Central Park’s original design included a 15-acre meadow for sheep grazing, which was home to approximately 200 pedigree Southdown sheep until 1934 when the Tavern on the Green was built. The sheep were tended to by a shepherd and his family in a Victorian barn, and their wool was harvested and auctioned off. The sheep were eventually moved to Prospect Park in Brooklyn and later to the Catskill Mountains.
The original 1857 concept for New York’s Central Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, included an open lawn known as the “Greensward.” Borrowing from the concept of the traditional English garden, where polite society communed with nature, the plan called for a flock of sheep to graze in the 15-acre meadow on the west side of Central Park. In 1864, approximately 200 sheep called the park home. Pedigree Southdown sheep grazed there for almost 70 years – until planners decided to build the Tavern on the Green restaurant on the Sheep Meadow site in 1934. Under other circumstances, the sheep may have been relocated elsewhere in the park, but it was the pinnacle of the Great Depression and city officials feared sheep would be seen as a source of free food.
Farm life in the big city:
The Central Park sheep slept in a Victorian barn, tended by a shepherd and his family who had quarters on the second floor. Parts of the barn have been opened to the public as educational pavilions, to the delight of the children of the town.
Manhattan paid for their care, but the sheep helped. They kept the grass cut and fertilized, and their wool was harvested and auctioned off.
In the 1930s, the Central Park sheep were moved to Prospect Park in Brooklyn and eventually left the city for good. They moved 100 miles (161 km) north into the Catskill Mountains.
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