aThe Great Urban Landscape By Taylor McCue
Origins of The Park
Of all the wonders of New York City, Central Park is ranks the first of spectacular sites as it is arguablyone of the most important man-made public space instructures in the United States as it is the first established green space open to the public.1 Up until the Park’s opening in 1857, any resident of Manhattan who
wanted to experience a pastoral landscape had to retreat to the countryside. 2 W However, what is most remarkable about the landscape is its size; its 843 acre span takes up 6% of Manhattan’s total acreage.3 On an island with limited space, one must wonder what made the Park worthy to inhabit the great mMetropolis. In
the wake of the Industrial Revolution, Evening Post editor William Cullen Bryant suggested that a “Cause of regret that in laying out New York, no preparation was made, while it was yet
1 Sarah Cedar Miller, Central Park: , An American Masterpiece. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2003), 7.
2 Dorceta E. Taylor, “Central Park as a model for social control: Urban parks, social class and leisure behavior in nineteenth-century America.” Journal of Leisure Research 31. no. 4 (1999): 429.
3 “FAQ,” Central Park Conservancy, accessed November 19, 2013,
http://www.centralparknyc.org/visit/general-info/faq/http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html
practical, for a range of parks and public gardens along the central part of the island.” He believed public parks were necessary to escape the din of city life as, in the context of the mid nineteenth century, “The advancing populations of the city are sweeping over them [the available land] and covering them from our reach.”4 As Frederick Law Olmsted, the primary architect of Central Park, explained, “The primary purpose of the Park is to provide the best practicable means of healthful recreation, for the inhabitants of the city, of all classes... It should... present to the eye a charming rural landscape, such as, unless produced by art, is never found within the limits of a large town.” 5 UUrban parks were constructed as a with special significance to serve meaningful functionsresponse to Bryant’s widespread through that the fast-developing city was swallowing up the island. Among these included: to ease. Park supporters believed a park should be built in order to: ease congestion by providing a breathing space, act as an urban resorts for peoplepeople with no access to the countryside, e and allow for the structure and growth of the city, and protect the urban water supply.6 Urban troubles caused by industrial life, a rapidly growing population, sanitation problems, and limited space contributed to the need for Manhattanites for such a retreatto have an easily assessable place to retreat.
The original idea to build the Park sprouted from elite New Yorkers who were inspired by the formal gardens they saw in London, and Paris, and Vienna. However, as word spread about a park, ambitions for the Park’s construction grew far beyond that. The Park was built based off three motivationsSupporters of the Park were motivated by three main goals: to establish the first American urban landscape on Manhattan, use the Park as a tool of social control, and createas a recreational space away from the turmoil’sturmoil of industrial life. These three primary reasons
4 W.C. Bryant. A New Park. New York Evening Post. July 3, 1844.
5 Charles E. Beveridge and David Schuyler, Volume III: Central Park (Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1983), 91
6 Taylor, Central Park as a Model for Social Control,s, 427,
were extremely important because they werealike in that they shaped by theresponded to the special spatial limitations of the island.
Landscape Architecture in M m id- Nineteenth 19 th Century America as Social Control
In the years leading up to the Civil War, urban landscape design emerged in commercial capital cities such as Washington DC and New York City. Early landscape architects sought to establish the United States as “Nature’s Nation”. 7 The constructions of rural cemeteries were
early attempts of urban landscapers’ to combine nature and culture. Formally designed landscape
eventually combined the country and the city in the form of urban landscape (which included
parks, suburbs, and parkways). 8 Experimentation with this new design was centered primarily on the outer perimeters of large scale cities. 9 This was becausewas due to the fact that the the cost of acquiring park lands was expensive; officials planned parks in the cheapest and most 7 Gunther Barth, “Book Reviews,” review of The New Urban Landscape: The Redefinition of City Form in Nineteenth-Century America, by David Schuyler. The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and
Biography , July 1988, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20092251? seq=1
8 Gunther Barth, “Book Reviews,” review of The New Urban Landscape: The Redefinition of City Form in Nineteenth-Century America, by David Schuyler. The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and
Biography , July 1988, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20092251? seq=1
inconvenient locations, which was were usually located on the outskirts of town. or rocks, or unusable terrain10 However, the issue with implementing the same park design on the waterfront in ManhattanManhattan’s waterfront was the island’s that the perimeter was reserved for industry
and commerce, thus making the perimeter off limits for construction of the Park.infernal perimeter. The waterfront, by the 1870’s, was condemned by the New York Times as full of “rotten structures” where , the abode of rats and the hiding places of river thieves…” where political ambition came before cultural or societal needs. 11 The Park could not be built on the waterfront because the perimeter was crucial to industry in the nineteenth century.
