Alphabe Thursday N is for New York City and Central Park

Still keeping with my theme of walking and it would seem in some cities during the 19th century it was already becoming dangerous.

Central Park in New York City was shaped in the style of English gardens particularly Liverpool’s Public park.  It was a place for the new up and coming citizens to parade their wealth.  While the poor preferred to pay and enjoy the privacy of the private parks, rather like London’s Vauxhall Gardens, where they could drink beer and dance the polka and other so called plebeian activities.

However,those would wished only for an uplifting walk would be disappointed and at risk.  The Central Park became a popular promenade for the rich and their carriages.  

So, the rich frequented the Central Park and the ‘poor’ pedestrians wandered the New York Battery and Broadway once enjoyed by the fashionable New Yorkers; that is, until it fell into decline as the ‘respectable citizens lost control over these public spaces’. It would seem in New York City during the 1850s, carriage owning was the defining feature of the new urban upper-class  and that walking was passe or simply unsafe.  

Images from Frederick Law Olmsted’s New York ; text by Elizabeth Barlow and illustrative portfolio by William Alex and attributed to Harpers Weekly 1864 and 1886. From the library of the Landscape Institute