Grass Grown on Purpose

Nothing about Central Park happened by accident. Two designers drew the whole plan on paper before a single tree was planted. What looks like old, natural land is really built land, made over years on top of solid rock.

The rock was the hard part. Much of the park sits on stone too tough to dig by hand. Workers had to blast it apart, using more gunpowder than a famous battle fought around the same years. Every hill and pond in the park sits exactly where someone chose to put it.

One open meadow near the middle kept real sheep for seventy years. They grazed there to keep the grass short, long before machines could do the job. A parks official moved the sheep out in nineteen thirty-four and turned their barn into a restaurant. The meadow has stayed open ever since.

Near the lake stands a cast-iron bridge, built in eighteen sixty-two. On a still evening its curve shows whole in the water below. Polly landed on the rail and watched squirrels cross the grass where sheep once grazed.