Stuff You Should Know - How Central Park Works

Episode Date: January 31, 2019

Central Park in Manhattan was America’s first landscaped public park, built at a time when New Yorkers’ only option for getting some fresh air was hanging around cemeteries. Get all the info about this beautiful icon and how it’s served as a landscape for class struggles over three centuries. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry Rowland over there.

And this is Stuff You Should Know. Was that a real stair down? Yeah, Jerry won. Jerry won because I was like, I don't have time for this any longer. That's pretty funny because that's just sort of all the three of us. You guys are having a stair down over nothing.

You're just over there grumpy, like, can we go? I was just doing my thing and then all I heard from you was nice job, Jerry. So like you conceded. Well, sure, yeah. You gave it to her. I mean, Jerry won. My friend, Billy, the one who I passed away from MS

that I talked about, he and I used to do a staring contest but it was a certain face we had to make. And you had to not laugh. That was our staring contest. So we both make this certain face that he invented and the first one of us to break and laugh, which was always me. Can I see the face?

No. Okay, that's fine. I've retired it. I understand. That's right. Okay, well, thanks for the story. Oh, by the way, very special listener mail coming up today, everyone, so stick around for that.

Whoa, Sarah, the amazing 11-year-old fan. Yeah, who's not 11 anymore. She's reappeared, everybody. Gosh, so delightful to hear from her. All right, so, wow, let's just get through this then. I know. It's Central Park. Central Park, it's huge.

It's in New York, the end. It's square. It's rectangular, Charles. All right, so let's talk about New York in between 1821 and 1855, the population of New York grew four times its size over that 34-year period. From 15 people to 60. And they were crowded and people started moving

further and further north. That was a funny joke I just made, but you just said that the population of New York quadrupled over 30 years. Yeah, 34 years, and New York started at the south as far as people live in there and kept going further and further north. And Manhattan-wise.

Sure, sure, we're gonna talk about New York State, come on. No, no, but I mean, there's Brooklyn too. And Poughkeepsie, no, no, sure, all the boroughs. But yeah, we're talking about the island of Manhattan. And things got so crowded that people would gather in cemeteries to socialize. Yeah, that was really weird. So we've talked about that before.

I don't remember what episode it was, but we talked about- Some of the stuff, it might be in the subways or something. Park or pizza. It might have been tombstones or something. Because we talked about cemeteries being designed to be park-like because people would go have picnics and stuff there.

Maybe so. All the material that has to do with Central Park makes it sound like that's all they had available were cemeteries if they wanted to go hang out and have picnics in green space. So I'm not sure if it was involuntary or if it was designed that way or both, but it was either a tenement

or a commercial district or the cemetery. That was what you had if you were outdoors. Yeah, and I think it's not necessarily that's all you had, but maybe all you had that was close and accessible. Sure. The cemetery is six blocks from my apartment. Right. And also, as you will learn,

much of, not Northern Manhattan, but yeah, counting Northern Manhattan, Central Manhattan, where Central Park now is, was gross swamp land. Swampy, rocky. You're not hanging out there anyway. Yeah, forget the 1820s. Let's go back 2.6 million years ago, Chuck.

There was an ice sheet over New York State that was two miles thick. And it just so happened to terminate, the termination edge, well, the edge of it. Sure. Went right through the bottom of Manhattan, went through Brooklyn, and actually like all the heights and hills in Brooklyn,

that's because, that's actual hills, right? Because a glacier pushed the ground up there, because that's where it stopped growing forward. But as these glaciers were moving down South from the North, they were pushing boulders and rocks and stones everywhere, and where they ended up and then finally retreated from, they left all that stuff, which is why they're boulders in Central Park.

There used to be a lot more boulders there. So much so that the land was just basically considered virtually unusable. Yeah, they weren't, that area was not being developed anyway, which made it a difficult task, but it made it sort of the only place if you wanted to build a 700 plus acre park,

that was kind of the place to go. Right, and so they did want to build a park, because again, if you wanted to go outside and hang out and have a picnic, you had to go to Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, that was basically it. So the people who were living in New York wanted this, but then also the upper society, I guess,

the super wealthy, were like, yeah, yeah, this will put our town on the map, man, London's got Hyde Park, Paris has one, all the great cities have a great park, but there's not one in the United States. Let's build it in New York. Yeah, that was later, like initially there was no call for a park.

I mean, it took 40 or 50 years of lots of inhabitants to get this idea. The original city plan in 1811 had no mention of any park, but for you city planning nerds, I know you know this already, if you're a city planning nerd, but John Randall Jr., he was the man who laid out

that the grid for New York City, very famously, I saw a documentary on it. Oh, really? Yeah, it's amazing. He drove these iron, I believe iron bolts into the ground. With his fingers. His bare hands. It was a surveying bolt,

and it was to map out that grid, like every block. Can't you see one still? There's one in Central Park that they found. I don't think they found any other ones in Central Park. But it has nothing to do with Central Park, because this is like a good 50, 60 years before they even thought of, 40 years before they even thought of Central Park.

