B Y - K E N T - H A N N O N
P H O T O S - B Y - P E T E R - F R E Y

America's first—and most famous—urban park was in declining health until Marianne Cramer and the Central Park Conservancy came to the rescue

t would be stretching the point to say that landscape architecture professor Marianne Cramer knows every blade of grass in Central Park. (On the Great Lawn, perhaps.) Or that every gardener from the model boat pond to the Harlem Meer knows her name. (A couple of the new ones haven't met her.) Or that the park would never have been restored to its current grandeur if the Central Park Conservancy hadn't hired her to plan the restoration. (There must be someone else in the world who knows and cares as much about the park as she does.)

But when you accompany Cramer (MLA '77) on a walking tour of America's first major park intended solely for public use—which she calls "the island within the island"—it's evident that Frederick Law Olmsted's mid-19th century handiwork has been in good hands.

"Olmsted conceived Central Park as the antithesis of New York City," says Cramer, who is sipping early-morning coffee at a table next to the model boat pond. Looming behind her is The Plaza hotel on Central Park South. "Because of his brilliant vision, there are places like this one—right in the middle of the city—where kids can sail miniature boats beneath the greatest skyline in the world. There are other places in Central Park—even today—where you can't see the New York skyline or hear the honking of taxis. In the Ravine, for example, which is part of the North Woods section between 102nd and 106th streets, you'd swear you were in the Adirondacks."

She's right; you would—which is one reason why Olmsted's plan won out over 34 other proposals back in 1858. He and partner Calvert Vaux envisioned Central Park as the undeveloped center of a teeming metropolis, which was to be screened out whenever possible to "leave uncertainty as to the occupation of the space beyond." The text of Olmsted's plan was especially prophetic, considering that in 1858 New York City had progressed only as far north as 38th Street; between there and where the park began at 59th Street was undeveloped countryside.

"The time will come," Olmsted wrote, "when New York will be built up . . . and the picturesquely varied, rocky formations of the island will have been converted into formations for rows of monotonous straight streets, and piles of erect buildings. There will be no suggestion left of its present varied surfaces, with the single exception of the few acres contained in the Park. Then the priceless value of the present picturesque outlines of the ground will be perceived, and its adaptability for its purpose more fully recognized."

Central Park's 843-acre expanse is the most expensive piece of not-for-sale real estate in the world. But a century of use took its toll on Olmsted's grand creation. When Cramer was hired by the Conservancy in 1982, Central Park was in decline. Landscapes had eroded, ponds were laden with algae and silt, buildings were in disrepair, and there was graffiti everywhere. The problem wasn't really crime or vandalism, as most people surmised, says Cramer, but rather overuse—and lack of money.

"The running craze brought people back to the park, and so did the big-events craze of the Sixties," she says. "The softball diamonds on the Great Lawn were in constant use—except there was no grass. But with the city going through a fiscal crisis in the 1970s, it was tough to get money to maintain the park."

Enter the Central Park Conservancy, a not-for-profit agency that was the brain child of city planner-author Betsy Rogers. Organized in 1980 as the fiscal crisis was ending, the not-for-profit agency has pooled resources and talent to rescue, restore, and maintain the park. Talk about a success story. Through private donations from individuals, foundations, and corporations, the Conservancy now provides 85 percent of the park's $20 million annual operating budget. It funds major capital improvements like the restoration of the park's signature element, Bethesda Fountain. The Conservancy also provides horticultural care, as well as programs for the 20 million people who visit the park every year.

"Betsy Rogers used to say that we started out as this small, merry band with big ideas, but not really sure where we were going," says Cramer, who was aprt of a four-person team charged with developing a master plan for restoring the park. Cramer's role was to be the principal planner.

"The problem wasn't so much restoring Olmsted's design, as uncovering it," says Cramer, who grew up near Freeport, Pa., on a dairy farm two-thirds the size of Central Park. "He and Vaux left the original skeleton intact—like Bobby Jones and Augusta National."

