Central Park NYC ─ An Architectural View

A lavish and unprecedented exploration of Central Park’s extraordinary and beautifully designed spaces, buildings, sculpture, and follies, in historic photographs and exquisitely detailed watercolors by the authors. Frederick Law Olmsted’s Central Park is famed for its naturalistic design and the beauty and diversity of its landscape features. The rich body of sculpture and architecture in this National Historic Landmark is a cherished element of the city’s cultural heritage and includes pavilions, memorials, and monuments, sculptures, bridges, and arches, gates and rustic shelters, gardens, lakes, and meers, and even a 3,500-year-old Egyptian obelisk. Most remain as originally designed, but some have been altered, a few demolished, and fewer still never realized. Here, after years of meticulous research, shown in contemporary and archival photographs as well as maps of the park, the most beautiful and beloved structures from the park’s 160-year history have been chosen by the authors and depicted as originally designed in ravishing watercolors of exquisite detail. As Hubert de Givenchy noted in his preface to the authors’ previous book, Chinoiseries, and which is equally applicable here with regard to the authors’ watercolors, "These precious documents retrace an epoque when taste, extravagance, and sense of fantasy were an essential part of the way in which parks and gardens were embellished, by perfectly inscribing them in nature, then furnishing them with dreams."

Andrew Zega and Bernd H. Dams are well-known architectural historians and illustrators specializing in architecture and garden history. They have coauthored and coillustrated four books. Their exquisite watercolors are noted for their realist technique and historical accuracy and are regularly featured in numerous periodicals as well as in major architectural journals; they have been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums in the United States and in France.