It was like maybe this is part of the grid, the street grid. So there's one in a boulder that, I mean, I'm not gonna say where it is. Oh, you gotta go find it, huh? Well, they try to keep it on the down low as far as the actual GPS coordinate. Like these people that hunted it down and found it.

It's like a speakeasy, but it's really just a bolt in a stone. It's a bolt in a stone. And you will become the king of New York if you can pull it out. Oh, you should not dare. Nothing should be there for eternity. But there's supposedly more of them.

And there are people that go around and try and find these, it's kind of neat. Yeah, it is neat. So I guess I am a city planning nerd at heart. I have to say, I came across a great site called Ephemeral New York that documents like all the New York that's been lost and built over and changed over the time.

That's cool. It's a great website. Go check it out. Cause we got some good stuff from them for this episode. All right. So where we left off before my nerdy segue was you were talking about wealthy New Yorkers saying we want to park.

There's a more cynical view that was we want to park and that would also greatly increase the land value around the park where we own houses. Yeah, because just like today, the area around Central Park was very well healed. Well, in some places. Right. And other places, not at all.

In the place where Central Park is now, there was a lot of very low income people living there. So you have very rich people surrounding very low income people, which I'm guessing made the low income people very nervous. And eventually justifiably so, because the low income people are the ones who had to move to make the park initially for the rich people.

Should we go and talk about that? Why not? Seneca Village? Yeah. And well, there's Seneca Village and then there are largely Irish and German immigrants. In Seneca Village? Well, and all over Seneca Village is only one small part

of this immigrant housing that was sort of around the park that of course, you know what imminent domain is if the city wants to build the park there, they're going to get that land one way or the other. Yeah, the New York legislature, the state legislature said, yep, New York city, you can exercise imminent domain over that and take whatever land you want.

You got to pay them fair market value, which is up for debate if it was actually fair, but those people have to move whether they like it or not. Right. So Seneca Village was founded in 1825. There was a couple in 1824 named John Elizabeth Whitehead who bought. No, they owned it.

Farmland. Oh, that, okay, all right. I thought they'd owned the land for a long time. No, they bought farmland between 82nd and 88th street and then between 1825 and 1832 started selling it off. Oh, okay. And they sold 50 parcels of that land, half of which went to people of African descent,

which was very unusual at the time to say the least. It was. And so like basically out of this, out of this sale of lots over this period of time, the Seneca Village started very quickly. The people who lived there built a house or a school, churches, couple churches, houses, and like this village developed this community.

If so, there's a couple of things that was remarkable about Seneca Village. One, these were African-American landowners, which was very unusual at the time because even at this time, slavery was still on the books legal in New York and these were freed or unenslaved African-Americans who owned land,

which meant if they owned $250 worth of land, they could vote, which would have made them like, like there were a hundred African-Americans who could vote at this time because that's how few of them actually owned land. 10% of those people lived in Seneca Village. So this is a really unusual spot,

but it was also unusual because it was a place where African-Americans and European settlers or European immigrants lived together, like lived in this community together. Yeah, but I should say, you also had to jump through certain other hoops to vote. It wasn't quite as simple as owning land because that would be, I guess, too easy for them back then,

which was, as to say, not easy at all, but they still said, no, there's some other things you still gotta do to vote. Sure, oh, did we mention the other stuff too? And big shout out to Andrew William. He was the first man of African descent who bought land that would become Seneca Village in September, 1825. But like you said,

it was Irish and German immigrants moved in there as well, and they were welcomed. And it was by all accounts, a multicultural society that got along well with one another. It went to the same church. That's enormous. Pretty amazing. Buried in the same graveyard.

There was a midwife there who lived in the village and she delivered babies of any ethnicity or race. Yeah, no one knows why it's called Seneca Village. On most maps, it's known as Yorkville. Oh, I thought that was a different place that the Yorkville people moved up to Seneca Village after they got moved out. Well, Yorkville, there was another York town.

Oh, that's what I'm thinking of. But this was on maps as Yorkville, and no one knows if it was a distortion of Senegal or if it might've been code for the Underground Railroad. It's another theory. Another theory is that it was derogatory somehow because areas where African immigrants would live, they would call bad names of just whatever.

So who knows? No one knows for sure where Seneca Village came from, the name at least. Gotcha. It was interesting. So it sounds like Seneca Village is great. It was. I must have had fortune smiling on it

throughout its time, right? Not true. So Seneca Village was in the way of this proposed park, right? So let's get, we'll just go ahead and cut to the chase here. Seneca Village was, they had to move, which is sad because the community ended then when the state and the city moved in and said,

this is city land now. You guys, I'll have to move. Here's some money for your land. The community broke up. It didn't resettle or reform elsewhere. It was like ephemeral, like that ephemeral New York site. It lasted for a few decades and it was peaceful

and harmonious and then it was gone because they had to move to make way for Central Park. Yeah, it took a couple of years of fighting the law, but eventually the law went out and it was called in this article, a violent clearing of Seneca Village. Like they basically sent cops in there with their batons and like physically removed people.

