Valuing Central Park's Contributions to New York City's ... - Appleseed

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Making History: Ice
Skating in Central Park
“On a December Sunday in 1858 about
three hundred skaters showed up at the
newly frozen, only partially filled Central
Park Lake on West 73rd Street…Ten
thousand turned up on the following
Sunday and perhaps twice as many on
Christmas Day…
“The opening of the park unleashed what
the Post called, ‘skating mania,’ the revival
of a sport that had been fading in New York
as the growing city swallowed up existing
ponds. In the late 1850s and throughout
the 1860s ice skating drew enormous
crowds…On an average winter day about
thirty thousand additional people came to
skate or to watch others.”
The Park and the People
importance of parks to the overall well-being of the community. One of the plan’s goals
is to ensure that by 2030, no New Yorker should have to travel more than ten minutes
to reach a park.
What the Park offers
Central Park is in this respect one of City’s greatest assets. Approximately 550,000
New Yorkers live within a half-mile of the Park (about a ten-minute walk) – more than
the entire population of Atlanta or Portland, and roughly the equivalent of the entire
population of Denver. About 1.15 million more are within a half-hour bus or subway
ride.
The Park offers an extensive array of recreational resources, including:
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58 miles of pedestrian walkways;
26 baseball/softball fields;
3 soccer fields;
30 tennis courts;
21 playgrounds;
Wollman and Lasker skating rinks;
Boat rentals on the Lake;
The Lasker Pool; and
Indoor and outdoor climbing walls.
All of these resources are widely used. For example:
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New York Road Runners views the Park as its “home course;” in 2006, 39 of the 59
races organized by NYRR took place wholly or partly in Central Park, with a total
of more than 160,000 participants. Running clubs such as the New York Harriers,