January 31, 2019 • 53 mins
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.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bright, and Jerry Rowland over there. Uh,
and this is stuff you should Know. Was that a
real stare down? Yeah, Jerry one, Jerry one, because I
(00:24):
was like, I don't have time for this any laundery.
That's pretty funny because that's just sort of all the
three of us. You guys are having a stare down
over nothing. You're just over there grumpy like I was
just doing my thing, and then all I heard from
you was nice job, Jerry, So like you conceded, Well,
sure you gave it to her. I mean, Jerry one.
My friend, uh Billy, the one who I passed away
(00:46):
from MS that I talked about. He and I used
to do with 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 in the first one of
us to break and laugh, which was always men. Can
I see the face? Uh No, okay, that's fine, I've retired.
(01:06):
I understand. Um. 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 eleven
year old fans. Yeah, and she's reappeared, everybody. Gosh, so
delightful to hear from her. All right, so wow, let's
(01:28):
just get through this then, kind of in Central Park.
Central Park. It's huge, it's a New York year. It's square,
it's rectangular, Charles, all right, So let's talk about New York.
In between eight and eighteen fifty five, the population of
New York grew four times its size over that thirty
(01:51):
four year period, from people to sixty and they were
crowded and people started moving further and further worth like
like that was a funny joke I just made. But
you just said that the population of New York quadruple
over thirty years. Thirty four years, and you know, New
(02:12):
York started at the south as far as people living there,
and kept going further and further north. And Manhattan wise, sure, sure,
yeah about New York State. Come on, no, no, but
I mean there's Brooklyn too, and Poughkeepsie No, no, sure,
all the boroughs. Yeah, we're talking about the island of Manhattan. Uh,
and things got so crowded that people would gather in
(02:36):
cemeteries to socialize. Yeah, that was really weird. So we've
talked about that before. We were like, I don't remember
what episode it was, but we saw this stuff. It
might have been the subways or something, park or pizza.
It might have been tombstones or something. Because we talked
about the cemeteries being designed to be park like because
people would go have picnics and stuff. All the material
(02:59):
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. You're both, but they it
was either a tenement or a commercial district or the
(03:20):
cemetery that was what you had if you were outdoors. Yeah,
and I think I think it's not necessarily that's all
you had, but like maybe all you had that was
close and accessible, like the cemetery is, you know, six
blocks from my apartment. Um. And also, as you will learn,
much of not Northern Manhattan, but yeah, County, Northern Manhattan,
(03:44):
Central Manhattan, where Central Park now is was gross swampland
swampy rocky. You're not You're not hanging out there anyway. Yeah,
forget the twenties. Let's go back two point six million
years ago. Chuco. There was an ice sheet over New
York State um that was two miles thick, and it
(04:05):
just so happened to terminate the termination edge that that
the well, the edge of it went right through the
bottom of Manhattan, went through Brooklyn and actually like all
the heights and hills and in Brooklyn, that's because that's
actual hills, right, because a glacier pushed the ground up there,
(04:26):
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.
(04:48):
Yeah they weren't. That area was not being developed anyway,
which made it made it a um a difficult task,
but it made it sort of the only place if
you wanted to build a seven hundred 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
(05:10):
in Brooklyn. That was basically it. So the people who
were living in New York wanted this, but then also
the um upper society, I guess, the super wealthy. We're 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
(05:31):
United States. Let's build it in New York. Yeah, you
know that was was later Like initially they there was
no call for a park. I mean, it took forty
or fifty years of lots of inhabitants to get this idea.
Um the original city plan in eighteen eleven had no
mention of any park. But for you city planning nerds,
(05:53):
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. Yeah, it's amazing.
He drove these iron I believe iron bolts into the
ground with his fingers, his bare hands. It was a
(06:14):
surveying bolt and it was to map out that that grid,
like every block. Can't you see one? Still there's one
in Central Park that they found it. 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 fifty sixty years before they even thought of
forty years before they even thought of Central part. It
was like maybe this is part of the grid, the
(06:35):
street grid. So there's one in a boulder that Um,
I mean, I'm not gonna say where it is. You
gotta go find it. Huh. Well, that that's they try
to keep it on the download as far as the
actual GPS coordinate, like these people that hunted it down
and found it. It's like a speakeasy, but sort of
just a bolt in this it's a bolt in the stone,
and you will become the king of New York if
(06:56):
you can pull it out. Oh you should not, dare,
nothing should be there for eternity. But there's there's supposedly
more of them. Uh, And there are people that go
around and try and find these is kind of neat. Yeah,
it is neat, So I guess I'm a city planning
at heart. I have to say, Um, I came across
the great site called the Femeral New York that documents
like all the New York that's been lost and built
(07:17):
over and changed over the time. They have a great website.
Go check it out because we got some of 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 York are saying we want
to park. Um, there's a more cynical view that was
(07:38):
we want to park and that would also greatly increase
increase the land value around the park. Um, where we
own houses. Yeah, because just like today, the area around
Central Park was very well healed um well in some places,
in other places not at all. In the place where
this where what Central Park is now, there was a
(08:00):
lot of, um, 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 they're
(08:23):
Seneca Village and then they're largely Irish and German immigrants
in Seneca Village. Uh, well, and all over Seneca Village
is only one small part of this immigrant housing that
was sort of around the park that. Uh. Of course,
when you know, 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,
(08:45):
the New York legislature, the state legislature said, yep, New
York City, you can exercise eminent 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 eighteen twenty five. There was a couple in
(09:07):
eighteen twenty four named John Elizabeth Whitehead who bought Now
they owned farmland. Oh that okay, all right, I did.
I thought they'd in the land for a long time. Now.
