First Annual Report of the Board of Commissioners of the Department of Public Parks for the Year ending May 1, 1871.
New York: William C. Bryant & Co, 1871.
Price: $1,500.00
About the item
First edition. 50 plates [i.e with the two plates at page 24 on one sheet and an additional plate at page 258 not included in the list of plates], including 4 mounted photographs by Rockwood, 3 photomechanical plates, 7 folding plates including color lithographed views, and 3 folding maps. Without the very rare mounted photograph of The Grotto Bridge at page 198 (not bound into most copies). 8vo. Contemporary full purple morocco, covers and spine tooled in blind, yellow endpapers. Some separations to folding plates. Provenance: John W. Reps. NYPL Checklist 234-2.
Item #323645
The report offers detailed information on the early years of Central Park, including a large folding map and guide. It includes appendices with the “Legal History of the Jurisdiction of the Department of Public Parks”; a report of the comptroller Geo. M. Van Nort, with various statistics on labor, visitors, and use of the park; a list of donations; a list of animals in the menagerie; a report of the engineer-in-chief M. A. Kellogg about the progress of construction work, with detailed sections “Improvement of City Parks” (pp. 222-52) and “Improvement of ‘the Boulevard’ and Other Avenues and Streets” (pp. 252-69); a report of the landscape gardener Frank A. Pollard, acting chief landscape gardener; and a report of the superintendent of the Central Park, B. F. Crane; engineer reports and more.