"The problem wasn't so much restoring Olmsted's design, as uncovering it."—Marianne Cramer

he initial impetus for the construction of Central Park came from the young William Cullen Bryant. As early as 1844, when he was still a part-time student at Yale, Bryant's Evening Post newspaper editorialized in favor of a major natural park for New York City. Bryant envisioned such a park being developed on a 154-acre tract of land that stretched from 68th Street to 77th Street along the shore of the East River. Jones Wood was a popular spot with anglers and picnickers, and its natural topographical elements—an uneven surface with rocky outcroppings and sparkling streams—was similar to what Olmsted and Vaux would ultimately create in Central Park. But Jones Wood fell out of favor for economic reasons. Short-sighted businessmen decried the idea of using valuable commercial water frontage for something as frivolous as a park. Whereas, naturalists, who understood that the city was in desperate need of an expanse of greenspace on the order of London's parks and public gardens, considered Jones Wood woefully small for a city with an 1850s population of 600,000.

"It is only a child's playground!" remarked landscape gardener and New York tastemaker Andrew Jackson Downing. "Five hundred acres is the smallest area that should be reserved for the future wants of such a city."

Downing proposed a central reservation bordering the distributing reservoirs of the Croton Aqueduct, which had brought fresh water to New Yorkers in 1842. Most of the trees had been cut when the aqueduct system was built, but Downing's site was centrally located and much larger than Jones Wood—extending from 59th Street north to 101th Street and from Fifth Avenue west to Eighth Avenue. When businessmen nixed the Jones Wood proposal, Central Park was headed to the drawing board. But whose?

"Andrew Jackson Downing was expected to be Central Park's designer," says Cramer, "but he drowned in a steamboat accident."

At the time he applied for the job of park superintendent, Olmsted wasn't even a landscape architect; like Bryant, he was a writer. But he became a landscape architect—America's first, as a matter of fact—because he had a keen appreciation for the beauty of nature and how people could best interact with it. Olmsted was named park superintendent by an eight-to-one vote of a board of commissioners, who later confirmed that it was the endorsement of another writer, park consultant Washington Irving, that sealed the deal.

"Olmsted had his work cut out for him,' says Cramer. "When he was named superintendent, 5,000 people were living in the area that would become the park—and they weren't just squatters in shanty towns. Smelly, dirty industries had left the lower end of the island for cheaper land up north. There were stone quarries, farms, taverns—even a convent."

Olmsted's genius was in anticipating the need for a park whose scale and democratic purpose had no precedent. His design included four sunken traverses that carry traffic from Fifth Avenue to the west side without intruding on the park experience. He also created a system of sweeping street-level drives which give the park visual ambiance, whether those drives were being used by 19th-century carriages in Olmsted's day or cabs, joggers, and rollerbladers, as is the case today. To accentuate Vista Rock, the highest point in the park, he added Belvedere Castle, a wonderful ornamental feature which is also a U.S. Weather Bureau station. To ensure that the castle wasn't overemphasized, Olmsted kept it somewhat dwarfish in scale, enhancing the impression of great distance to those who gazed at it from across the park.

What Olmsted and Vaux left out in the way of modern-day attractions—skating rinks, children's zoo, Shakespeare theater, 23 playgrounds—has been added, including a memorial to John Lennon [see "Strawberry Fields" sidebar] that was designed by UGA alumnus Bruce Kelly (BLA '71).

Today, Central Park is surrounded by skyscrapers and high-rise apartment buildings, just as Olmsted predicted. It is a place of respite and rejuvenation—literally a breathing space—for millions of people who live, work, and visit Manhattan island every day. Without it, the pace of life in America's largest city—and the world's financial center—would be virtually intolerable.

arianne Cramer was teaching high school biology in Easton, Md., when she was bitten by the landscape architecture bug.

"Vacation homes for wealthy people from D.C. were destroying the marshes that support the shore," says Cramer. She considered going to graduate school at Penn, but settled on UGA's landscape architecture program—now the largest in the country—because it was undergoing tremendous growth in the late 1970s. The professor who had the most impact on her was Jack Crowley, who is now dean. He enlisted her aid on a summer parks project in Oklahoma.