10 Taylor, Central Park as a Model for Social Control, 440.
Popularity of Parks
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, parks became a highlight feature of cities in wWestern citiesEurope. In London, the previously private royal lands of the royals were opening up to the public. In
In GermanyGermany towns, old fortifications were reconstructed as public gardens. 12 Parks became an important infrastructures in wWestern European cities as the leading landscape architects believed parks to
operate asbe as instruments of social control and the enlightenment. Urban parks were not merely a physical space, but also a socially-constructed area. 13 By the early nineteenth century, municipal and national governments established landscaped public parks in response to the widespread romantic ideal of rus in urbe—country in the city. 14
12 Rosenzweig and Blackmar, The Park and the People, 4Rosenzweig, and Blackmar. The Park and the People, 4.
13 Dorceta E. Taylor, “Central Park as a Mmodel for Ssocial Cocontrol,: Urban parks, social class and leisure behavior in nineteeth-century America.” Journal of Leisure Research 31 (1999): 420.
Under Pressure from Europe
The well-traveled elite of New York found themselves running into harsh
criticisms from wWestern European men who were accustomed to formal and ly visually pleasing established gardens in the
mid-nineteenth century. These New Yorkers found themselves increasingly fixated on the inferiority they felt when comparing
American public green spaces to the likes of London and Paris. One noted T“they discussed “the difference between our country and city, and those abroad; and the remark was made that there was no want of our city so great as a large park for walking and driving.”15 The elite of
Manhattan found themselves battling affluent critics from abroad. Alexis de Tocqueville upon visiting the United States in the 1830’s, noted “few of the civilized nations of our time have made less progress” in the arts, literature, or science. 16 The elite of New York city were key actors in the construction of urban parks in accordance to middle class tastes and values. 17 As the island became more crowded and industrial, Adding to the stress from Europe, the elite New Yorkers found themselves in the context of an increasingly growing hostile environment on the island. thus, the need for the Park shifted outside of the homes of these elite and into the city streets.
15 Rosenzweig and Blackmar, The Park and the People, 16.Robert Brown Minturn, Jr.,Memoir of Robert Brown Minturn (1871) 65-146
16 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America(. Garden City, NY:J.P. Mayer, 1969)., 454. 17 Taylor, Central Park as a Mmodel for Ssocial Ccontrol ,421.
The poet and editor of the New York Post, William Cullen Bryant , voiced the first documented need for a park: “Commerce is devouring inch by inch the coast of the island.”18 The trade lines, factory production, railroads, banks, and insurance houses made Manhattan into a financial, national trade, and industrial center. 19 The growing Growing population and crowded city streets left the middle of the island untouched because business and commerce were
concentrated along the waterfront.. Thus, the middle strip of the island was a plausible place to build the Park.
At the time that the construction of Central Park was being discussed, over 20,000 immigrants were arriving to
the City each year500,000 people lived in Manhattan with 20,000 immigrants arriving each year. By 1850, half of the island’s the City residents were recent immigrants.20 Thus the middle strip of the island was a plausible natural place for a possible location for the Park.
American landscape architect, Andrew Jackson Downing, wrote in 1849 that a public park would “refine the national character, foster the love of rural beauty…The true policy of publics is to
18 Berenson, Barnes and Noble Complete Illustrated Map and Guidebook to Central Park.9 Richard J. Berenson, Barnes and Noble Complete Illustrated Map and Guidebook to Central Park. (New York: Silver Linings Books, 1999, 2003), 9.
19 Rosenzweig and Blackmar, The Park and the People, 22. 20 “The History of Central Park,” Central Park Conservancy.
foster the taste for great public libraries, parks and gardens which all may enjoy.” In the cry for reform, the Park takes took on a new dimension as park supporters suggested the Park would solve problems in sanitation, government, transportation and leadership.