They bought farmland between eighty two Street and then between
eight and eighteen thirty two started selling it off, and
they sold fifty parcels of that land, half of which
(09:30):
went to UH people of African descent, which was very
unusual at the time to say the least. It was
um and so like. Basically, out of this, out of
this sale of lots, over this period of time, the
Seneca Village started very quickly. Um. The people who lived
there built a house or school, UM, churches, a couple
(09:53):
of churches, houses, um and like, this village developed, this community.
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 um freed or unenslaved African Americans who
(10:17):
owned land, which meant if they owned two d and
fifty dollars worth of land, they could vote, which would
have made them um like like there were a hundred
African Americans who could vote at this time, because that's
how that's how how few of them actually owned land.
Ten percent of those people lived in Seneca Village. So
this is a really unusual spot. But It was also
(10:38):
unusual because it was a place where African Americans and
European settlers or European immigrants lived together, like lived in
this community together. Yeah. Um, but should say you also
had to jump through certain other hoops to vote. Wasn't
quite as simple as owning land, because that would be, um,
I guess too easy for them back then, which was
(11:00):
to say, not easy at all. But they still said, no,
there's some other things you still got to do to vote.
That we mentioned the other stuff too, uh 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 eight Um. But like you said, it
was Irish and German immigrants moved in there as well,
(11:23):
and they were welcomed and it was by all accounts
a multi cultural society that um got along well with
one another, went to the same church. Yeah, 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
(11:44):
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. Wow, Yorkville, there was another york
town that 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 have been code
(12:05):
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. Just whatever I see,
So who knows. No one knows for sure where Seneca
Village came from the name. At least it was interesting.
So it sounds like Seneca Village is great. It was.
(12:28):
It must have had fortune smiling on it throughout its time, right.
Not true? So Seneca Village was in the way of
this 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 when the state and the city moved
(12:49):
in and said this is this is city land. Now
you guys will have to move here some money for
your land. Um, the community broke up, it didn't resettle
a reform elsewhere. Was like ephemeral, like that ephemeral New
York site. It was. 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
(13:12):
fighting the law, but eventually the law went out and
uh and it was a this called in this article
a violent clearing of Seneca Village. Um. Like they basically
sent cops in there with their batons and like physically
removed people. Yeah, and there was a a big kind
of um media blitz in favor of moving everybody out.
(13:33):
They were, you know, derided as a shanty town of
squatters and stuff like that, despite the fact that most
of the people who lived there are a lot of
people who lived their own their land in their houses
and had for decades. Then, Um, they were they had
just as much right to be there as anybody else.
But the popular opinion of the public at the time
(13:54):
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. Uh.
In two thousand eleven, the sort of weird silver lining
is the Institute for the Exploration of Seneca Village History
got permission after ten years of trying from the Central
Park Conservancy to excavate a couple of sites in the village.
(14:17):
And they went in there and excavated, 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. Um, whatever we've been when they built Central Park, right,
they had already dug it up when they did. The
other one, though, was original, and they found the original
(14:39):
soil of Seneca Village at the former yard of Nancy Moore.
Pretty neat and they have two fifty 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, Um, all right,
why don't we take a break and then come back
(15:00):
and talk about the park? Is it in Boston? Now? Yeah?
What happened there? All right? Chuck? So um, I think
(15:30):
by eighteen fifty three their head. I think in the
eighteen fifties there is 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. UM and he was
a well known poet at the time and a beloved figure,
but he definitely used the Post as a platform to
(15:52):
advocate for this green space. Now again, there's a lot
of um 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 to
rival Paris or London, and it needed a park. They
wanted to go show off their carriages in the park,
(16:15):
but they also advocated publicly for the park for the
working classes, the middle class. They should have a place
to 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,
(16:35):
and by eighteens, even though that was kind of a lie,
it was at least at first um. But by eighteen
fifty three I believe work started. There was a central
park that had been designated land had been designated for
the Central Park by then, that's right. And they had
a contest. Uh. I believe it was the first design
(16:55):
contest in the country. A lot of first that said,
designer park, you gotta have a parade ground, you gotta
have a principal fountain, you gotta have a lookout tower,
you gotta have a skating arena. You gotta have four
cross streets because people still got to get through there somehow. Uh.
In a in a palace, I'm sorry, a place for
(17:18):
or a palace, why not for an exhibition or a
concert hall? Very specific rules for this design contest that
that was one by two gentlemen, very famous now gentleman
named Frederick law Olmstead and Calvert vote or vour vote
(17:45):
but definitely not vox vox x is always silent um. Yeah,
those two submitted something called the Green's Word Plan and
they won. I like that name. And they won for
a couple of reasons. One um uh uh. Frederick law
Olmstead was the superintendent of Central Park at the time.
Probably didn't hurt no, um, but he wasn't a shoe
(18:08):
and 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 vow um they're playing this
greenswere 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. It's considered a work
(18:31):
of art still to this day, although they actually went
on to design Prospect Park in Brooklyn. That's supposedly their
masterpiece over Central Park is Prospect Park. I mean, I
love them both. Yeah, 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 before.
But I mean what we were so okay, I walked
(18:53):
like fifteen paces in Central Park, right, it was just
like we weren't in there for long, right, That's that's
that's really the only thing. 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 of the
bottom of Central Park. I haven't been over like Street
(19:19):
a lot north of that, but that's where it gets
a little more wild anyway, Um, and not wild like
the parties coyotes, but a little more, a little more
wild as far as the design goes, well, very purposefully, yes, right, Okay,
I'm glad you said purposely because supposedly the bottom half
of Central Park, so the part of the park itself
(19:41):
is meant to evoke New York State. The bottom half
is much more urban refined. Um uh, trimmed, I don't know,
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. Uh, you know, Poughkeepsie.
You've never been to Bethesda Fountain. I don't believe I have.
(20:04):
I've seen never been skating, drink so many episodes of
Order there I can't distinguish reality from fantasy. Man, I'm like,
so like, I'm going into my memory. I'm like, okay, turn,
You're right. Is Lenny Briscoe standing there from TV? Well,
I've never seen an episode of that, so I guess
we're even what Yeah, you've never seen an episode of
(20:28):
the ten thousand episodes of Law and Order. Oh you're
missing out, Chris North and um, what was Briscoe's name?
Jerry or Bach those two together. Ye, Benjamin Bratt was
a close second to the Chris North Jerry or Bach thing.
And then it just keeps going on like they were
so good at all of them were just amazing. But yeah,
(20:49):
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. Um, stay up by the park.
Well let's stay then, just like get out in it.
I've developed a taste for the Upper west Side, but
but not the park, like the right You're so close,
I will go out. I'll take a helicopter, I will
(21:11):
go out of my way. I like Lower east Side
and Upper west Side are my two favorites in New
York in Manhattan. Interesting, Yeah, what what you like? Lower
east Side? I like it? Oh man, Well, I mean,
my very favorite part of New York is the West
Village for sure, But I like the Lower east Side.
I like it in the East Village still a little grungy.
Is there such a thing as the Lower west Side?
(21:33):
That wall street? No? Like? Well, I mean wall streets
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 okay, yeah, like like the
high Line that's probably Lower west Side. There's some really
great art galleries in the meat package. Oh man, boy.
When I first started going to New York, that was
when it was still shady over there, and like you
(21:53):
would walk through like blocks and blocks of industrial meatpacking
plants to get to like the one bar was open
that knowing had heard of, and then Juliani came in
clean the place up. Well, just thank god for him, right, Um,
So the design of Central Park, the Greensward, Oh yeah,
(22:14):
like if you 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 I think we've always been conversational. Yeah, but I mean,
like this seems like a binnacle of conversation. Well, let
(22:36):
me say this. I think episodes one through four fifty
we're less conversations than But what about what about I
don't know? All right, Uh, the Greensword plan. If you
didn't know anything about Central Park, you may be under
the misconception that they just sort of squared it off
(22:58):
and rake some things around and that, and it was
like there's the park and like, let's just protect this
green space. But it was highly highly, highly designed, and
apparently they used as much explosives as would later be
used at the Battle of Gettysburg. You supposedly more to
blast away rock and move that rock, because I remember
(23:20):
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 building further to build likes. 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
(23:40):
highly it was designed because and which is probably a
testament to their design, because when you walk around, you're
just like it all fits right, that's I mean, that's
the thing. Like there, 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 in
Central Park is actually highly managed, highly designed green space
(24:05):
that exists in a rectangle that when you're in the
center of it. From my from what I've seen, i'm
all in order. You can't tell that you're you're like
in the middle of the city and like that, Like
the roads none of them are straight, they're all meant
to curve. Um. There's meadows that kind of like go
out of sight, and there's woods, the ramble, like the
(24:28):
whole wood walk and all that. Um, all of it's
designed to just completely take you out of the city
and PLoP you into this 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,
(24:48):
maybe that they have protected those uh eight hundred 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 started at nine Street instead? And like,
what's it gonna hurt because we could really use that area,
but no, it is protected. Um, did you hear? Like
(25:10):
the dude bought a two eight million dollar penthouse in
Central Park. So yeah, I can't imagine what some infensive
house right ever sold in America. So Bethesta Mountain before
we before we leave that beautiful, beautiful um work of art. Yeah,
Bethesta terris Uh. It is a two tiered um that's
(25:33):
kind of one of the cool things. It's like it
sits low and you can walk from from the top
half of it and just kind of gaze out upon
that in 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
um uh by Emma Stebbins, an America artist was called
(25:56):
the Angel of the Waters, and she was awarded that
commission a very famous sculptor, and we gotta gotta acknowledge her.
It's beautiful. One of one of my favorite places in
the world. I've seen it. They found a body there
one of the episodes of Long So I feel like
I've been to the John Lennon Memorial you or was
(26:17):
it with you me? Because I'm almost certain that I've
been to that. I don't know because the only time
I definitely was in Central Park with you. I will
um we went with a former co worker who kind
of baby sat us on an early marketing trip. Remember
that person. Yeah, that's the only time it was with us,
(26:39):
which would explain why you tried to block it from
your memory. Did we go to Strawberry Field? 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, because if I remember correctly, it was more
like this other person was just like, where can we
get a pretzel? That kind of thing. All right, So
back to the design, before we get to the building,
(27:01):
they needed those four roads. Yeah, this is a big one,
which was huge because Olmstead and vow Uh. They sank
their roads eight ft below the surface of the park,
which really, um, I mean 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. Uh. And it really blends
(27:23):
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 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 Olmstead and vow one because like
(27:46):
so a couple of other designs that I saw. One was, um,
all the continents in meadow form interesting okay, interesting, but
also terrible. And then somebody just draw drew a pyramid
on a piece of paper, and apparently it was like boom,
there's my there's my submission. So like they didn't have
the most competition. But when they again, when they were
(28:09):
like sunken roads, meadows and stuff like that, it was
it was very clear that they had the right vision.
Uh you know the movie Arthur, the Dudley Moore movie. Yeah,
they drive through the park. And at the beginning of
that movie, because he says, drive through the park a bitman.
You know I love Jerry's laughing. You know, I love
the park. So do you mean Russell brand? God, you
(28:32):
know Hodgman was in that one. That's right. I never
saw that it couldn't do it. I saw the Hodgman Park.
Just cue that up. No, I just went to the
movies waited went in watching Hodgeman. Uh. Twenty thousand workers
UM worked on Central Park. UM, Irish laborers, German gardeners. Uh,
(28:52):
stone native stone cutters, native born stone cutters. And uh
what do I say? How many two and trees and
shrubs were planted? Yep, they moved at the beginning, they
moved like a six million cubic feet of earth in
and out. Um. Yeah, just the the number of trees
(29:14):
and shrubs that were planted is just mind boggling. And UM,
it was extremely expensive to UM. There was something like
a five million dollar price tag just to acquire the land.
Supposedly that's three times higher than what they projected the
actual park was going to cost. Yeah, so that's like
(29:36):
a hundred and fifty million dollars today. This is at
a time when you know that was that was a
bunch of money to back then. UM, But it was
also I believe there's a financial panic that really made
people say, like, what's this is a crazy amount of money,
what are we doing? But they pressed on. UM. The
Civil War broke out during during this the construction, and
(29:58):
so construction kind of tapered off a while, and they
went and fought the war, and then everybody came back,
and when they came back, they brought with them uh
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 uh rumor or a myth that is that what
(30:20):
bridge is it? One of them was supposedly made of cannonballs. Yeah,
the heart Bridge, I can't remember what it was. Something
bow Bridge, the bow Bridge, the bow Bridge? Is it?
The bow Bridge? Yeah, it was supposedly up until like
nineteen seventy four, like every book you could read said
they had giant cannonballs. That has found as as its foundation. Yeah,
(30:40):
it's like ball bearings because it was like expanded and
contracted so much because of the winters. No cannonballs. They
did a renovation on it, so they're building this thing. Uh.
They finally in eighteen fifty nine, in the winter of
eighteen fifty nine is when it first opened for public use,
and by eight that park received more than seven million
(31:04):
visitors a year. There's 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 when it opened, initially it was kind of like
(31:27):
thanks for the park, chumps, appreciate the taxpayer money. Um.
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 labor if you were part of the working class,
the only day of the week you had off was Sunday. Um.
(31:47):
Carriages were very much welcomed and they made up something like, um,
fifty or sixty percent of the visitors arrived in carriages
in the first decade were in carriages, but like five
percent of New Yorkers were wealthy enough to afford carriage
at all, right, exactly. Um. So basically it was just
kind of like a stay out kind of thing. They
(32:08):
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. I go to the cemetery.
You couldn't ride around in a work card, so like yeah,
like if you had an ice truck, yeah, sorry, Like
you want to just put your family in it to
take him out for a Sunday drive. Nope, none of those.
(32:29):
You had to have a nice carriage. So there were
always all these rules, um that were enforced for a
little while. And then finally, um, the rest of New York,
the other New Yorkers said this is b s. Yeah,
let's let's loosen these up a little bit, and they
finally petitioned for some changes in Central Park. Finally, in
(32:52):
the eighteen seventies became a true public park. Yeah, Like
little by little, that's when it started ease on some
of these rules. Um. Apparently Olmstead was not a fan
of children trapesing all over the grass, so he would
have been none too pleased with family picnics and all
(33:12):
of it on the Great Lawn. Um. Obviously that changed
over the years as well. Uh. And since you know,
mid eighteen seventy five and on, it's been a series
of um, 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,
(33:34):
how much for the people, should we add some like
a swimming pool, yeah 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 towards the people.
It's fields, and they said, okay, maybe one or two
of those, and then it would kind of go back,
you know, like, um, you know, the people have screwed
(33:55):
it up a little bit, so let's take it over
and make up some more rules. And it just keeps
going back and between too much for the people, and
the people are taking it for granted, too 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, um,
like the greensword plan was so revered. It was sort
(34:17):
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. Yeah,
until Progressive 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 um example of
(34:38):
all of this in uh, the Casino story. Yeah, so
there was this thing called the Ladies Refreshment Saloon. I
think there was an original Calvert Vo building, one of
the buildings he built. It looked like, um, an upstate
New York cottage, a very like a wealthy person's cottage
house in New York. Is beautiful little house. And originally,
(34:59):
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 twenties, I think New York got
(35:21):
a mayor who was basically a gangster named Jimmy Walker,
gentleman Jimmy Walker, and he was not Jimmy Walker, different
Jimmy Walker, um. And he was super in favor of
speakeasies and like gambling and all this stuff. And he
helped make the casino or the this refreshment saloon into
(35:42):
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 eighteen sixties building UM in Central Park. Yeah,
he said, let's take the Ladies refreshment salon and make
it the opposite of that, right exact. And so during
the day it was a restaurant that was open to all,
(36:04):
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
forty cents a cup at a time when coffee was
like a nickel everywhere else. So, you know, eight times
the normal rate for just a cup of coffee, which
is kind of like what's not good for a public park.
(36:24):
But it was open 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
(36:45):
for the people taking back New York and their park,
and so UM Mayor LaGuardia appointed a guy named Robert
Moses who became the parks commissioner for decades, and Robert
Moses lobbied to tear the casino down. Yeah, he did
a lot, Robert Moses. He built twenty playgrounds on the periphery.
(37:07):
He renovated the zoo that I think had been around
since eighteen seventy one, and it was and still is
very popular. Um he was the first one to accommodate automobiles.
He had an athletic fields, UM benefactors private benefactors in
the fifties and sixties, which was during his tenure. Um
(37:28):
helped contribute to the skating rank, the woman rank, Alaska
ranking pool, the boat houses, the chess and Checker's 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 UM advocate for the park and it had
kind of started to fall into decay around the turn
(37:51):
of the twentieth century, and when he came in in
nineteen thirty four, he just completely turned it around, like
you said, added all this stuff, but also renovated it
and Sally 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 did you say, Um, the park really sorry to
(38:14):
follow the pieces because there was no champion there like
Robert Moses. But there's 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
(38:34):
very quickly. All right, well, let's take a break there, uh,
and we'll come back and finish up from ninety to today,
don't alright, so the park is going downhill in the nineties, sixties,
(39:10):
and seventies. Um, we mentioned a few reasons. Another big
reason was that there was no no ownership. No one
had ultimate responsibility. Like I feel like the buck was
being passed all over the city. No one was happy
about it, but there was no body in place to say, no,
this is we gotta fix this now. And if you
look up pictures of Central Park in the seventies, man,
(39:34):
and I mean it was like all of New York.
