Blog posts tagged with 'new york prints'

Currier & Ives treated Central Park as both a new civic spectacle and a marketable image of modern New York. The firm’s first wave of park prints, centered in the early 1860s, captured skating, carriage traffic, lakes, and rustic bridges at the very moment the Greensward plan was becoming lived reality. Later issues expanded the subject into social scenes, named landmarks such as Bethesda Fountain, and panoramic city views in which Central Park functioned as a recognizable urban landmark. For collectors, the group forms a coherent specialty zone within the Currier & Ives catalogue because it unites New York topography, park history, and the hierarchy of folio sizes.