Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Central Park

Starting point is 00:00:00 In 19th century, New York City was one of the fastest growing cities in the world. However, it was still a very young city, and as such the city's leaders were able to take a step back and plan what exactly they wanted the future of the city to be. What they decided was that the city needed a park, not just any park, but a great park that took up an enormous part of the island of Manhattan. Learn more about Central Park and how it became one of the world's greatest urban parks on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

Starting point is 00:00:46 ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. If you've ever seen an aerial or satellite view of the island of Manhattan, you will immediately notice one thing that sticks out amid the blog. blocks of gray. A long green rectangle right in the heart of the island. It's so large and so different from its surroundings that it seems to be out of place. Almost everywhere else on the island

Starting point is 00:01:28 is packed with tall buildings covering almost every block. That giant green rectangle is Central Park. Central Park wasn't an accident. It was purposefully created and was designed to be an integral part of the city. To understand how Central Park came to be, you first need to know that history of Manhattan and of New York City. New York, originally settled by the Dutch and called New Amsterdam, was chosen because of its excellent location. It had a massive natural harbor at the mouth of the Hudson River, which also gave it direct access to the interior of New York State. The original settlement was on the tip of the island of Manhattan, and despite its importance as a port, the settlement grew slowly. At the time of the Revolutionary War,

Starting point is 00:02:12 New York only had a population of about 20,000 people. In comparison at the time, London had a population of 750,000 people. Almost everyone in New York lived on the southern tip of the island at that time. The rest of the island was woods and farmland. After independence, the city's population exploded, and it mostly began growing northward from its original location at the southern tip of the island. By the mid-19th century, New York had grown to a population of over 500,000 people, and its growth wasn't slowing down.

Starting point is 00:02:47 Most of the population at this time lived south of what is today 40th Street. Unlike other great cities of the world, which New York was fast becoming, they had an opportunity to plan the future growth of the city, something that most great cities in Europe or Asia never did because they grew organically over centuries. The Commissioner's Plan of 1811 was a wide-ranging plan for the growth of the city on the island of Manhattan. The plan called for a grid system of streets and avenues that still exist today.

Starting point is 00:03:19 In fact, if you look at a map of New York, you'll notice how the streets and the southern part of Manhattan are not at all aligned in a grid and are more European. And then roughly north of Houston Street, I'm sorry, New Yorkers, Houston Street, the grid suddenly begins. The grid as planned, extended to the very top of the island and included several small parks that would break up the grid in a few locations. By the mid-19th century, a movement was underway which had people appreciating nature for its own sake. This was embodied in Henry David Thoreau's book, Walden, which was published in 1854. In the book, he suggested that every American city should set aside land for a, quote, primitive forest in order to, quote, preserve all the advantages of living in the country. Even before Thoreau in 1840, there were already calls for the creation of a large park,

Starting point is 00:04:12 greater in size than any of the public squares in the city that had existed before. The idea caught on as the northern part of the island was still mostly undeveloped at this time. One of the biggest advocates of a park was William Cullen Bryant, the editor of the New York Evening Post. As early as 1844, he was advocating for the park saying, quote, it's good for your health, good for the city, good for all these things. By 1851, the idea had the support of the city's mayor, Ambrose Kingsland. He brought the idea for the creation of a large park to the city council, and they endorsed it. The first step was to find a place to build the park. The first location was

Starting point is 00:04:53 actually Jones's Woods, located on the Upper East Side. Today it's the neighborhood known as Lennox Hill. That idea was rejected because of cost and because it was rather small. A second location was selected, which was dubbed Central Park for its central location on the island. It was located between 59th and 106 streets between 5th and 8th avenues. One of the reasons why the location was selected was because of a large reservoir that already existed on the land. In 1853, the New York Common Council approved the site, and that same year, the state of New York approved the Central Park Act, which provided funds to purchase the land. The land was not the best land on Manhattan for building.

Starting point is 00:05:37 Much of it was rocky and uneven, which didn't make for a good building foundation, but was perfectly fine for a park. There was, however, a small problem. There were people who lived on the land. Most of them lived in small villages, and one in particular called Seneca Village was the largest. Seneca Village was populated mainly by freed African Americans, along with some Irish and German immigrants. At the time, Seneca Village represented 20% of all the property-owning African Americans in New York City. The people of Seneca Village, over 1,600 of them, ended up being forcibly removed from their homes due to eminent domain. The total cost of purchasing the land in Central Park was $7.4 million. Just to put that into perspective, when the United States purchased Alaska in 1867, they only spent $7.2 million, even though Alaska is over $508,000 times greater than Central Park.

Starting point is 00:06:38 Finally, after years of preparation, a public contest was held for people to submit designs for the park. The park commission had very specific requirements for any of the proposals. The park had to have a parade ground, a principal fountain, a lookout tower, a skating arena, four cross streets, and a place for an exhibition or concert hall. There were 32 submissions in total, and the winning proposal was by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vox. Their proposal was called the Greensward Plan. Most of the proposals tried to integrate the park into the city.

