Great Lawn

As the Croton-Catskill Reservoir system was completed in the first decade of the 20th century, the Lower Reservoir came to be redundant. As early as 1903, there were plans to cover the reservoir to create additional recreational space, and in 1910, park commissioner Charles Bunstein Stover started advocating for the removal of the reservoir. This was epitomized by the Catskill Aqueduct Celebration Committee's commission of a design from the prominent Beaux-Arts "society" architect Thomas Hastings. Henry Fairfield Osborn lobbied instead for a formal carriage drive that would link his American Museum of Natural History with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Other plans for the site called for…

The lawn and pond occupy the almost flat site of the rectangular, 35 acre Lower Reservoir, which was incorporated into the Greensward Plan for Central Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. The King Jagiello Monument stands at Turtle Pond's east end, the Delacorte Theater on its west end. The Great Lawn proper, surrounded by an oval-shaped path, covers 14 acre. The Turtle Pond and the adjacent Arthur Ross Pinetum occupy another 31 acre. The Great Lawn and Turtle Pond take up about 55 acre in total.