Yeah, and there was a big kind of media blitz in favor of moving everybody out. They were derided as a shanty town of squatters and stuff like that, despite the fact that most of the people who live there or a lot of people who live there own their land in their houses and head for decades then. They had just as much right to be there as anybody else,

but the popular opinion of the public at the time was they were just squatting and they should be forced to move and it was totally justifiable to come in with police batons to clear them off the land. In 2011, the sort of weird silver lining is the Institute for the Exploration of Seneca Village history got permission after 10 years of trying

from the Central Park Conservancy to excavate a couple of sites in the village and they went in there and excavated two different home sites and on one they found some artifacts, but it was clear that it had been already buried under Central Park, whatever. When they built Central Park. Right, they had already dug it up

when they did Central Park. The other one though was original and they found the original soil of Seneca Village at the former yard of Nancy Moore. Pretty neat and they have 250 bags of material to analyze now and soil samples and some artifacts to see what life was really like back then. So pretty cool.

So they better get to it. That's right. All right, why don't we take a break and then come back and talk about the pod. Okay, is it in Boston now? Yeah, what happened there? ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] On the podcast, Paydude the 90s called

David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the co-classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends

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blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to

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So, I think by 1853, there had, I think in the 1850s, there was like this drumbeat to have a park. Everybody wanted a park. Yeah, William Cullen Bryant was one of the big names. Who edited the evening post, which is now the New York post. And he was a well-known poet at the time and a beloved figure.

But he definitely used the post as a platform to advocate for this green space. Now, again, there's a lot of understanding in this day and age that the wealthiest New Yorkers wanted this park for themselves, basically. They wanted their new city that they had built to rival Paris or London, and it needed a park. They wanted to go show off their carriages in the park.

But they also advocated publicly for the park, for the working classes, the middle class. They should have a place to come and hang out. And this is, you know, this is America. Of course, everyone will be welcome. It's a public park. It will be America's first landscape public park. And so, people really kind of got on board with this.

And by 18... Even though that was kind of a lie. It was, at least at first. But by 1853, I believe, work started. There was a central park that had been designated. Land had been designated for the central park by then. Right? That's right.

And they had a contest. I believe it was the first design contest in the country. A lot of firsts that said, design our park. You gotta have a parade ground. You gotta have a principal fountain. Gotta have a lookout tower. Gotta have a skating arena. Sure.

You gotta have four cross streets. Okay. Cause people still gotta get through there somehow. Right. And a palace, I'm sorry, a place for... Or a palace, why not? For an exhibition or a concert hall. Right.

Very specific rules for this design contest that was one. By two gentlemen, very famous now gentlemen, named Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux? I'm going with Vaux. Okay. B-A-U-X? Yeah. Or Vau, Vau or Vaux?

But definitely not Vaux. Vaux. Vau. Vaux is always silent. Yeah. Those two submitted something called the Greensward plan and they won. I like that name.

And they won for a couple of reasons. One, Frederick Law Olmsted was the superintendent of Central Park at the time. Probably didn't hurt. No. But he wasn't a shoe-in, I believe his boss. I can't remember like what position his boss would have had. His boss submitted a plan too.

Apparently he and Vaux, their plan, this Greensward plan that they submitted was just so obviously head and shoulders above every other design that was submitted that it was just clear like from the outset. Yes, these guys should win. And it was considered a work of art still to this day, although they actually went on

to design Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Lovely park. And that's supposedly their masterpiece over Central Park is Prospect Park. I mean, I love them both. They're both great. I've never been to either of them. That's not true.

No, I swear to God, I've never, I mean, I must have like- I've stood in Central Park with you before. I know, but I mean, so okay. I walked like 15 paces in Central Park, right? It was just like- We weren't in there for long. Right.

That's it. That's really the only time? Yes, and I've never been in Prospect Park. Boy, I have explored, there's so much of it, but I bet you I've explored 75% of the bottom 50% of Central Park. Wow. I haven't been over like 86th Street a lot

north of that, but that's where it gets a little more wild anyway, and not wild like the parties. Coyotes. But a little more wild as far as the design goes. Well, that's- Very purposefully. Yes, right. Okay, I'm glad you said purposefully,

because supposedly the bottom half of Central Park, so the park itself is meant to evoke New York State. The bottom half is much more urban refined, trimmed, I don't know. Sure. And it's meant to reflect New York City, and then as you get further up in the park, it's a little more wild.

There's parties and coyotes, all a, you know, Poughkeepsie. You've never been to Bethesda Fountain? I don't believe I have. I've seen so many- You've never been to the Boat House or the Skating Rink? So many episodes of Law & Order. I can't distinguish reality from fantasy. Oh man.

I'm like, I'm going into my memory. I'm like, okay, turn to your right. Is Lenny Briscoe standing there? If so, then this is from TV. Well, I've never seen an episode of that, so I guess we're even. What? Yeah.

Lenny Briscoe wants the show. You've never seen an episode of the 10,000 episodes of Law & Order. No. Oh, you're missing out. Chris Knoth and, what was Briscoe's name? Jerry Orbach. Those two together?

