The Ramble in Central Park: A Wilderness West of Fifth [Paperback]

A photographic tribute to the untamed heart of Central Park

INTRODUCTION

Central Park is a great work of art, and most appropriately has been an inspiration to painters, photographers, and writers ever since its creation. The Ramble, completed in 1859, has been a particular focus of the photographer’s art, and Robert McCabe’s images are a valuable contribution to this venerable tradition. McCabe appreciates everything from the smallest detail of an unfurled leaf to the largest vista of the Lake and the New York City skyline beyond, and his scope leaves no leaf unturned.

A “ramble,” defined as both “a walk without a definite route, taken merely for pleasure,” or “an aimless amble on a winding course,” has been in the English language since the sixteenth century, though as an intentionally designed landscape it was first practiced in the nineteenth century, and perfected in Central Park by designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux.

Originally a barren stretch of rock outcrops abutting a vast swamp, the Ramble area was transformed into an intimate woodland to complement the infinite lakes and meadows and formal geometric settings such as the Mall and Bethesda Terrace. In planning for the main woodland, Olmsted fantasized “[t]here can be no better place than the Ramble for the perfect realization of the wild garden.” He instructed his superintendent of plating, Ignaz Pilat, to create a quasi-subtropical setting similar to those he had experienced in Panama and the South. These landscapes were characterized by the visual interplay of textures, colors, and materials—brushed with dappled light and shade—and combined with the sounds of babbling brooks, rushing streams, and chirping birds that were, in his words, meant to “excite the childish playfulness and profuse careless utterances of Nature” and to evoke mystery, obscurity, and rapture ilóT