Ambrose Cornelius Kingsland (May 24, 1804 – October 13, 1878) was a wealthy sperm oil merchant who served as the 71st mayor of New York City from 1851 to 1853.

[5][6] A successful merchant, Kingsland built businesses in grocery dry goods, sperm oil, shipping and real estate.

D & A Kingsland operated whaling ships and owned several noteworthy clipper ships, including Typhoon and Western World, operating the Empire Line between New York and Liverpool and the Third Line of New Orleans packets, and entering the China trade around 1850.

[13] Kingsland's proposal was the first official step in a tortuous two-year process leading to the State legislation that authorized the creation of Central Park.

The proposal, that public monies be appropriated to create a large urban park, was a conceptual novelty.

[8] Its eventual outcome – the expenditure of nearly $15 million[14](about five times the entire city’s 1851 budget), including the purchase of 760 acres out of one of the nation’s most expensive urban real estate markets, to create the nation’s first large landscaped public park,[15] was revolutionary.

[16] When the Common Council’s Committee on Lands and Places, having endorsed Kingsland’s proposal, chose this location, the pro-park press heartily cheered it.

Legislative action was quick, despite strong opposition from fiscal conservatives and downtown commercial interests.

The Common Council approved the committee’s choice of Jones Wood and sought State enabling legislation.

One, in June 1851, published correspondence between two city officials discussing an alternative site for the park – a tract, much larger than Jones Wood, at the center of Manhattan where the new Croton reservoir was to be located, which would realize economies of combining park and reservoir.

[19] The other article was by noted landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing, thanking the mayor for his path breaking message, but forcefully arguing that the Common Council’s choice of Jones Wood was too tame – that a much larger park was needed for Manhattan’s burgeoning population.

[20] In light of the emerging appeal of the central alternate site, and mounting opposition to Jones Wood (fueled by Kingsland’s veto of the Battery enlargement, which nettled aldermen who had seen this downtown park enlargement as a quid-pro-quo for supporting the uptown park[8][21]), the Common Council resolved to delay the Jones Wood acquisition to allow time for considering other possible sites.

[14] However, the newly elected Democrat dominated Common Council, immobilized by discord between Jones Wood supporters, Central Park supporters, and those opposing any grand uptown park, took no action Eighteen months of public debate, confusion and intense political maneuvering ensued, as the tide of opinion and political support shifted from Jones Wood to Central Park.

This group of aldermen intended to use their time in office for self enrichment, and were to be known as the “Forty Thieves” Common Council of 1852-1853.Tammany Hall#Political gangs and the Forty Thieves They foreshadowed an era of New York’s history marked by rampant political corruption.

[25] Thus, the Forty Thieves easily overrode Kingsland’s numerous vetoes of their graft riddled bills, ordinances and resolutions, which included the sale of properties and the award of contracts, ferry leases and railroad franchises at rigged values, lining aldermanic pockets at the city's expense.

"[3] Kingsland's home was at 114 Fifth Avenue (southwest corner at 17th Street),[40][41] now the site of a Banana Republic store.