Celebrating Central Park

The Christian Science Monitor ^ | July 21, 2003

[presidio9]

As New Yorkers mark the 150th anniversary of Central Park, it's worth noting how that 843-acre jewel influenced the rest of the country. For it launched the career of Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of American landscape architecture.

It's hard today to imagine New York City without Central Park, Boston without the Emerald Necklace, Washington without the National Zoo or Rock Creek Park - all the work of Olmsted, or (in the case of Rock Creek Park) his son, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., who carried on his work.

Central Park's serene beauty is not the original landscape of Manhattan. That was mostly marshland. Olmsted was influenced by the tradition of English landscapers who created designs that looked natural but were carefully planned and sculpted to create desired effects.

Olmsted's view of nature was similar to that of his contemporaries and friends Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. His landscapes expressed transcendentalist concepts of natural order and morality, which helped breed a cult of wilderness - even of wilderness created or altered by humans.

Adrian Benepe, New York City parks commissioner, compares Central Park to a "19th century Disneyland," a woodland fantasy engineered to resemble the nearby Adirondack and Catskill Mountain regions. Workers spent years constructing it: The original park contained 270,000 planted trees and shrubs.

Central Park was an innovation that differed from its European counterparts, which were originally aristocratic hunting grounds later opened to the public. Central Park and Olmsted's other projects were meant for the people from the start.

The Oldmsteds left their mark on urban and suburban landscapes nationwide, but also played key roles in founding the National Park system, now copied worldwide. Olmsted senior was the first commissioner of California' Yosemite Park.

The Olmsted legacy was to make American cities more livable and beautiful - to make nature more available to city residents. It's a legacy to celebrate with every walk in the park.

[foreverfree]

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[evilC]

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[finnman69]

It was beautful in the park this weekend. Perfect.

[presidio9]

I'm headed there right now.

[Lee Heggy]

Central Park is beautiful. Here in Kansas City we have Swope Park.

Col. Thomas H. Swope

1827 - 1909

Swope's most famous legacy to the city was the 1,334 acres along the Blue River, promptly named Swope Park. The shy bachelor donated the tract to the city in 1896, before city boundaries, streetcar lines, or paved roads had reached the property. The donation created such excitement that a city holiday was declared.

It's a huge park that in many places is totally untouched woodland. In the days before airconditioning thousands of people would overnight on the cool grassy slopes. I've spent many days as a young boy wandering around in that park, going to the zoo, flying kites and in the winter sleading.

[firebrand]

I've been a member of the Greensward Foundation for decades. It's the group that wants to keep Central Park as the creators of the park intended it to be--a rural-like haven from the city, with no commercial incursions, wrapped Reichstags, or tree-root-destroying concerts.

Lately the group has given in to the tremendous social and financial pressure from the Central Park Conservancy, which has maintained the park at enormous private expense but does not have the original vision.

[firebrand]

I should add that Henry Stern and Adrian Benepe have been outstanding Parks Commissioners, who basically had no choice in the Conservancy decision, because it was either let the park wither or go with the in-crowd.

[Clemenza]

Remember, however, that Olmstead himself stated that his greatest work was PROSPECT Park here in Brooklyn. I'm inclined to agree with him. :-)

[jjbrouwer]

I prefer Prospect Park - although Crown Heights isn't exactly somewhere you want to visit on a dark night - or indeed any night. I'm playing football in the park this weekend.

[Cacique]

Buing

[firebrand]

And let's not forget Branch Brook Park in Newark, a beautiful long, winding park that has better cherry blossoms than Washington and 100 species of trees.

(I aced my leaf collection assignment in junior high school by just wandering through part of this park and picking up leaves and twigs. Most of the other kids lived in the Olmsted-and-Vaux-deprived suburbs.)

[dead]

When I was a degenerate youth, my friends and I used to cut high school, hop the bus to Central Park, buy beer at the neighborhood bodegas (they’ll sell to anyone) and hang out in the park watching jugglers and listening to all the guitar-playing buskers.

It’s a really wonderful place.

(Just get the hell out of Dodge before sundown!)

[Clemenza]

Yeah, but you got Park Slope nearby, with the cool cafes on 7th Avenue and the ever-improving restaurant row on Fifth Avenue.

Speaking of Crown Heights, I watched the West Indian Parade as it turned from Eastern Parkway to GAPlaza in September. It was ALOT of fun and much better than that filthy monstrosity that is the Puerto Rican Day Parade.

[jjbrouwer]

Park Slope is cool and only second really to Brooklyn Heights.

I notice you live in Bay Ridge. It's a very nice area and not as expensive as Park Slope.

You ever been to the Wicked Monk or the Salty Dog? Two great pubs in Bay Ridge...

[Clemenza]

You ever been to the Wicked Monk or the Salty Dog? Two great pubs in Bay Ridge...

Been there, done that.

Yes, "Da Ridge" is a highly underrated neighborhood. The problems are 1. Its too damn far for a commute by subway (it takes me an hour!) and 2. the lower rents around here have attracted what has become the largest Arab muslim population in the city (to say nothing of the "overflow" from Slum-set Park). Fifth Avenue, especially in the 60s and 70s, resembles Cairo or the West Bank now. I wish we would get more professionals above Third Avenue, but that appears to not be the case.

Nevertheless, 3rd Avenue remains the restaurant capital of Brooklyn (no matter what Smith Street says) and you can't beat the promenade along the water.

[jjbrouwer]

Speaking of promenades, a friend of mine used to live in Brooklyn Heights. Lovely neighbourhood but more expensive than Manhattan.

Her street backed on to the promenade and you had a great view of the skyline. Plus, you could take a little picnic, with a few bottles of wine out and sit and chew the fat.

[nutmeg]

There's a Central Park exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through September 28, 2003. We were in town a couple of weeks ago and stopped in to check it out. Definitely worth a look if you're a fan of the Park:

Central Park: A Sesquicentennial Celebration - May 15, 2003–September 28, 2003

In celebration of the 150th anniversary of the legislation (July 21, 1853) that designated as “a public place” the lands that were to become New York’s Central Park, the Museum has mounted an exhibition about the design and construction of the park in which its building has been located since 1870. The exhibition focuses primarily on the original presentation plans and drawings, by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, for their “Greensward” plan, which won the 1858 competition to design the park. A selection of working drawings and contemporary photographs illustrates the actual construction of the park according to that design. In addition to objects in the Museum's collection, the show features numerous loans—most notably from the Municipal Archives, the Department of Parks of the City of New York, and the New-York Historical Society.

[nutmeg]

Thanks for the pings! :-)