Yeah. Yeah. Benjamin Bratt was a close second to the Chris Knoth, Jerry Orbach thing. And then it just keeps going on. Like, they were so good at, all of them were just amazing. But yeah, a lot of stuff took place in Central Park. So I feel like I've been there.

Here's what you do, man. Next time we go to New York, I know that we typically stay downtown. Yeah. Stay up by the park. Well, listen to you. And then just like, get out in it. I've developed a taste for the Upper West Side.

But not the park. I like the, right. You're so close. I will go out, I'll take a helicopter over. I will go out of my way. I like Lower East Side and Upper West Side are my two favorites in New York and Manhattan. Interesting.

Yeah. You like Lower East Side? I like it all, man. Well, I mean, my very favorite part of New York is the West Village, for sure. It's nice. But I like the Lower East Side. I like it in the East Village.

Still a little grungy. It's nice. Is there such a thing as the Lower West Side? What is that, Wall Street? No, like, well, I mean, Wall Street's all the way down. But I would say like, if, I mean, I don't think it's called the Lower West Side, but like the Meatpacking District.

Oh, okay. Yeah, I like that too. And like the High Line, that's probably Lower West Side. There's some really great art galleries in the Meatpacking District. Oh, man. Boy, when I first started going to New York, that was when it was still shady over there.

And like you would walk through like blocks and blocks of industrial meatpacking plants to get to like the one bar that was open, that no one had art of. And then Giuliani came in and cleaned the place up. Well, just thank God for him, right? So the design of Central Park, the Greens Ward. Oh yeah, I forgot.

Like if you- We have so much information to go over. I know. Should this be a two-parter? I don't know. Let me ask you, has our podcast gotten more conversational, this question aside? Hasn't it?

I don't know. Okay. I think we've always been conversational. Yeah, but I mean like this seems like a pinnacle of conversational. Well, let me say this. I think episodes one through 450 were less conversations than 450 through 1200.

Okay. But what about 1200 on? I don't know. All right. The Greens Ward plan. If you didn't know anything about Central Park, you may be under the misconception that they just sort of squared it off

and raked some things around and it was like, there's the park. And like, let's just protect this green space. But it was highly, highly, highly designed. Oh yeah. And apparently they used as much explosives as would later be used at the Battle of Gettysburg. He's supposedly more.

To blast away rock and move that rock. Because remember the glacier that moved all that rock down. That's a big problem when you're trying to build a park. Like planted hundreds of thousands of trees. Swamps that they couldn't drain. They just filled in further to build lakes. Yeah, so it was, and I don't think anyone really thinks that

like, oh, they just walled it up and said, now we have a park, but I don't think I even realized how highly it was designed because, and which is probably a testament to their design. Cause when you walk around, you're just like, it all fits. Right, that's, I mean, that's the thing. Like they went to a lot of trouble to make it look so naturalistic

that you just assume that that's what the land always looked like. And Central Park is actually a highly managed, highly designed green space. That exists in a rectangle that when you're in the center of it, from what I've seen on Law and Order, you can't tell that you're like in the middle of the city.

I mean, like that. That's the idea. That the roads, none of them are straight. They're all meant to curve. There's meadows that kind of like go out of sight and there's woods, the ramble, like the whole wood walk and all that. All of it's designed to just completely take you out

of the city and plop you into this world. But it's just so well done and so natural that it seems like that's just what this patch of land always looked like. Well, and cool that like, even in an era today where that land is the most valuable land on the planet, maybe that they have protected those 800 plus acres now and said, you're not, I don't care how much money you have,

you're not gonna lop off. Just no, why don't we start it at 95th Street instead? And like, what's it gonna hurt? Cause we could really use that area, but no, it is protected. Yeah. Did you hear like the dude bought a $258 million penthouse on Central Park?

So yeah, I can't imagine how much that would cost. Most expensive house, right? Ever sold in America? In America, yeah. So Bethesda Mountain before we leave that beautiful, beautiful work of art. Yeah, Bethesda Terrace, it is a two tiered, that's kind of one of the cool things is like it sits low

and you can walk from the top half of it and just kind of gaze out upon that and the pond right behind it and then walk down the stairs and hear live music almost every day of the week, it feels like. But that was designed by Emma Stebbins, an America artist, it's called The Angel of the Waters. And she was awarded that commission,

a very famous sculptor. And we gotta acknowledge her. Sure. It's beautiful, one of my favorite places in the world. I've seen it, they found a body there. One of the episodes of Lawn Ark. So I feel like I've been to the John Lennon Memorial. Is that with you or was it with you, me?

Cause I'm almost a hundred percent certain that I've been to that. I don't know, cause the only time I definitely was in Central Park with you, I will, we went with a former coworker who kind of babysat us on an early marketing trip. Sure. Remember that person?

Yeah, that's the only time it was with us, which would explain why you tried to block it from your memory. Did we go to Strawberry Fields? I don't remember. Well, then I believe I have been another time and it would have been with you, me then. I think we did not, cause if I remember correctly,

it was more like this other person was just like, oh, where can we get a pretzel? That kind of thing. Marketing. All right, so back to the design before we get to the building. They needed those four roads. Yeah, this is a big one.