Starting point is 00:07:11 The Greensward Plan, however, opted for a clear distinction between park and city. The design of the park was largely inspired by Birkenhead Park in Birkenhead, England, which is considered to be the world's first publicly funded city park. Creating the park was not simply a matter of preserving space in the city. The park had to be actively developed. Roads and walking trails had to be built, swamps had to be drained, and an incredible volume of soil and rock had to be moved. A 140,000 cubic meters of rock and soil were moved,

Starting point is 00:07:43 and there was more gunpowder used in excavating some of the rock in Central Park than were used in the entire Battle of Gittiesburg. Likewise, because of the poor soil in the park, more than 18,000 cubic meters of topsoil had to be brought in from New Jersey. The roads going through the park are sunken so they can't be seen. The paths and roads in the park are seldom straight, the designers wanted to discourage people from carriage racing. Parts of the park opened sooner than others. The first section of the park to open in December 1858 was the lake in the middle

Starting point is 00:08:16 western part of the park. In 1859, the city purchased 65 more acres of land in the north, from 106 to 110th Street. Construction of the park continued throughout the entire decade of the 1860s, right through the American Civil War. In 1870, the park in its construction came under the control of Tammany Hall, the political machine that ran New York. Boss Tweed, the leader of Tammany Hall, abolished the board overseeing the park, and installed his own men in a board instead. However, this resulted in Olmstead and Vox resigning from the commission in late 1870. But this didn't last long as Tweed was arrested in an embezzlement scandal in 1871, and the members of the commission were replaced with Olmstead and Vox being rehired. In 1872, two areas of the park were set aside for two of its

Starting point is 00:09:03 largest and most important construction projects. On the west side, what was known as Manhattan Square was to become the American Museum of Natural History. On the east side of the park was to be the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Both museums are significant enough to be subjects of their own in future episodes. After 18 years of construction and the piecemeal opening of parts of the park, Central Park was finally and officially considered complete in 1876. Even though the park was quote-unquote done, that didn't mean the construction and development stopped. From approximately 1880 to 1930, several iconic structures were built, including Belvedere Castle, the Bethesda Terrace and the Central Park Zoo. Various statues and monuments were also erected in the park as well.

Starting point is 00:09:53 The park saw various rises and falls over the years. It would fall into disrepair and then undergo renovations. More changes in additions took place, especially during the Great Depression. An area known as sheep meadow actually had sheep in it, but they were eventually removed because of the construction of the tavern on the green. In 1935, carriage rides returned to the park after an absence of several decades, and today still remains a popular feature. The 1960s saw the creation of another ice skating rink and the start of the Shakespeare in the park program. One of the things about Central Park that's interesting to ponder is its economic value. There are a couple ways you can look at the economic value of Central Park, one of which is

Starting point is 00:10:37 what it does to real estate prices in New York. Apartments that overlook Central Park and apartments that are near Central Park have a premium value. One local park advocacy group estimates that Central Park adds $26 billion to the property values of real estate around the park. And this alone adds over a billion dollars per year to the revenue of New York City. But perhaps a more interesting question is what would the land value of Central Park be today? Central Park is the largest remaining block of undeveloped space in one of the world's most expensive real estate markets. While no one's suggesting that Central Park should actually be sold off and developed, it's an interesting question. For starters, it's difficult to price undeveloped land in New York City because for all practical purposes, there is none.

Starting point is 00:11:29 Almost all the land values in Manhattan assume the value of the buildings that are on it. Second, the value of the buildings around Central Park varies dramatically. The land across from the southern end of the park is some of the most expensive real estate in the world. On the northern end of the park near Harlem, prices are much less. So let's assume an average value of $1,000 per square foot of undeveloped land, which actually might be an underestimate. Next, there are 838 acres of land in Central Park, and there are 43,560 square feet per acre of land, which means that there are 36,50, 203,280 square feet of land in Central Park. And that includes everything, including the lakes, ponds, trails, and buildings such as the

Starting point is 00:12:19 Metropolitan Museum of Art. Using these estimates, the approximate entire land value of Central Park, using mass, and Manhattan prices is $36.5 billion. These price estimates are based on land around Central Park, which has value because of Central Park. Remove Central Park and suddenly that land value isn't as high. The interesting thing is that the increase in value of properties around Central Park isn't that far off from the theoretical land value of Central Park itself. and that means there might not even be an economic justification for ever developing Central Park,

Starting point is 00:13:03 assuming somebody actually wanted to do that. Central Park is one of the great urban parks in the world. It's a massive swath of green right in the middle of one of the largest, most densely populated cities in the world. And it exists because of planning and foresight in the 19th century, which created the park before it became overwhelmed by the growth of the city. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiever. I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon,

Starting point is 00:13:39 including the show's producers. Your support helps me put out a show every single day. And also, Patreon is currently the only place where Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise is available to the top tier of supporters. If you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and members of the Completionist Club, you can join the Everything Everywhere Daily Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Central Park

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