Quick answer
Central Park is an 843-acre public park in the middle of Manhattan, the first public park built in America. Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux starting in 1858, it draws about 42 million visits a year and is one of the most-visited urban parks in the country.
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A Plan for the Countryside
Central Park was created beginning in 1858, when a growing New York decided it needed a piece of countryside inside the city. The winning design — the Greensward plan by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux — turned 843 acres of rocky, marshy land into what looks like nature but is entirely engineered: sweeping lawns, woodlands, meandering streams, and lakes arranged along winding paths. The land was not empty. A community called Seneca Village, home to hundreds of African-American property owners, stood where the park's south end is now, and its residents were displaced. What rose in its place became the first public park built in America.
The City's Backyard
Inside the rectangle of the park are 36 bridges and arches, about 50 fountains and monuments, lakes for rowboats, a zoo, two skating rinks, and a carousel. Its more than 18,000 trees cool the air, and over 200 species of birds stop here on the Atlantic flyway. The most visited corner is Strawberry Fields, a memorial to John Lennon near the West 72nd Street entrance, dedicated on October 9, 1985 — what would have been his 45th birthday — with the word Imagine set into a mosaic donated by the city of Naples.
A Day in the Park
The best way to see it is to give up on seeing all of it. Walk in at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, follow the Mall to Bethesda Fountain, then rent a rowboat at the Loeb Boathouse on the Lake and push out from under the trees. Watch the skyline disappear behind the foliage, listen to the traffic noise drop away, and spend an afternoon somewhere that looks nothing like New York — which was exactly the point of the whole project.