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Olmsted and Vaux slated the area in the southwest corner of Central Park for one of the required features of the Central Park competition: a military practice ground.

But plans change. To keep the pastoral mood of the Greensward Plan, the rough terrain was instead blasted, filled, and fertilized into a gently rolling meadow.

Two hundred sheep kept the meadow’s grass cropped. Visitors didn’t have to worry about stepping on sheep pats … because visitors were not supposed to venture onto the lawns. Commissioner Andrew Haswell Green decreed, “The blades of grass that united, make up a lawn, can be enjoyed without pressing them underfoot.”

The Tweed Years

The hard-working sheep lived in unobtrusive sheds until 1870, when Boss Tweed took control of the Park. Tweed and his friends liked building things. Construction gave a lot of scope for inflated bills and kickbacks. Tweed’s cronies on the Board of Commissioners ordered Jacob Wrey Mould to design a permanent home for sheep and shepherd near West 67th Street.

When Tweed and company were expelled from office in late 1871, the park’s engineer reported that the very expensive new building was damp, lightless, and unventilated: wholly unsuitable as a home for sheep. Commissioner Green suggested turning it into an aquarium. Olmsted lobbied for razing it: it interrupted a pastoral vista. But the sheep continued to live there until the early 1930s, when their very lives were threatened.

The Moses Years

With the coming of the Great Depression, homeless men built “Hoovervilles” in Central Park. They caught and roasted the Park’s birds. It was feared that the sheep, too, might become emergency rations.

Enter Robert Moses, who was named park commissioner in 1934. Moses hustled the sheep off to Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Then, with federal funds, he transformed their former pasture into one of the park’s great open spaces.

The 1960s-1970s

In the 1960s and 1970s, Sheep Meadow was the place to hold large-scale events, from New York Philharmonic concerts to Vietnam protests to “love-ins.”

But all those feet pressing on the grass had a deleterious effect, as Commissioner Green expected. The meadow turned into a dust bowl. It was only restored in 1980, by the Central Park Conservancy.

Tavern on the Green

As for the Sheepfold, Moses transformed it into a moderately priced restaurant that he called “Tavern on the Green.”

The private restaurateurs who ran Tavern on the Green for decades turned the patio into the famous Crystal Room and wrapped the trees in lights. For decades, the Tavern was the highest-grossing restaurant in New York – a favorite venue for celebrity spottings and celebration dinners. (Google “Tavern on the Green Crystal Room” for photos.) Today it’s open again, under new management. A few of the details of its days as a sheepfold are still visible.

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• For more early images of Central Park, see my pages on images through 1860; 1861-1865; and 1866-1870. For more on Central Park in the nineteenth century, see my book Central Park: The Early Years (details here).
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