In 1865, when San Francisco's Daily Evening Bulletin asked its
readers if it were not time for the city to finally establish a
public park, residents had only private gardens and small urban
squares where they could retreat from urban crowding, noise, and
filth. Five short years later, city supervisors approved the
creation of Golden Gate Park, the second largest urban park in
America. Over the next sixty years, and particularly after 1900, a
network of smaller parks and parkways was built, turning San
Francisco into one of the nation's greenest cities. In Building San
Francisco's Parks, 1850-1930, Terence Young traces the history of
San Francisco's park system, from the earliest city plans, which
made no provision for a public park, through the private garden
movement of the 1850s and 1860, Frederick Law Olmsted's early
involvement in developing a comprehensive parks plan, the design
and construction of Golden Gate Park, and finally to the expansion
of green space in the first third of the twentieth century. Young
documents this history in terms of the four social ideals that
guided America's urban park advocates and planners in this period:
public health, prosperity, social coherence, and democratic
equality. He also differentiates between two periods in the history
of American park building, each defined by a distinctive attitude
towards "improving" nature: the romantic approach, which prevailed
from the 1860s to the 1880s, emphasized the beauty of nature, while
the rationalistic approach, dominant from the 1880s to the 1920s,
saw nature as the best setting for uplifting activities such as
athletics and education. Building San Francisco's Parks, 1850-1930
maps the political, cultural, and social dimensions of landscape
design in urban America and offers new insights into the
transformation of San Francisco's physical environment and quality
of life through its world-famous park system.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!