballplaying, Bike Riding, Skating, Glass Bottles, and Dogs. On wet days the gates are not opened.
Past large events
Past large events and current use have included:
Emergency uses
At times the Meadow has been used for emergency helicopter air operations.
At least one child is recorded to have been born in Sheep's Meadow:
Features
On July 24, 2007, the Meadow was the first of Central Park's areas to go high speed. Park officials said the wireless Internet service in that part of the park was upgraded to 15 megabits per second from the previous rate of 3 Mbit/s... "feel free to hop onto the Information Superhighway at full speed. "
In 1865, Olmsted and Vaux added a new feature to enhance the park's attractions and convenience. Vaux (working with his assistant, architect Jacob Wrey Mould) designed the Moorish-style Mineral Springs Pavilion at the northwestern edge of the Sheep Meadow. The Mineral Spring Pavilion had cusped arches supported on slender colonnettes, and flaring, complex roofs, reminiscent of Saracenic architecture. In 1957, Moses demolished the structure.
Statues include:
In 1970, Garry Winogrand took a black-and-white photo of a peace demonstration, which shows thousands of just-released balloons floating over a sea of Vietnam War protesters. In 2005, Mayor Bloomberg hosted the opening of the project by Christo and Jeanne-Claude's entitled the "Gates" to Central Park. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg raised a long metal pole to release fabric from the top of a gate in the Sheep Meadow.
In popular culture
With permission, production activity is permitted on the Sheep Meadow only when it is open. The meadow is open for production in dry weather from May through October, from 11 am to dusk. Beginning in 1908, with Romeo and Juliet, films have used Sheep Meadow as their backdrop for love scenes, large-scale song-and-dance numbers, car chases, and – in Ghostbusters – even for a monster's rampage through Tavern on the Green.