Which was huge because Olmsted and Vaux, they sank their roads eight feet below the surface of the park, which really, I mean, it doesn't completely hide them, but they use trees and things to sort of obscure these roads. So it wouldn't just be like this, another just straight, you know, cross street. And it really blends in nicely with the park.

And in fact, one of the lovelier things you can do is drive through the park. I saw that, I didn't even know that you could, but I went on a Google street view of the road. And I was like, oh yeah, totally, I get it now. Like I got it from reading it, but then I was like, am I understanding this correctly? And yes, there are sunken roads through the park,

which was another reason why Olmsted and Vaux won, because like, so a couple other designs that I saw, one was all the continents in meadow form. Oh, interesting. Okay, interesting, but also terrible. And then somebody just drew a pyramid on a piece of paper and apparently it was like, boom, there's my submission. So like, they didn't have the most competition,

but when they, again, when they were like sunken roads and meadows and stuff like that, it was very clear that they had the right vision. You know the movie, Arthur, the Dudley Moore movie? Yeah. They drive through the park at the beginning of that movie because he says, drive through the park, bitumen. You know, I love Jerry's laughing.

You know, I love the park. Yeah. Do you mean Russell Brand? Oh God. You know, Hodgman was in that one. That's right. I never saw it, I couldn't do it. I saw the Hodgman Park.

Just queued that up? No, I just went to the movies, waited, went in, watched Hodgman and left. 20,000 workers worked on Central Park. Irish laborers, German gardeners, native stone cutters, native born stone cutters. And what did I say, how many? Yeah, 270,000 trees and shrubs were planted.

Yep. They moved. At the beginning. There's like a six million cubic feet of earth in and out. That's crazy. Yeah, just the number of trees and shrubs that were planted is just mind boggling. And it was extremely expensive too.

There was something like a $5 million price tag just to acquire the land. Yeah. Supposedly that's three times higher than what they projected the actual park was going to cost. Wow. Yeah, so that's like $150 million today. Oh man.

This is at a time when that was a bunch of money too back then. But it was also, I believe there was a financial panic that really made people say like, what's, this is a crazy amount of money and what are we doing? But they pressed on. The civil war broke out during the construction

and so construction kind of tapered off for a while and they went and fought the war and then everybody came back. And when they came back, they brought with them an understanding of explosives so that they were able to blow away rock a lot more easily than they were before the war. Yeah, for sure.

And there is a false rumor or a myth that is that what bridge is it? One of them was supposedly made of cannonballs. Yeah, the heart bridge. I can't remember what it was. There's something bow bridge. The bow bridge, the bow bridge. Is it the bow bridge?

Yeah, it was supposedly up until like 1974, like every book you could read said they had giant cannonballs as its foundation. Yeah, it was like ball bearings because it was like expanded and contracted so much because of the winters. No cannonballs. No, they did a renovation on it.

So they're building this thing. They finally in 1859, in the winter of 1859 is when it first opened for public use. Right. And by 1865, that park received more than 7 million visitors a year. That is a lot. But like you said, that we need to follow up on,

at first they had a bunch of rules in place that kind of kept it for the wealthier New Yorkers. For sure. So like the history of Central Park is actually a history of class struggle in New York, big time. And when it opened initially, it was kind of like, thanks for the park jumps, appreciate the taxpayer money. And it was like if there was any kind of event

or orchestra or band or anything like that, it took place from Monday to Saturday because if you were a laborer, if you were part of the working class, the only day of the week you had off was Sunday. Carriages were very much welcomed and they made up something like 50 or 60% of the visitors arrived in carriages.

Yeah, in the first decade, 50% were in carriages. But like 5% of New Yorkers were wealthy enough to afford carriages. That says it all. Right, exactly. So basically it was just kind of like a stay out kind of thing. They had a ban on group picnics. Yeah, that was a big one.

So like all these, you know, big immigrant families that love to get together in large groups. None of that. Couldn't do it. Go to the cemetery. You couldn't ride around in a work cart, so like. Yeah, like if you had a ice truck. Yeah.

Like you want to just put your family in it to take them out for a Sunday drive? Nope, none of those. You had to have a nice carriage. So there were always all these rules that were enforced for a little while. And then finally, the rest of New York, the other New Yorkers said, this is BS.

Yeah. Let's loosen these up a little bit. And they finally petitioned for some changes and Central Park finally in the 1870s became a true public park. Yeah, like little by little, that's when it started to ease on some of these rules. Apparently Olmsted was not a fan of children

traipsing all over the grass. So he would have been none too pleased with family picnics and all over on the Great Lawn. Obviously that changed over the years as well. And since, you know, mid 1875 and on, it's been a series of progressive minded people that have opened up the park and democratized it over decades and decades.

But it's also been kind of this push and pull. Like, okay, how much for the people should we add some like? A swimming pool. Yeah, or like some, like, should we put the baseball stadium here? That was a proposal at one point in time. And they're like, no, let's not do, let's not go that far toward the people.