"The problem with Oklahoma's state parks was that the forest floors were completely bare," Cramer recalls. "When the weed-whackers went through, there were cutting all the saplings, too. Crowley asked her what should be done about it. Cramer said the state needed to get into the tree-planting business, thus marking her introduction to the world of environmental planning.

"I thought I was getting into another science," she recalls of her early days at the University. "But when I got to UGA, Dean Bob Nichols was talking about drafting and engineering—and I was panicking. But grad school taught me how to think critically, how to pick up a pencil and solve a problem."

Cramer became a teaching assistant in the third year of her master's program, and when the opportunity arose to spend two summers at UGA's study-abroad program in Cortona, Italy, she jumped at the chance.

"What an eye-opener," she says. "Our culture is so young and chaotic—and here's this other continent with layer upon layer of civilization. Even their ruins are captivating. I was struck by how much of life in Cortona, which is a densely populated little town, is spent in open urban spaces—and how, over time, these spaces were created or modified to embellish civic life. This is something we don't have much of in America."

When the ex-farm girl finished her master's degree at UGA, she headed to New York. She got a job with the city's parks and recreation department, and her master plan for the land around the Metropolitan Museum of Art caught the attention of Betsy Rogers, who was looking for someone who understood the New York City bureaucracy—and the big picture.

Cramer co-authored the management plan that became the blueprint for the park's $270 million restoration. She also initiated an innovative woodlands restoration program, and, drawing upon what she learned in grad school and on the job, Cramer introduced several generations of park staff to the Olmstedian tradition.

fine mist has turned into a gentle rain as Cramer's day-long walking tour of the park pauses at a set of red flags stuck in the ground to define the perimeter of the Great Lawn. Over the years, this 55-acre venue between 79th and 86th streets has hosted New York City's greatest outdoor events: Barbra, Pope John Paul II, and regular summer performances by the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera which attract a sea of picnickers and music lovers. Average attendance for one of the philharmonic's summer concerts: 125,000. And what ALTA is to the Atlanta tennis world, Great Lawn softball is to New Yorkers. Want to see a theatrical star up close? The stage door is one way; the Broadway Show League is another.

"If Bethesda Terrace is the heart of the park, the Great Lawn is its heartbeat," says Cramer of the Conservancy's most recent restoration project, which was completed just before she left to join the UGA faculty in '98. "But by the 1970s, all this tough love had turned the Great Lawn into the Great Dustbowl."

No park landscape was left out of the renovation plan, but there was considerable doubt in some circles as to whether the Great Lawn could ever be kept green. Have faith, said the Conservancy. We'll replace the first 12 inches of topsoil, install a sprinkler system, grow lush, green grass—and convince the public to help us keep it that way.

"Students think they want to be landscape architects . . . so I give them a dose of the real world."—Marianne Cramer

"The Conservancy went to the people with an aggressive education program, particularly to those who live nearest to the park and use it the most for recreation—and for walking their dogs," says Cramer. "The plan is simple. People are told to stay off the Great Lawn when the soil is wet because that's when the most damage occurs from feet and paws. To make sure they know when the soil is wet, the Conservancy puts out the red flags. "

Fortunately, the public heeds red flags far better than cabbies do red lights. Indeed, with the red flags out in full force on this only mildly damp Tuesday morning, not a single New Yorker—human or canine—is setting foot on the Great Lawn, which will be dried out and unscathed for Wednesday afternoon's softball games.

ramer's tour concludes at the Harlem Meer (Dutch for "little sea"), where she describes how hard the Conservancy worked to renovate the northern end of the park, which doesn't attract nearly as much use and attention—or money—as the more fashionable south end.

The Meer and The Ravine are where Cramer helped make the most difference in Central Park. The Meer was a sick, debris-laden marsh before Cramer & Co. turned it into a beautiful lake that has become a popular spot for catch-and-release fishing. Mallards and egrets live on the man-made island in the middle of the Meer, and the Conservancy also worked with the Harlem community to redo certain aspects of the area immediately adjacent to the northern end of the park—in particular, Frederick Douglas Circle.

