What: Observance of 100th anniversary of first car in Central Park.
When: 9 am, November 16, 1999. Rain or shine.
Where: West Drive at West 67th Street-across from Tavern on the Green.

On November 16, 1999, a coalition of prominent environmental groups-including the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council-along with park advocates and users, will mark the 100th anniversary of the first car allowed on the loop drive in Central Park, and renew their call for a Car-Free Central Park.

Central Park is the world's most renowned urban park and, at times, a beautiful oasis from the noise, tumult, and hectic pace of city streets. But since the first car was allowed into the park on November 13, 1899, the park's serenity has been steadily eroding, and the thousands of school children, walkers, cyclists, runners and skaters who use the park daily have been forced to endure an escalating level of pollution, noise, and personal danger. Currently, cars are allowed on the Park's loop drive 16 to 21 hours a day during the week, and 24 hours on weekdays from Thanksgiving to January 1st.

At the ceremony, speakers will address the century of intrusion by the automobile into New York's crown jewel and will urge a return to park designer Frederick Law Olmsted's vision of Central Park as a refuge and retreat from the city. Olmsted said that "[Central Park] should present an aspect of spaciousness and tranquility...thereby affording the most agreeable contrast to the confinement, bustle, and monotonous street division of the city." Olmsted's biographer recently issued a strong statement in support of a car?free Central Park [see attached]. Were Mr. Olmsted alive today, he undoubtedly would join the campaign to return the Park to its original purpose.

For 30 years, New Yorkers striving for a more livable city have been fighting to restore Central Park to Olmsted's ideal. Citizens have staged more than 20 demonstrations, and sent more than 15,000 letters and postcards to the Mayor, Manhattan Borough President, and NYC Parks Commissioner asking for a car?free Central Park. At this commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the first car in Central Park, the message is simple: cars have had their century in the park. It is time for the people of New York to have theirs.

"We often hear the claim that Central Park's loop drive is a necessary 'safety valve' for traffic in the city," said Ken Coughlin, chair of Transportation Alternatives' Car?Free Central Park campaign. "In fact, the availability of the drive is funneling more car traffic to and from the Central Business District than would otherwise exist. Ironically, Central Park is currently contributing to one of the urban problems it was designed to help people escape."

Central Park Facts

• 75% of the cars using Central Park have only one passenger.
• All of the motorists driving in the Park each hour could easily fit into one subway train.
• 45% of Manhattan's surface is devoted to moving or storing cars, 13% to parks.
• 77% of Manhattan's households do not own cars. 56% of NYC households don't.
• A 1996 NYCDOT study found that nearly two?thirds (64.3%) of cars exceed the speed limit on the Loop Drive in the park. On the East Drive between East 85th and East 96th Streets and on the West Drive between West 81st and West 72nd Streets, 93.6% and 82% of motorists, respectively, exceeded the 30 mph speed limit.
• Every year there are approximately 250 motor vehicle accidents on park roads.

Statement of Witold Rybczynski, author of A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century (Scribner, 1999)

The singular achievement of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux's plan for Central Park is its long-lived ability to adapt to a range of uses and users entirely unforeseen by their makers. Roller blading, speed walking and even bicycling were unknown in the nineteenth century, yet the park is ideally suited to these activities. The Sheep Meadow has been the site of progressive playgrounds in the early 1900s and antiwar demonstrations in the sixties. Concerts and plays likewise take their place.

Yet there are limits to even Central Park's flexibility. Olmsted and Vaux went to great lengths to ensure that commercial traffic could cross the park with the least visual impact, by sinking the four transverse roads. Today, the presence of cars on what were intended to be leisurely carriage drives within the park seriously compromises their vision of a place to escape the bustle of the city. Cars are simply too large, too noisy, and too fast. 'Crowded thoroughfares,' Olmsted wrote, have 'nothing in common with the park proper, but every thing at variance with those agreeable sentiments which we should wish the park to inspire.' Let us heed his advice.