What about softball fields? Right, they said, okay, maybe one or two of those. And then it would kind of go back, you know, like, no, the people have screwed it up a little bit. So let's take it over and make up some more rules. And it just keeps going back and forth between too much for the people and the people are taking it for granted to too strict.

And we need to kind of loosen it up a little bit. Just kind of went back and forth like that. And it's still doing that today. Yeah, and also I think like the Green's word plan was so revered. It was sort of like the constitution. It was like, for decades and decades, they would go back to that original plan

and think about like, well, this isn't what they intended. Right, the founders. Yeah, until progressives sort of got on board and we're like, well, we can actually alter this, keep the spirit of the park and just make it more accessible because softball fields are great. There's a really good example of all of this

in the casino story. Yeah. So there was this thing called the ladies refreshment saloon, I think. There was an original Calvert Vogue building, one of the buildings he built. It looked like an upstate New York cottage, like a wealthy person's cottage house in New York.

It's a beautiful little house. And originally, if you were a woman who was unescorted by a man to Central Park, this was the place you could go and like get a drink and relax and chill out because no men were allowed. It was just the ladies refreshment saloon, right? And then over time, men started to be allowed

and it became like an actual restaurant. And then in the 20s, I think, New York got a mayor who was basically a gangster named Jimmy Walker, gentleman Jimmy Walker. And he was- Not Jimmy Walker. No, not dynamite. Different Jimmy Walker.

And he was super in favor of speakeasies and like gambling and all this stuff. And he helped make the casino or this refreshment saloon into what was known as the casino. There wasn't actual gambling there, but it was like the hottest nightclub in New York was in this original 1860s building in Central Park.

Yeah, he said, let's take the ladies refreshment saloon and make it the opposite of that. Right, exactly. And so during the day, it was a restaurant that was open to all, but it was basically like a Neiman Marcus cafe where like the prices were so outrageously high that the average person couldn't afford this stuff.

It was like coffee for 40 cents a cup at a time when coffee was like a nickel everywhere else. So, eight times the normal rate for just a cup of coffee, which it's kind of like, well, it's not good for a public park, but it was open to everybody until night came. And then it was an exclusive nightclub. Like you could not get in unless you were on the list.

And there was like partying like this for years throughout the roaring twenties. And then finally, when Jimmy Walker was no longer mayor, he was toppled for corruption. The casino became a symbol for the people taking back New York and their park. And so Mayor LaGuardia appointed a guy named Robert Moses who became the Parks Commissioner for decades.

That was a big deal. And Robert Moses lobbied to tear the casino down. Yeah, he did a lot. Robert Moses, he built 20 playgrounds on the periphery. He renovated the zoo that I think had been around since 1871 and it was and still is very popular. He was the first one to accommodate automobiles. He added athletic fields, benefactors,

private benefactors in the fifties and sixties, which was during his tenure helped to contribute to the skating rink, the wallman rink, lasker rink and pool, the boat houses, the chess and checkers house, ball fields on the great lawn. Like he really made a lot of changes for like the people. Right, so yeah, they took the park back

and he actually, he was a huge advocate for the park. And it had kind of started to fall into decay around the turn of the 20th century. And when he came in in 1934, he just completely turned it around. Like you said, added all this stuff, but also renovated it and basically restored it back to its original glory.

And so Robert Moses was great. He saved Central Park. The first time. The first time, but when he left in, what'd you say, 1960? Yeah. The park really started to fall to pieces because there was no champion there, like Robert Moses.

But there was also no plan in place. And there was also no money. New York basically, the way that I saw it, New York abdicated its stewardship of Central Park. It basically said, this is whatever, we're not paying attention to this anymore. And it went to poop very quickly. All right, well, let's take a break there

and we'll come back and finish up from 1960 to today. Dun-dun. ["The Nineties"] On the podcast, Hey Dude, The Nineties called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the nineties. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound, like poltergeist? Also leave a code on your best friend's beeper,

because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in, as we take you back to the nineties. Listen to Hey Dude, The Nineties called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself,

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or wherever you listen to podcasts. Singing stuff with Joshua and Charles, stuff you should know. All right, so the park is going downhill in the 1960s and 70s. We mentioned a few reasons. Another big reason was that there was no ownership. No one had ultimate responsibility. Like, I feel like the buck was being passed all over the city.

Totally. No one was happy about it, but there was no body in place to say, no, we've got to fix this now. And if you look at pictures of Central Park in the 70s, man, and it was like all of New York when it looked like a wasteland. It was like the Warriors in there. Yeah, like these classic places, like the boathouse and the skating rink are like graffitied and like.

