The 'Park Dwellers' have moved out, but we're not done with our coverage of Central Park. In this episode we get into the politics surrounding the financing, design, building, and opening of Central Park. The "Park for ALL the People" was far from that when it first opened. Please try to "keep off the grass" as you dive into this episode, where we hear the story of how the hiring of the workers to build the park led to the removal of Fernando Wood as mayor of New York City, fancy carriage parades, the fight over Sundays in the Park, and why adults couldn't play baseball in Central Park until over 50 years after it opened.
Full Episode Transcript can be found here:
The Majority of the information for this episode comes from: Rosenzweig, R., & Blackmar, E. (1992). The Park and the People: A History of Central Park. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
The complete resource list can be found at www.nydarksidepodcast.com
The intro theme for this podcast are sections of Nightmare Machine by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons