New York City Central Park:
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Central Park is bordered on the north by Central Park North (110th Street), on the east by Fifth Avenue, on the south by Columbus Circle and Central Park South (59th Street), and on the west by Central Park West (which is called Eighth Avenue south of Columbus Circle and also often north of Central Park, where it is officially named Frederick Douglass Boulevard). The entire park is 2.5 miles long by one-half mile wide (or 4 km × 800 m).
In the 1850s, realizing the need for a large public green space for New Yorkers to get away from the chaos and noise of the city, the New York legislature set aside a vast swath of land in Upper Manhattan. Landscape designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux developed the winning design for the park, influenced by naturalistic landscapes which were popular in park design at the time. Any architectural features and roads were to be visually integrated into the surrounding landscape, to maintain the "rustic" feel of the park. The park was officially completed in 1873, with more than 500,000 cubic feet of topsoil brought in from New Jersey and millions of trees, shrubs, and other plants laying the foundation of the park.
Through the early 20th century the park fell into a decline due to a lack of maintenance, with dead trees, worn-out lawns, and much litter and vandalism. The park received a major boost in the 1930s, when these issues were finally addressed, but the park once again fell into a decline later in the 20th century, becoming increasingly run-down and crime-ridden through the 1960s and 70s. In 1980, the Central Park Conservancy was founded under contract from the city to restore and maintain the park. Today, the violent night crimes of previous decades are all but gone, and common sense is all you really need to stay safe in the park today.
https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Manhattan/Central_Park