Escaping the Island
However, arguments for the Park “intersected with concerns about the city’s competitive position within its own emerging metropolitan area.”. 21 Many residents of Manhattan’s former residents took to fleeing the city and settling down in growing establishments such as Brooklyn and New Jersey. Arguments in support of building the large-scale Park become ever the more prevalent in order to “prevent this the drawing away of theour population.”22 In addition, the booming economy and rapid population growth had created health and sanitation problems, thus compromising the appeal of the city to settle, visit, or do business in. Malnutrition,
contaminated water, disease, contagion and polluted air all contributed to the growing toxicity of the city. All of which was due to the congestion the waterfront traffic created. Industry
contaminated the island’s perimeter. In the 1830’s and 184’0’s, Park supporters argued the Park
21 Rosenzweig and Blackmar, The Park and the People, 24. 22
would act as “lungs for the city” and serveact as anecdotes to the “ills of industrial society” caused by the commerce which was devouring the island’s perimeter. 23
The Park Gives the People Lungs
In an increasingly growing commercial city, it is clear why the elite of Manhattan felt the
need for a Park considering the geographical limits New York had as an island. As garbage filled the streets and congestion made living uncomfortabletight., the island, completely
circumnavigated by water, limited spatial movement. There was nowhere to escape the
harshness of city life, except in the form of retreat to the surrounding lands across from o other burrows of the island. New York politicians utilized the
mMetaphor that the Park served as New York’s lungs in order to
promote the benefits of the Park as a place for rejuvenation, reflection, and exercise. 24 Though politicians and planners had other commercial and business-based intentions for the Park, their greatest argument came in the formpromoting the Park as a space of this space for fresh air amidst the polluted air of the island city. 25
The Park as Refuge for New Yorkers in Manhattan
n
In many ways, theThe construction of Central Park saved the islandstopped the island’s
inhabitants from leaving. To solve the problem of congestion, Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, the Park’s primary designers, opted to “pant out” the city from within the park. They blocked out city congestion by planting trees and shrubs along the park’s perimeter. 26 As the elite began to leave and take refuge in more spacious areas, they were again drawn back to the 24 Rosenzweig and Blackmar, The Park and the People, 24
25 Rosenzweig and Blackmar, The Park and the People, 24-25. 26 Taylor, Central Park as a Model for Social Control , 440.
.
island due to the
Central Park]. 27 It created an escape on the island itself, thus keeping people from leaving. Due to the fact that Manhattan isAs an island and because the waterfront was reserved for industry, ManhattanNew York’s urban planners were limited in free space available for landscape
developmente. Though parametric expansion created more land space for construction28, this was limited to the commercial atmosphere of the waterfront. A public green space which would allow high culture was essential a crucial response to the growing congestion of the island, because it provided a more comfortable environment for people to continue to live on the island. As soon as the Park opened to the public in 1857, “it was renowned as an island of solitude in the midst of a throbbing metropolis.”29 The boundaries which Manhattan as an island prevented New Yorkers to
easily retreat form the brutality of Industrial life
27 See essay “Aesthetics of Central Park” by Taylor McCue 28 See essay… Maya’s Perimeter
. A great number of middle- and upper-class New YorkersManhattanites became increasingly affection afeected?affectedby the claustrophobic feeling implemented by the limited space of the island and as industrial life and population continued to grow. They began to take note of the public health dangers the pollution of the city created. Thus, the appeal of the Park became all the prominent prevalent as a way to remain on the island with theas it
promisedes a naturalized retreatof natural escape and space. As Nnew YorkersManhattanites were brought into contact with nature, though artificial, it still provided the escape from the artificial life style created by the industry of the waterfront. 30
Drawing the People Back to the Islan d
Landscape architects described the Park as a serene, contemplative space intended to improve the lives of peoples living in the noisy, filthy, disease-ridden city. The local people were undereducated, overworked and in need of recreation. 31 After the opening of Central Park, Olmsted frequently compared the Park to a European park of the West. He argued that Western Europeans, upon visiting the Park, decided to become naturalized citizens and live in the city. The Park was also credited with improving the lives of the poor and the rich alike. 32 According
to the Sanitary Commission, the lives of women and children of New York City greatly improved
because they were spending time in the Park. 33
Olmsted wrote “There is no doubt that the Ppark has added years to the lives of many of the most valued citizens and many have remarked that is has much increased their working
30 John H. Rauch, M.D., Public Parks: Their Effect upon the Moral, Physical and Sanitary
Conditions of the Inhabitants of Large Cities, with Special reference to the City of Chicago. (Chicago: S.C. Griggs, 1869),. 83.
31 Taylor, Central Park as a Model for Social Control, 440. 32
capacity.”34 Olmsted referred to reports from doctors explaining: “As to the effect [of Central Park] on public health, there is no question that it is already great. The testimony of the older physicians of the city will be found unanimous on this points. Says one, ‘Where I formerly ordered patients of a certain class to give up their business altogether and go out of town, I now often advise simply moderation, and prescribe a ride in the Park before going to their offices, and again a drive with their families before dinner.” 35’ The lives of women and children who were too poor to leave the islWith the completion of Central Park, Vaux and Olmsted were able to market the Park’s importance by arguing it served four different purposes: (a) as a work of art, (b) as a tool of social control, (c) as an environment to improve physical and mental health, (d) as a means of producing better workers. 36 These four purposes kept residents from leaving the island. By the late nineteenth century, Manhattanites and now had a new option of going to the Park to escape the congestion of the City. 37 Central Park secured the future of residents on the island as they no longer needed to leave the island to find rejuvenating naturalistic landscapes.
34 Taylor