It wouldn't looked like a waste land. It was like
the warriors in there. Yeah, like these classic places like
the boat House and the Skating Rinker, like graffitied and
likes everywhere. It's just hard to believe broken all the place,
the being vandalized. It's like it is, it's it's so sad.
It is. It's sad to see, but it's also unbelievable
(39:55):
to see now that you know what Central Park looks like,
just how bad it was in the seventies and eighties
and the sixties. It was actually 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 seventies were just like whatever, forget it and
um it was kind of like that broken windows theory
(40:17):
of like policing, where once once you once you reach
this tipping point, as it were, um, it just kind
of all just turns to garbage. And that's Central Park
in the seventies and eighties 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
(40:40):
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
cleared the park out. Uh. And I know this because
I spent the night in the park for Shakespeare in
the Park tickets and you you line up, you hang
(41:03):
out and party with people in line until I can't
remember what time it was, but something like two am,
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 moved the entire
line out of the park. And then then you're sleeping
(41:25):
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
(41:45):
the Park kind of makes it sound like it would
be No, that's just the name of the program, but
it's uh this Yeah, And it was The Seagull with
Kevin Klein and Meryl Streep and John Goodman and Christopher Walking,
Philip Seymour Hoffman, George the Call, Natalie Portman Wow, and
there was like two more directed by Mike Nichols. It
(42:06):
was like one of the most legendary performances ever. And
that's the one where I saw James Lipton wearing a
inside the actor's studio jacket. 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 sleepless
Danzing shirts. So anyway, that's what happens. They move you
(42:27):
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.
It was really something else. So, uh, Central Park is
in Decay And in nineteen seventy four, UM a man
named George Soros who was saved the day the devil
to some people in this country. George Soros and Richard
(42:49):
gilder Um under working with a Central Park Community fund,
underwrote a management study in nineteen seventy four 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
(43:11):
a CEO essentially like one person, one person in charge
so everyone can't go like I thought, he was gonna
fix the thing. One person who who has like not
unchecked authority, but just basically like their their boss, their
decision is final. Yeah. So that was the first thing.
And then the second thing was a central park board
(43:33):
of guardians to oversee all this stuff. Um the guy
suggested the Guardian Angels, but was shouted down, Oh man,
we should do one of those guys. Uh. Nine. Though,
Elizabeth Betsy Barlow, who is now UM Rogers was a
Yale educated urban planner and writer, became that central park administrator,
(43:54):
which was essentially the de facto CEO that they were
looking for. UM. 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. UM too get well healed
New Yorkers involved. Yeah, and they apparently were um bolstered
(44:16):
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 the 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, yeah, I'll be right there. Um.
(44:38):
They and they would fix it, and they they very quickly.
It was that 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 painting, there's already some garbage, you maybe
a little and then you hit that like snowball thing.
They kept the snowball from ever growing by being just
(44:59):
completely vigilant and they attracted a lot of attention, improved like, oh,
this actually will work, and so it's more money started
coming in to kind of resurrect the park. Yeah, And
in nineteen eighty um she uh brought together a couple
of groups, the Central Park Task Force in the Central
Park Community Fund to finally merge and create the Central
(45:19):
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. UH. And then in n UH an arrangement
between the Conservancy and the City of New York UM
formalized that public private partnership. UH. And there was a
(45:43):
man named Douglas Blonch Blonsky, the blons 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 forty nine zones, and every single
(46:06):
zone had its own gardener and its own staff. And
if you look at the size of Central Park, it
that's like probably a few two or three square blocks
maybe per team. Anybody can handle that. But that's the
way to do it, you know, you make it smaller. Well,
there's also accountability, to have the accountability at the top.
And then ever since then it's been humming. There's a UM.
(46:30):
The big thing moving forward is a three hundred million dollar. Um,
what do you call it, like a like a fund
to keep it going in definitely, Yeah, which is funny
because that's double the original price in adjusted for inflation.
That is funny. And in March of last year, uh,
Elizabeth Betsy another Betsy Betsy Elizabeth Betsy Winberg Smith became
(46:55):
president CEO of the Conservancy. And all of these people
that do us do it because they love the park.
I mean, I'm sure she's paid and stuff, but they're
not volunteers. But it's not like uh, 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,
(47:17):
I mean, clearly, that's kind of the proof is in
the pudding, because I mean they've they've done a pretty
great job in bringing Central Park back, especially if you
go look at those pictures from the seventies and eighties
and then think about it today. Yeah. Man, Yeah, you
see a picture from five, you see a law in
order from totally different. I just got one more thing.
(47:38):
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're like as opposed to you know what's
funny he he made his his arc is a master
(48:01):
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
(48:21):
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's
a ton of stuff. 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. Um.
(48:43):
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 eleven year old super fan.
(49:04):
We got a lot of letters from read some of
them money air. Then Sarah disappeared from us, and uh,
in those ten 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. Uh. She says, Hey, guys, listen to can
(49:27):
you can your Grandfather's Diet Short in your Life? And
this was from a while ago. It's like ten Yeah,
but that was a select episode. She heard it as
a select and said, and heard the thirteen year old
version of myself get a shout out. Well, guys, I'm
now twenty one. It's been entirely too long, and I
owe you an explanation. Um. She said, her iPod broke
(49:47):
way back then, a likely story, that's like the modern Yeah,
I broke, so her iPod broke. Um. It took a
while to get back to get the smart phone. Once
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
(50:09):
though I dearly loved it admired you uh the entire time. Um.
