When the Covid pandemic settled over Manhattan, New Yorkers took solace in Central Park, the 843-acre green oasis. Finding respite from the hardships of confinement, they were perhaps unaware that this public sanctuary was saved from almost irreversible ruin thanks to the extraordinary efforts of Elizabeth Rogers.
Appointed Central Park Administrator by Gordon J. Davis, Commissioner the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, Elizabeth Rogers gave leadership to a group of private citizens campaigning for the restoration and maintenance of the park’s badly deteriorated landscape. Through her dual connection to both the public and private sectors Rogers became the creator of a new kind of philanthropic organization, the Central Park Conservancy , the first public-private park partnership in the United States. From 1980 until 1995 she served as its founding president, overseeing the implementation of a landscape restoration plan and the renewal of the park’s management regime.
In addition to her career as a historic landscape preservationist, Rogers is a landscape historian and the author of several books including her 2001 magnum opus Landscape Design: A Cultural and Architectural History , which has…
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