The Mall and Literary Walk - A Cathedral of Elms

Photo: Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)

A stop on Central Park Highlights Walk, a free self-guided tour.

Olmsted and Vaux avoided straight lines everywhere else in the park, but here they made one exception. The Mall is a grand straight promenade, about a quarter mile long, where 19th-century New Yorkers of every class came to stroll, see and be seen. The great arching American elms that line it form what the park calls the largest remaining stand of these trees in North America, saved from the disease that wiped out elms across much of the country.

This southern end is called Literary Walk for its statues. William Shakespeare is here, along with the Scottish writers Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott, and the American poet Fitz-Greene Halleck, the first statue of an American in the park. Christopher Columbus stands nearby as the odd one out.

Walk north under the elms and notice how the branches meet overhead like the vaulted ceiling of a church. On weekends you will find musicians, painters and performers along the way.

Getting here: Walk north past the Dairy, the little Victorian visitor center, and cross the drive to the start of the Mall, where Shakespeare's statue stands.

Did you know?: Money for the Shakespeare statue was raised partly by an 1864 benefit performance of Julius Caesar starring the three Booth brothers, including John Wilkes Booth.

Photo op: Stand in the center of the path and shoot north to catch the double row of elms meeting overhead like a tunnel.

More on Wikipedia: Central Park Mall · Frederick Law Olmsted · Calvert Vaux · Fitz-Greene Halleck

The Mall and Literary Walk - A Cathedral of Elms

Stops on this tour