The fun facts I learned throughout the years also came
incredibly handy during my quiz Bowl career and throughout high school.
So yes, I am very much a nerd ha U.
Currently I'm a senior in college, which is even crazy
for me to say back to being a regular listener.
And boy did I miss you guys. I am so
(50:29):
sorry we lost touch, um, 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 eleven year old version of myself. Uh.
You inspired me to pursue every opportunity I was given
to learn. You showed me that there is always a
story behind everything, and then I should always ask questions
(50:50):
and she she got it. Man. Uh. 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. Um.
So she graduated in two thousand fifteen, 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.
(51:12):
The Scotland Ghana you want she set. Aside from travel,
I had a chance to lead on our campus. Was
elected student government president. This is all leading to a like, Hey,
this is what happens when you listen stuff. You should know.
This is advice for kids. Um, weirdly have to thank
you for spurring the beginning of that leadership. It might
seem like a weird thing to attribute to your podcast,
(51:33):
but I truly have to thank you for helping develop
my critical thinking skills early on in my education. You
guys truly fostered uh a mentality within me. The education
is always a strength. So how about that man that's
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. She'll do great. She says, I feel
(51:53):
like you're all old friends that I've lost connection with
and I'd love to fix that. Sarah, twenty one year
old super fan, thank you so much for getting back
in touch. She gave a little picture, she said, a
picture like this is me now, just adorable, adorable. Thank
you very much. For writing in Sarah, And I would say,
if you're like Sarah and you want to get in touch,
(52:13):
but nobody's really like Sarah, but the original eleven year
old super fan now turned twenty one year old successful
um fan. Yeah, it just goes as well. One day
we will read an email called Sarah the middle aged
super fan and I will be like a million close
to sixty. Yeah, which is so weird. I won't be
(52:34):
sixty now, you'll be just a few years behind me. Well,
thank you against Sarah. And if you want to get
in touch with us, so let us know how we
impact your life. We'd love hearing that. Stuff. You can
go on to Stuff you Should Know dot com. Check
out our social links. I'm at the Josh Clark Way
dot com. You can send us an email the Stuff
podcast how stuff Works dot com for more on this
(52:58):
and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff works
dot com? Hm, hm,
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bright, and Jerry Rowland over there. Uh,
and this is stuff you should Know. Was that a
real stare down? Yeah, Jerry one, Jerry one, because I
(00:24):
was like, I don't have time for this any laundery.
That's pretty funny because that's just sort of all the
three of us. You guys are having a stare down
over nothing. You're just over there grumpy like I was
just doing my thing, and then all I heard from
you was nice job, Jerry, So like you conceded, Well,
sure you gave it to her. I mean, Jerry one.
My friend, uh Billy, the one who I passed away
(00:46):
from MS that I talked about. He and I used
to do with 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 in the first one of
us to break and laugh, which was always men. Can
I see the face? Uh No, okay, that's fine, I've retired.
(01:06):
I understand. Um. 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 eleven
year old fans. Yeah, and she's reappeared, everybody. Gosh, so
delightful to hear from her. All right, so wow, let's
(01:28):
just get through this then, kind of in Central Park.
Central Park. It's huge, it's a New York year. It's square,
it's rectangular, Charles, all right, So let's talk about New York.
In between eight and eighteen fifty five, the population of
New York grew four times its size over that thirty
(01:51):
four year period, from people to sixty and they were
crowded and people started moving further and further worth like
like that was a funny joke I just made. But
you just said that the population of New York quadruple
over thirty years. Thirty four years, and you know, New
(02:12):
York started at the south as far as people living there,
and kept going further and further north. And Manhattan wise, sure, sure,
yeah about New York State. Come on, no, no, but
I mean there's Brooklyn too, and Poughkeepsie No, no, sure,
all the boroughs. Yeah, we're talking about the island of Manhattan. Uh,
and things got so crowded that people would gather in
(02:36):
cemeteries to socialize. Yeah, that was really weird. So we've
talked about that before. We were like, I don't remember
what episode it was, but we saw this stuff. It
might have been the subways or something, park or pizza.
It might have been tombstones or something. Because we talked
about the cemeteries being designed to be park like because
people would go have picnics and stuff. All the material
(02:59):
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. You're both, but they it
was either a tenement or a commercial district or the
(03:20):
cemetery that was what you had if you were outdoors. Yeah,
and I think I think it's not necessarily that's all
you had, but like maybe all you had that was
close and accessible, like the cemetery is, you know, six
blocks from my apartment. Um. And also, as you will learn,
much of not Northern Manhattan, but yeah, County, Northern Manhattan,
(03:44):
Central Manhattan, where Central Park now is was gross swampland
swampy rocky. You're not You're not hanging out there anyway. Yeah,
forget the twenties. Let's go back two point six million
years ago. Chuco. There was an ice sheet over New
York State um that was two miles thick, and it
(04:05):
just so happened to terminate the termination edge that that
the well, the edge of it went right through the
bottom of Manhattan, went through Brooklyn and actually like all
the heights and hills and in Brooklyn, that's because that's
actual hills, right, because a glacier pushed the ground up there,
(04:26):
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.
(04:48):
Yeah they weren't. That area was not being developed anyway,
which made it made it a um a difficult task,
but it made it sort of the only place if
you wanted to build a seven hundred 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
(05:10):
in Brooklyn. That was basically it. So the people who
were living in New York wanted this, but then also
the um upper society, I guess, the super wealthy. We're 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
(05:31):
United States. Let's build it in New York. Yeah, you
know that was was later Like initially they there was
no call for a park. I mean, it took forty
or fifty years of lots of inhabitants to get this idea.