"A good landscape architect has to be able to speak other people's language," says Cramer, "whether they're talking to a fresh-water ecologist or to a civic leader like Harlem's Karen Phillips [BLA '75 . . . see cover story in Sept. '97 issue of GM], who was a lovely alto in the chorus of voices working on the northern end of the park."

The day ends at dusk, with the tour participants having walked the length of the park. But an important history lesson occurs just before Cramer and her weary band of adventurers arrive at the Meer. It happens in The Ravine, the faux Adirondacks area where a canopy of trees obscures the skyline and the din of the city all but disappears, thanks to a hidden waterfall and the chatter of birds. Cramer leads the group underneath the cave-like Huddlestone Arch, built with boulders as heavy as 20 tons, then pauses on a tiny bridge above the only original stream bed in the park. When the group is completely enthralled with the beauty of the deciduous forest that surrounds them, she drops the bomb:

"This where they found the Central Park jogger."

She points to a spot up ahead in the stream bed.

"She was dragged from the road and left there for dead."

The 1987 crime shocked the nation and gave rise to the term "wilding." Cramer has included it in her narrative because the terrible incident actually helped save Central Park.

"We had just finished restoring the Sheep Meadow, and it seemed like the park was coming back," she recalls. "Then this horrible thing happened."

The shock waves were felt through every layer of city government all the way to the mayor, who convened the Green Ribbon Panel to look into how the park could be made better, safer, more accessible.

"The public was outraged," says Cramer. "They felt personally violated by what happened to this poor woman, who managed to survive the attack by a gang of youths," says Cramer. "From then on, it seemed like everybody wanted to know how they could help."

Increased financial support helped fuel the Conservancy's restoration program, and greater visibility for police and park personnel made the park safer.

"Police started patrolling the park on scooters and on foot," says Cramer. "But the park's always been a pretty safe place. What you have to address is the public's perception of how safe it is. Putting our precinct gardeners into the landscapes also proved to be an effective deterrent. The end result is that Central Park is safer today than it's ever been."

ramer's sixth-floor office in UGA's Caldwell Hall affords her a western view that goes on for miles. It's not Central Park, but it enables Cramer to watch the sun set—and she's happy she got the chance to return to her alma mater.

"When I was a student," she says, "Allen Stovall was one of my mentors. Now that I'm on the faculty, his office is right next to mine—and he's still mentoring me!"

Cramer left the Conservance because her job as planner of the park restoration was done, and because she was eager for the challenge of teaching.

"Students think they want to be landscape architects, but they're not sure," says Cramer. "So I give them a dose of the real world."

In the graduate-level land management class Cramer taught last fall, she used the Harlem Meer as a case study.

"The Meer gave us fits," says Cramer. "Work crews dredged the bottom, got rid of a significent buildup of algae, and the water was clear for several months—but the algae came back."

Cramer consulted a soil scientist, who theorized that the ratio of carnivorous fish (e.g., bass) to herbivorous fish (e.g., perch) was disproportionately high.

"What we think happened is that fishermen weren't observing the catch-and-release rules," says Cramer. "They were taking too many carnivorous fish home for dinner—and bass feed on herbivorous fish like perch. As a result, the herbivorous population soared. They feed on phytoplankton, and when they eat too much of it the sun's rays can penetrate all the way to the bottom—causing an overgrowth of algae. When we enforced the catch-and-release rules, the algae problem went away."

Cramer knew her students lacked the science background to solve a problem that had baffled the Conservancy. But could they ask the right questions? She made copies of all her files on the Meer, gave a box to each of three student teams, and asked each team what it would do to clear up the Meer.

"One of the essential questions they asked was, 'What about the fish?'" says Cramer. "I told them I was impressed they had figured that out because the Conservancy should have been prepared for the fish problem—and we weren't. I also told them that problems like these are why landscape architecture gets in your blood."

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