Trash everywhere. It's just hard to believe. Stuff's broken all over the place. The statues are all being vandalized. It's like, it is. It's so sad. It is, it's sad to see. But it's also unbelievable to see now

that you know what Central Park looks like. Just how bad it was in the 70s and 80s. And throughout the 60s, there wasn't like a Robert Moses champion, and it was starting to go downhill, but it was nothing like it was when they finally in the 70s were just like, whatever, forget it. And it was kind of like that broken windows theory of policing, where once you reach this tipping

point as it were, it just kind of all just turns to garbage. And that's Central Park in the 70s and 80s was a great example of that. And it was considered like a really dangerous place that you did not want to be after dark. And there was that very famous Central Park Five case. And everybody just found it so easy to believe that some teenagers had brutally attacked a woman

and left her for dead because it was Central Park. Yeah, I mean, you can't even be in there at certain hours now, like they clear the park out. And I know this because I spent the night in the park for Shakespeare in the park tickets, and you line up, you hang out and party with people in line until, I can't remember what time it was, but something like 2 a.m. and the cops come around

and they say, everybody get up and they walk you in order out onto the sidewalk right there on, I don't know if it was the east or west side, but they basically move the entire line out of the park. And then you're sleeping on the sidewalk all night. And then in the morning, they come back and they move you all back into the park in line. And everyone just does it.

Must have been a hell of a Shakespeare play. It was the most legendary. What was it? The Seagull, I never told you about that. The Seagull, that's like Chekhov or something. Yeah, it doesn't mean everything is Shakespeare. It's just Shakespeare in the park kind of makes it sound like it would be.

No, that's just the name of the program. But it's a, this was- You saw the Seagull? Yeah, and it was the Seagull with Kevin Klein and Meryl Streep and John Goodman and Christopher Walken and Philip Seymour Hoffman. And George Seagull. Natalie Portman.

Wow. And there was like two more directed by Mike Nichols. It was like one of the most legendary performances ever. And that's the one where I saw James Lipton wearing a inside the actors studio jacket. No, come on. It's like you don't need to wear that. It's like Glenn Danzig walks around wearing Danzig shirts.

Did you know that? Oh, I'm sure. Sleeveless Danzig shirts. Yep. So anyway, that's what happens. They move you out at night, so it's kind of fun. I highly recommend everyone doing that at some point in their life.

That's a heck of a play, man. Yeah, it was really something else. So Central Park is in decay. And in 1974, a man named George Soros who was- Saves the day. The devil to some people in this country. George Soros and Richard Gilder, working with the Central Park Community Fund,

underwrote a management study in 1974 by E.S. Savas who was a professor of public systems management at Columbia. And this was a big study that basically came away with two big clear initiatives. One was like, we need a CEO, essentially. Right. One person, one person in charge. Right.

So everyone can't go like, I thought he was gonna fix the thing. No, one person who has like a, not unchecked authority, but just basically like their- A boss. Their decision is final. Yeah, yeah. So that was the first thing.

And then the second thing was a Central Park Board of Guardians to oversee all this stuff. The guy suggested the guardian angels but was shouted down. Oh man, we should do one of those guys. Sure. In 1979 though, Elizabeth Betsy Barlow, who is now Rogers, was a Yale-educated urban planner

and writer, became that Central Park administrator, which was essentially the de facto CEO that they were looking for. Right. And then she is the one, so many people did so much great work over the years, but she really did. She was the first one to create a public-private partnership

to get well-heeled New Yorkers involved. Yeah, and they apparently were bolstered by early successes. Like they went in, and one of the first things they did was they created a zero-tolerance policy for graffiti, garbage, anything broken. If anybody saw anything wrong with the park, you were supposed to phone it in and they just responded immediately and fixed it.

Like literally phone it in, not just phone it in. Right, right, right. Sure, it's a lot. Yeah, yeah, I'll be right there. And they would fix it. And they very quickly, it was the kind of thing where like if the park's already clean, you're probably going to be less likely to litter

or less likely to spray paint. But if it's already spray paint or there's already some garbage, you may be a little, and then you hit that like snowball thing. They kept the snowball from ever growing by being just completely vigilant. And they attracted a lot of attention, improved like, oh, this actually will work.

And so more money started coming in to kind of resurrect the park. Yeah, and in 1980, she brought together a couple of groups, the Central Park Task Force and the Central Park Community Fund to finally merge and create the Central Park Conservancy, which was that citizen-based Board of Guardians that they called for with that initial study.

So they have a plan in place now. Things are getting way, way better. And then in 1998, an arrangement between the Conservancy and the City of New York formalized that public-private partnership. And there was a man named Douglas Blonsky. Sure, the Blonsk. The Blonsk, who assumed her title of administrator.

And he was the one that created this really innovative management, innovative in its simplicity, I think. Because he was like, here's what you need to do is we need to make it smaller. So he divided Central Park up into 49 zones. And every single zone had its own gardener and its own staff.

Right. And if you look at the size of Central Park, that's like probably a few two or three square blocks maybe. Sure. Per team. Anybody can handle that. But that's the way to do it. You make it smaller.

Well, there's also accountability too. The accountability at the top. And then ever since then, it's been humming. There's a, the big thing moving forward is a $300 million, what do you call it? Like a. Like a fund to keep it going indefinitely. Yeah.

Which is funny because that's double the original price and adjusted for inflation. That is funny. And in March of last year, Elizabeth Betsy. Another Betsy. Another Betsy. Elizabeth Betsy Weinberg Smith became president and CEO of the Conservancy.