Um the original city plan in eighteen eleven had no
mention of any park. But for you city planning nerds,
(05:53):
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. Yeah, it's amazing.
He drove these iron I believe iron bolts into the
ground with his fingers, his bare hands. It was a
(06:14):
surveying bolt and it was to map out that that grid,
like every block. Can't you see one? Still there's one
in Central Park that they found it. 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 fifty sixty years before they even thought of
forty years before they even thought of Central part. It
was like maybe this is part of the grid, the
(06:35):
street grid. So there's one in a boulder that Um,
I mean, I'm not gonna say where it is. You
gotta go find it. Huh. Well, that that's they try
to keep it on the download as far as the
actual GPS coordinate, like these people that hunted it down
and found it. It's like a speakeasy, but sort of
just a bolt in this it's a bolt in the stone,
and you will become the king of New York if
(06:56):
you can pull it out. Oh you should not, dare,
nothing should be there for eternity. But there's there's supposedly
more of them. Uh, And there are people that go
around and try and find these is kind of neat. Yeah,
it is neat, So I guess I'm a city planning
at heart. I have to say, Um, I came across
the great site called the Femeral New York that documents
like all the New York that's been lost and built
(07:17):
over and changed over the time. They have a great website.
Go check it out because we got some of 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 York are saying we want
to park. Um, there's a more cynical view that was
(07:38):
we want to park and that would also greatly increase
increase the land value around the park. Um, where we
own houses. Yeah, because just like today, the area around
Central Park was very well healed um well in some places,
in other places not at all. In the place where
this where what Central Park is now, there was a
(08:00):
lot of, um, 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 they're
(08:23):
Seneca Village and then they're largely Irish and German immigrants
in Seneca Village. Uh, well, and all over Seneca Village
is only one small part of this immigrant housing that
was sort of around the park that. Uh. Of course,
when you know, 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,
(08:45):
the New York legislature, the state legislature said, yep, New
York City, you can exercise eminent 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 eighteen twenty five. There was a couple in
(09:07):
eighteen twenty four named John Elizabeth Whitehead who bought Now
they owned farmland. Oh that okay, all right, I did.
I thought they'd in the land for a long time. Now.
They bought farmland between eighty two Street and then between
eight and eighteen thirty two started selling it off, and
they sold fifty parcels of that land, half of which
(09:30):
went to UH people of African descent, which was very
unusual at the time to say the least. It was
um and so like. Basically, out of this, out of
this sale of lots, over this period of time, the
Seneca Village started very quickly. Um. The people who lived
there built a house or school, UM, churches, a couple
(09:53):
of churches, houses, um and like, this village developed, this community.
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 um freed or unenslaved African Americans who
(10:17):
owned land, which meant if they owned two d and
fifty dollars worth of land, they could vote, which would
have made them um like like there were a hundred
African Americans who could vote at this time, because that's
how that's how how few of them actually owned land.
Ten percent of those people lived in Seneca Village. So
this is a really unusual spot. But It was also
(10:38):
unusual because it was a place where African Americans and
European settlers or European immigrants lived together, like lived in
this community together. Yeah. Um, but should say you also
had to jump through certain other hoops to vote. Wasn't
quite as simple as owning land, because that would be, um,
I guess too easy for them back then, which was
(11:00):
to say, not easy at all. But they still said, no,
there's some other things you still got to do to vote.
That we mentioned the other stuff too, uh 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 eight Um. But like you said, it
was Irish and German immigrants moved in there as well,
(11:23):
and they were welcomed and it was by all accounts
a multi cultural society that um got along well with
one another, went to the same church. Yeah, 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
(11:44):
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. Wow, Yorkville, there was another york
town that 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 have been code
(12:05):
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. Just whatever I see,
So who knows. No one knows for sure where Seneca
Village came from the name. At least it was interesting.
So it sounds like Seneca Village is great. It was.
(12:28):
It must have had fortune smiling on it throughout its time, right.
Not true? So Seneca Village was in the way of
this 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 when the state and the city moved
(12:49):
in and said this is this is city land. Now
you guys will have to move here some money for
your land. Um, the community broke up, it didn't resettle
a reform elsewhere. Was like ephemeral, like that ephemeral New
York site. It was. 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
(13:12):
fighting the law, but eventually the law went out and
uh and it was a this called in this article
a violent clearing of Seneca Village. Um. Like they basically
sent cops in there with their batons and like physically
removed people. Yeah, and there was a a big kind
of um media blitz in favor of moving everybody out.
(13:33):
They were, you know, derided as a shanty town of
squatters and stuff like that, despite the fact that most
of the people who lived there are a lot of
people who lived their own their land in their houses
and had for decades. Then, Um, they were they had
just as much right to be there as anybody else.
But the popular opinion of the public at the time
(13:54):
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. Uh.
In two thousand eleven, the sort of weird silver lining
is the Institute for the Exploration of Seneca Village History
got permission after ten years of trying from the Central
Park Conservancy to excavate a couple of sites in the village.
(14:17):
And they went in there and excavated, 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. Um, whatever we've been when they built Central Park, right,
they had already dug it up when they did. The
other one, though, was original, and they found the original
(14:39):
soil of Seneca Village at the former yard of Nancy Moore.
Pretty neat and they have two fifty 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, Um, all right,
why don't we take a break and then come back
(15:00):
and talk about the park? Is it in Boston? Now? Yeah?
