Map of the Central Park

A few years before Central Park was completed in 1876, the topographic draftsman Otto Sibeth constructed this large-scale and impressively detailed map of the park. It is the only known map of Central Park to bisect the park into north and south and to include a grid overprinted on the map. This subtle red grid and the alphanumeric system around the edge of the map are location tools that reference the landscape architect Robert Demcker’s “Central Park, the Plant List of 1873.” Demcker’s index details all 642 species of hardy trees and shrubs plus the 361 perennial and alpine plants present in the park at the time, as well as the 551 plants in the nursery and exotics collection. The map serves as a window into the extraordinary detail that went into the creation of Central Park, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s masterpiece of landscape architecture.