Statements over the years on a Car-Free Central Park

"[The Parks Department] would be blamable if it did not put first the protection of the public and the protection of the park features of peace and quiet, and second the matter of travel and transportation."
--George C. Clausen, President of the Park Board, 1899.

"[The typical driver] is taking the Park, not as a lovely work of art, to be slowly tasted and enjoyed, but only as a short cut to his possibly lawful but certainly loud and odoriferous occasions."
--New York Times Editorial, June 29, 1906

"I believe the time is near when we must consider means of taking traffic out of Central Park . . . Central Park was laid out as a restful recreation area, not as a thoroughfare for mechanical transportation."
--Sen. Nathan Straus Jr., 1924.

"Initially, while drivers were learning about and adjusting to the change, a few traffic jams could be expected. In the long-run, however, there is good reason to believe that motor-vehicle travel outside the park would level off and not strain the capacity of the local streets."
--Office of the Manhattan Borough President, August 1991.

"We're not going to yield to zealots."
--Parks Commissioner Henry Stern, 1994.

"I know that Olmsted did not design Central Park as a rumba stage."
--Parks Commissioner Henry Stern, October 1998.

"Parks are special places where people can enjoy a sense of peace and freedom difficult to find elsewhere in the city."
--Introduction to the City of New York Parks and Recreation Rules and Regulations, 1996.

"Skating in the recreation lane is unsafe when there are cars in the Park. Therefore skating is not recommended. Young children should not use the Drive when there are cars in the Park."
--"A Guide for Sharing the Drive," April 1998, City of New York Parks & Recreation and the Central Park Conservancy.

"We have agreed not to drive our automobiles into cathedrals, concert halls, art museums, private bedrooms and the other sanctums of our culture; we should treat our parks with the same deference."
--naturalist and author Edward Abbey

park [n]: "an area of land, usually in a largely natural state, for the enjoyment of the public, having facilities for rest and recreation, often owned, set apart, and managed by a city, state, or nation."
--Random House Unabridged, 2nd Ed.

Car-Free Central Park Chronology

November 13, 1899 Cars first allowed on park drives
1955, 1960 Park is without cars for a few days of national bicycle races, including the Olympic trials.
1966 Weekends car-free 6am to 6pm, Memorial Day to Labor Day.
1967 Weekend and Holiday hours expanded to year-round in Central, Prospect, and Forest Park. Tuesday night cycling experiment launched. No cars from 7pm to 11pm, from May23rd to Oct. 31st. Ended because of cold.
1968 Along with weekends and holidays, Loop Drive is car-free on Tuesdays and Wednesdays 7pm to 10:30 pm, Memorial Day to Labor Day.
1969 Car-free hours: Saturdays, sunrise to 7pm. Sundays and holidays, sunrise to 10:30pm. Weekdays unchanged.
1972 First weekday car-free hours. One-time experimental "Parks Week" May 22-26, Monday to Friday, 11am to 3pm.
1975 Regular weekday car-free hours instituted. Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm, June 2 to Labor Day.
1978 Weekday car-free schedule extended. Monday through Friday, 10am to 4pm, Monday through Thursday 7pm to 11pm, from May 1st to October 22nd.
1979 Weekends car-free from 7pm Friday to 6am Monday. Weekday car-free hours reduced to 10am to 3pm and 7pm to 10 pm. Bike/pedestrian lane added to loop.
1981 Cars allowed to intrude on lower loop, 6th Avenue to 72nd St. during weekday car-free hours.
1992 W. 110th St., W. 106th St., and 5th Ave. entrances closed to cars.
1994 Summer hours extended to 10 months of the year; January 1st to NYC Marathon (early November).
November 13, 1999 Weekdays are car-free from Jan.1st-Thanksgiving 10am-3pm and 7pm to 10pm. There are no weekday car-free hours from Thanksgiving to January 1st. Weekends are car-free all year from 7pm Friday to 6am Monday. Holidays are car-free.
200? Loop Drive declared car-free 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Central Park returned to its intended use.