Central Park Mall

The Central Park Mall is a mall in Central Park, in Manhattan, New York City. The mall, leading to Bethesda Fountain, provides the only purely formal feature in the naturalistic original plan of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux for Central Park.

The Mall was designed so that a carriage could disgorge its passengers at the south end, then drive round and pick them up again overlooking Bethesda Terrace, whose view of the Lake and Ramble formed the "ultimatum of interest" in Olmsted and Vaux's vision. With no need for tiresome redoubling their steps, fashionable New Yorkers, who in the first decades of the Park's existence drove through it in their stylish equipages but rarely walked in it, had their chance to mingle with the less affluent, a mix that was considered thoroughly "American", and picturesque enough to be illustrated repeatedly in the turn-of-the-twentieth-century watercolors of Maurice Prendergast (illustrations) and, slightly later, of Ludwig Bemelmans: "'a great charm of Central Park' wrote J. Crawford Hamilton in Munsey's Magazine, 'is the marvellous variety of its scenery and embellishments' including the crowds".

Facing onto the Mall near its upper end is the neo-classical half-domed Naumburg Bandshell (designed by William G. Tachau in 1916, built 1921-23), The Naumburg Bandshell replaced Vaux's cast-iron and wooden construction of 1860, where nineteenth-century concerts evolved partly into open-air popular dances as the evenings fell. The bandstand fell into disrepair by 1912, and new designs were invited by the Parks Department at that time. The architectural firm of Carrère and Hastings made the first submission, but the proposal was rejected as blocking views west towards Sheep Meadow. Then the successful Naumburg Bandshell design of W. G. Tachau's was submitted for its location on the east side of the Concert Ground, centrally nestled between the two projecting scenic overlooks, and it was accepted. It is Central Park's only neo-classical building. The Naumburg Orchestral Concerts, founded in 1905 and the world's oldest, continuous free outdoor classical music concert series take place there as a gift to the public, each summer.

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