And all of these people that do this do it because they love the park. I mean, sure she's paid and stuff, but they're not volunteers, but it's not like, I mean, it's a good position to be in if you want to be among the elite of New York. But all of these people were nature lovers and like park advocates.

Yeah. I mean, clearly that's kind of the proof is in the pudding because I mean, they've done a pretty great job in bringing Central Park back. Especially if you go look at those pictures from the 70s and 80s and then think about it today. Yeah, man. Yeah, you see a picture from 1975.

You see a law and order from 1995. Totally different. I just got one more thing. Let's hear it. Sheep Meadow used to have sheep. Yeah, the tavern on the green, the restaurant used to be where they housed the sheep. And they were put there very purposely by Olmstead.

To keep the grass cut, but also for aesthetics. Yeah, he said, all this green everywhere, bring in white and black sheep. They were like, as opposed to. You know what's funny? The red ones? His mark is a master landscape designer. He was like a journalist and a farmer.

That's what his background was. He became the Central Park superintendent because he needed a job. Amazing. That was it. I have one last one. The Central Park Zoo started out as an animal menagerie because people would take unwanted exotic pets

to the arsenal and they just ended up starting accumulating pets. I think it started with some swans and a black bear cub is how the whole thing started. If you want to know more about Central Park, there is a ton of stuff. Yeah, it's so much. This could have been a three-parter.

Easily. You could do a lot worse than going to ephemeral New York and looking. Or go to the park. Yeah, I guess you could do that. And since I said ephemeral New York, it's time for a very, very special listener mail. Yeah, this is long and I'm gonna make it shorter

even though I've already made it shorter, but you might remember many years ago we had Sarah, the amazing 11-year-old super fan. We got a lot of letters from, read some of them on the air. Then Sarah disappeared from us. Ghosted us. And in those 10 years, we would remark occasionally, like, whatever happened to Sarah?

She got in touch last week and it was literally one of the more exciting emails I've ever gotten. That was great. She says, hey guys, listen to, can your grandfather's die a short in your life? And this is from a while ago. It was like 2009 or 10.

Yeah, but that was a select episode. She heard it as a select and said, and heard the 13-year-old version of myself get a shout out. Well, guys, I'm now 21. It's been entirely too long and I owe you an explanation. She said her iPod broke way back then. A likely story. That's like the modern of my dog in my home.

Yeah. My iPod broke. So her iPod broke. It took a while to get the smartphone. When she got the smartphone, she listened here and there, but she said she was really busy with school. She's like, I lost my self-proclaimed title of super fan,

even though I dearly loved and admired you the entire time. The fun facts I learned throughout the years also came incredibly handy during my quiz bowl career and throughout high school. So yes, I'm very much a nerd. Ha. Currently, I'm a senior in college, which is even crazy for me to say.

I'm back to being a regular listener. And boy did I miss you guys. I am so sorry we lost touch. She said, I just want to sincerely thank you for continuing this podcast and consistently bringing new topics to light. You were also kind to that a little 11-year-old version of myself.

You inspired me to pursue every opportunity I was given to learn. You showed me that there is always a story behind everything and that I should always ask questions. Man, she so got it then. She got it, man. Way to go, Sarah. That has always stuck with me

and greatly shaped the person I am today. It's been amazing to watch you all achieve what you have. So she graduated in 2015, went on to study English and psychology at a small private liberal arts school. She traveled to Ghana. She traveled to Scotland to study literature. Sure, to Scotland, Ghana, if you want.

She said, aside from travel, I've had a chance to lead on our campus. I was elected student government president. This is all leading to like, hey, this is what happens when you listen to stuff you should know. This is advice for kids. Weirdly, I have to thank you

for spurring the beginning of that leadership. It might seem like a weird thing to attribute to your podcast, but I truly have to thank you for helping develop my critical thinking skills. Early on in my education, you guys truly fostered a mentality within me that education is always a strength.

So how about that, man? That's amazing. She's going to grad school now. She doesn't know where. She's applied all over the map and she says it's a little scary. Oh, you'll do great. She'll do great.

She says, I feel like you're all old friends that I've lost connection with and I'd love to fix that. Sarah. 21 year old super fan. Thank you so much for getting back in touch. She gave a little picture. She sent a picture.

She's like, this is me now. Just adorable. Yeah, adorable. I love it. Thank you very much for writing in, Sarah. And I would say if you're like Sarah and you want to get in touch, but nobody's really like Sarah.

Nobody. She's the original 11 year old super fan. That's right. Now turned 21 year old successful fan. Yeah, it's just goes as well. One day we will read an email called Sarah the middle aged super fan. All right.

And I will be like. A million. Close to 60. Which is so weird. I won't be 60. Now you'll be just a few years behind me. Well, thank you again, Sarah. And if you want to get in touch with us

to let us know how we impact your life, we'd love hearing that stuff. You can go on to stuff. You should know.com. Check out our social links. I'm at the Josh Clark way.com. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast,

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast

and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.