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Humanities and Social Sciences Library > Collections & Reading Rooms > Print Collection > MOVING UPTOWN Section IX (Parks)Parks New York City now has the largest urban park system in the United States, but until Central Park little consideration had been given to preserving open spaces. The Commissioners (Randel's) Plan of 1811, in fact, had considered interior parks unnecessary. The commissioners wrote, "It may, to many, be matter of surprise that so few vacant spaces have been left, and those so small, for the benefit of fresh air, and consequent preservation of health." They felt that unlike Paris or London, located on rivers, "those large areas of the sea which embrace Manhattan Island, render its situation, in regard to health and pleasure, as well as to convenience of commerce, peculiarly felicitous." The 1811 plan had included a great "Parade" between 23rd and 34th streets, Third and Seventh avenues, a place where troops could train and march. Six additional squares –Harlem Marsh and Harlem Square, Hamilton, Bloomingdale, and Manhattan Squares, and Observatory Place –were the only breaks in the grid's network (of these, only Madison Square, a remnant of the Parade, and the Museum of Natural History and the Planetarium on Manhattan Square, are survivors of this scheme). As the edge of the city moved north and the population swelled, the
need for more public spaces became apparent, particularly as more and more
of the waterfront was commandeered by business and industry. In 1831 an
official report noted "that almost every stranger who visits us, whether
from our sister states or from Europe, speaks of the paucity of our public
squares, and that in proportion to its size, New York contains a smaller
number, and those of comparatively less extent than perhaps any other town
of importance." John Bachman(n)'s 1859 bird's-eye view, New York and
Environs, makes evident this lack, the densely packed grid of buildings
only occasionally relieved by small islands of green. But by 1859, construction
of Central Park was in full swing. Joseph Napoleon Gimbrede (American, b. France, 1781–1832) Union Square Park opened in 1831, and by the mid-1840s was landscaped with lawns, flower beds, trees, and shrubbery, a perfect setting for the surrounding elegant mansions, theatres, and concert halls. Nestled in some of the trees were "ingeniously contrived miniature buildings . . . represent[ing] different business departments as 'The Post Office,' 'The Custom House,' 'The Exchange.'" Some of the old moneyed families remarked that the residents of Union Square and Fifth Avenue were so immersed in business that even the neighborhood birds had to be busy at work all day. Central Park [Summer]. 1865 Julius Bien (American, b. Germany, 1826–1909) Plans for a large central park were proposed around 1850 by the landscape
gardener Alexander Jackson Downing, and in 1853 the state legislature granted
the city the right to acquire by eminent domain a parcel of land bounded
by 59th and 106th streets, Fifth and Eighth avenues. The winners of the
competition to design the park were Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted.
Work began in 1857, partly to support the city's program of work relief
during that depression year. Although George Templeton Strong was skeptical
that such an unattractive plot of land could amount to anything, by the
mid-1860s, one New Yorker reported, "On a bare, unsightly, and disgusting
spot, they have created an area of beauty, charming as the Garden of the
Lord." There were restrictions –group picnics were banned, tradesmen
were forbidden to use their wagons for family excursions, and school boys
could not play ball there without a letter from their school principal –yet
in 1865 more than seven million visitors enjoyed the park. Julius Bien (American, b. Germany, 1826–1909) When Olmsted and Vaux started work on Central Park, newspapers predicted
that property overlooking the park would be among the most desirable in
the city. In 1862, Anthony Trollope concurred: "The present fashion of
Fifth Avenue about Twentieth Street will in course of time move itself
up to the Fifth Avenue as it looks, or will look, over the Park at Seventieth,
Eightieth, and Ninetieth Streets." George Hayward (American, b. England about 1800, active 1834–72) Advocates for a central park included wealthy citizens, who hoped to emulate the parks of London and Paris by creating a place for families to stroll and ride, and for the workers, a healthy alternative to saloons. The 843 acres acquired in 1853 were very unprepossessing: swampy land with rocky outcroppings and, on the park land proper, some small, poor communities, a tavern, a mill, farms, and abandoned military fortifications. The winners of the competition, Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, created a design that combined the pastoral tradition with open meadows, picturesque elements (i.e., the Ramble), and formal gardens, such as the Bethesda Terrace. Construction of the park was daunting. Workmen displaced some 1,600
residents, transformed the shape of the land with gunpowder, removed nearly
three million cubic yards of soil, and created roads, tunnels, bridges,
arches, stairways, fountains, and fences and planted more than 270,000
trees and shrubs. A portion of the park opened to the public in the fall
of 1858, and in 1863 the northern boundary of the park was extended to
110th Street. George Hayward (American, b. England about 1800, active 1834–72) Valentine's Manuals for the Corporation of the City of New York for
the years 1859 and 1864 included several views showing work on Central
Park as it progressed. Charles Magnus (American lithographic firm, about 1854–1880s) Used as a potter's field and a place for public hangings, the land was acquired by the city for a public park in 1827. The homes on 1–31 Washington Square North, built in the early 1830s, were among the first Greek Revival buildings in New York. Though many predicted that the wholesale drygoods trade would move north across Houston and take over Washington Square and lower Fifth Avenue, enough families stayed in their Washington Square homes that neither trade nor tenements took hold in the 1870s and 1880s. Improvements were made in the Square itself after the Parks Department was established in 1870. Stanford White's arch became a centerpiece of the park in 1895. |