Sheep Meadow. Fifteen acres of the most carefully managed grass in New York City. Looks simple, right? Just a big lawn with a gorgeous skyline behind it.
To build this simple lawn, they filled ten acres of swamp and blasted out a rocky ridge that stood sixteen feet above the finished grade. All so you could lie on a blanket and think, ah, nature.
And there were actual sheep here. Real ones. About two hundred pedigree Southdown and Dorset sheep grazed this meadow from eighteen sixty-four to nineteen thirty-four. Seventy years of sheep. A full-time shepherd lived with his family on the second floor of the sheepfold. Sheep downstairs, family upstairs. Twice a day, he stopped all carriage traffic on the park road so the flock could cross. Once a year, the city auctioned off the wool. Some years, they auctioned off the sheep themselves.
The shepherd — and this is a detail I love — reportedly kept a leather-bound journal where he named every lamb born on the meadow. The journal was found
during a renovation of the sheepfold in nineteen seventy-six, tucked inside a wall panel.
That sheepfold, by the way? You can see it from here. It's Tavern on the Green now. One of the highest-grossing restaurants in America. The building where a shepherd's children once fell asleep listening to two hundred sheep is now a place where you pay forty-two dollars for a salmon entree. Progress.
The s
