Now embraced as a cultural treasure and called the most democratic
space in New York, Central Park has a contentious and elitist
history - expertly chronicled here by Rosenzweig (History/George
Mason Univ.) and Blackmar (History/Columbia Univ.). Conceived by a
small group of the wealthy in the 1850s as an answer to Europe's
society gathering spaces, the park sparked debates from the
beginning: Why did New Yorkers need an uptown park when Hoboken's
Elysian Fields were half the distance away? Where should the park
be located? What kind of park should it be? A civic monument? A
programmed pleasure garden? A commons for public assembly? Or a
landscaped preserve of artificial nature, as essentially proposed
and executed by chosen designers Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert
Vaux? And just what public should the park attract? There was not
much debate, though, about displacing the site's "squatters," whom
Rosenzweig and Blackmar find were members of stable communities:
Some owned their property, most probably paid rent, and many were
black. And there was no protest when the park became a venue for
the rich to see and be seen in their fashionable carriages. While
the masses took their pleasure at commercial gardens elsewhere,
Olmstead - a tyrant who drove and underpaid park workers, enforced
strict decorum among visitors, and elbowed the more sympathetic
Vaux out of his share of credit - maintained the park as a
landscape to be viewed. Though the park's creation and early
decades are extensively detailed here, the authors complete the
political, class-conscious story through years of realestate
speculation, Tammany patronage, and reformers' penury; and then, in
the 20th century, through a growing diversity of use and users, and
- with homeless residents and millionaire neighbors - an evolving
debate over the question of "whose park is this, anyway?" Neither
dry chronology nor anecdotal diversion, but exemplary social
history. (Kirkus Reviews)
In this superb and handsomely illustrated book - the first
full-scale history of the park ever published - Roy Rosenzweig and
Elizabeth Blackmar tell the dramatic story of the creation of
Central Park, of the people who built it and have used it. The book
chronicles the launching of the park project, the disputes
surrounding its design and management, the job of constructing it,
and the various ways it has served generations of New Yorkers.
Throughout, the authors delineate the politicians, business people,
artists, immigrant laborers, and city dwellers who are the key
players in the tale. In tracing the park's history, the writers
also give us the history of New York. They explain how squabbles
over politics, taxes, and real estate development shaped the park
and describe the acrimonious debates over what a public park should
look like, what facilities it should offer, and how it should
accommodate the often incompatible expectations of different groups
of parkgoers. The authors have uncovered surprising information
about the immigrants and African Americans who were displaced from
the park site, and they offer a critical reassessment of the famous
collaboration of the park's designers, Frederick Law Olmsted and
Calvert Vaux. In rich detail, they describe working-class New
Yorkers fighting for Sunday park concerts and against the practice
of renting park seats for a nickel. They look back at the origins
of the zoo and museums at the park's borders. They follow the
battle between the twentieth-century reformers who wanted to
introduce playgrounds and ball fields and the preservationists
trying to protect the original Olmsted and Vaux design, and they
explain the dramatic changes broughtabout by the social impulses of
the New Deal and by Robert Moses. Rounding out the story, the
authors take in the park's recent history: rising fears of crime in
the 1950s, the "be-ins" and anti-war demonstrations of the 1960s,
the devastating fiscal crisis of the 1970s, and the restoration of
the park in the 1980s by the Central Park Conservancy. But the
authors' aim is much wider: they also show that conflicting visions
of how a park should be managed and used raise larger issues about
the meaning of the "public" in a democratic society. Who is the
public? How can people take part in making decisions about public
institutions? How do we create public space where people of diverse
social and cultural backgrounds will feel welcome? These are
questions that communities across the nation will continue to
debate. Parkgoers and city dwellers everywhere will be enthusiastic
readers of The Park and the People, as will those interested in
urban, architectural, social, and cultural history, urban planning,
and landscape architecture.
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