The Mall and Literary Walk: Cathedral of American Elms

Why is it significant?

Walk right into the center of this broad, straight promenade and gaze up at the vaulted green ceiling above your head. You are standing inside The Mall, Central Park's grandest formal design feature.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Walk right into the center of this broad, straight promenade and gaze up at the vaulted green ceiling above your head. You are standing inside The Mall, Central Park's grandest formal design feature. Look at the towering branches arching overhead: this breathtaking living cathedral is formed by over one hundred and fifty American Elms, representing one of the largest surviving stands of this majestic species anywhere in North America.

When Dutch elm disease decimated millions of native trees across the United States in the twentieth century, park arborists guarded this promenade with ferocious dedication, inoculating each trunk and isolating diseased branches to preserve this historic canopy.

Look to either side at the bronze statues of literary giants: William Shakespeare, Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, and Fitz-Greene Halleck. Olmsted and Vaux originally hated the idea of adding statues here, intending the park as a purely natural retreat. However, wealthy donors kept gifting monuments, turning the southern end into the Literary Walk.

In twenty twenty, history was made right here when the park unveiled the Women's Rights Pioneers Monument featuring Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton—the first monument in the park's one hundred and sixty-year history depicting real historical women. Continue walking north toward the grandeur of Bethesda Terrace.