What happened there? All right? Chuck? So um, I think
(15:30):
by eighteen fifty three their head. I think in the
eighteen fifties there is 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. UM and he was
a well known poet at the time and a beloved figure,
but he definitely used the Post as a platform to
(15:52):
advocate for this green space. Now again, there's a lot
of um 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 to
rival Paris or London, and it needed a park. They
wanted to go show off their carriages in the park,
(16:15):
but they also advocated publicly for the park for the
working classes, the middle class. They should have a place
to 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,
(16:35):
and by eighteens, even though that was kind of a lie,
it was at least at first um. But by eighteen
fifty three I believe work started. There was a central
park that had been designated land had been designated for
the Central Park by then, that's right. And they had
a contest. Uh. I believe it was the first design
(16:55):
contest in the country. A lot of first that said,
designer park, you gotta have a parade ground, you gotta
have a principal fountain, you gotta have a lookout tower,
you gotta have a skating arena. You gotta have four
cross streets because people still got to get through there somehow. Uh.
In a in a palace, I'm sorry, a place for
(17:18):
or a palace, why not for an exhibition or a
concert hall? Very specific rules for this design contest that
that was one by two gentlemen, very famous now gentleman
named Frederick law Olmstead and Calvert vote or vour vote
(17:45):
but definitely not vox vox x is always silent um. Yeah,
those two submitted something called the Green's Word Plan and
they won. I like that name. And they won for
a couple of reasons. One um uh uh. Frederick law
Olmstead was the superintendent of Central Park at the time.
Probably didn't hurt no, um, but he wasn't a shoe
(18:08):
and 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 vow um they're playing this
greenswere 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. It's considered a work
(18:31):
of art still to this day, although they actually went
on to design Prospect Park in Brooklyn. That's supposedly their
masterpiece over Central Park is Prospect Park. I mean, I
love them both. Yeah, 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 before.
But I mean what we were so okay, I walked
(18:53):
like fifteen paces in Central Park, right, it was just
like we weren't in there for long, right, That's that's
that's really the only thing. 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 of the
bottom of Central Park. I haven't been over like Street
(19:19):
a lot north of that, but that's where it gets
a little more wild anyway, Um, and not wild like
the parties coyotes, but a little more, a little more
wild as far as the design goes, well, very purposefully, yes, right, Okay,
I'm glad you said purposely because supposedly the bottom half
of Central Park, so the part of the park itself
(19:41):
is meant to evoke New York State. The bottom half
is much more urban refined. Um uh, trimmed, I don't know,
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. Uh, you know, Poughkeepsie.
You've never been to Bethesda Fountain. I don't believe I have.
(20:04):
I've seen never been skating, drink so many episodes of
Order there I can't distinguish reality from fantasy. Man, I'm like,
so like, I'm going into my memory. I'm like, okay, turn,
You're right. Is Lenny Briscoe standing there from TV? Well,
I've never seen an episode of that, so I guess
we're even what Yeah, you've never seen an episode of
(20:28):
the ten thousand episodes of Law and Order. Oh you're
missing out, Chris North and um, what was Briscoe's name?
Jerry or Bach those two together. Ye, Benjamin Bratt was
a close second to the Chris North Jerry or Bach thing.
And then it just keeps going on like they were
so good at all of them were just amazing. But yeah,
(20:49):
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. Um, stay up by the park.
Well let's stay then, just like get out in it.
I've developed a taste for the Upper west Side, but
but not the park, like the right You're so close,
I will go out. I'll take a helicopter, I will
(21:11):
go out of my way. I like Lower east Side
and Upper west Side are my two favorites in New
York in Manhattan. Interesting, Yeah, what what you like? Lower
east Side? I like it? Oh man, Well, I mean,
my very favorite part of New York is the West
Village for sure, But I like the Lower east Side.
I like it in the East Village still a little grungy.
Is there such a thing as the Lower west Side?
(21:33):
That wall street? No? Like? Well, I mean wall streets
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 okay, yeah, like like the
high Line that's probably Lower west Side. There's some really
great art galleries in the meat package. Oh man, boy.
When I first started going to New York, that was
when it was still shady over there, and like you
(21:53):
would walk through like blocks and blocks of industrial meatpacking
plants to get to like the one bar was open
that knowing had heard of, and then Juliani came in
clean the place up. Well, just thank god for him, right, Um,
So the design of Central Park, the Greensward, Oh yeah,
(22:14):
like if you 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 I think we've always been conversational. Yeah, but I mean,
like this seems like a binnacle of conversation. Well, let
(22:36):
me say this. I think episodes one through four fifty
we're less conversations than But what about what about I
don't know? All right, Uh, the Greensword plan. If you
didn't know anything about Central Park, you may be under
the misconception that they just sort of squared it off
(22:58):
and rake some things around and that, and it was
like there's the park and like, let's just protect this
green space. But it was highly highly, highly designed, and
apparently they used as much explosives as would later be
used at the Battle of Gettysburg. You supposedly more to
blast away rock and move that rock, because I remember
(23:20):
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 building further to build likes. 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
(23:40):
highly it was designed because and which is probably a
testament to their design, because when you walk around, you're
just like it all fits right, that's I mean, that's
the thing. Like there, 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 in
Central Park is actually highly managed, highly designed green space
(24:05):
that exists in a rectangle that when you're in the
center of it. From my from what I've seen, i'm
all in order. You can't tell that you're you're like
in the middle of the city and like that, Like
the roads none of them are straight, they're all meant
to curve. Um. There's meadows that kind of like go
out of sight, and there's woods, the ramble, like the
(24:28):
whole wood walk and all that. Um, all of it's
designed to just completely take you out of the city
and PLoP you into this 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,
(24:48):
maybe that they have protected those uh eight hundred 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 started at nine Street instead? And like,
what's it gonna hurt because we could really use that area,
but no, it is protected. Um, did you hear? Like
(25:10):
the dude bought a two eight million dollar penthouse in
Central Park. So yeah, I can't imagine what some infensive
house right ever sold in America. So Bethesta Mountain before
we before we leave that beautiful, beautiful um work of art. Yeah,
Bethesta terris Uh. It is a two tiered um that's
(25:33):
kind of one of the cool things. It's like it
sits low and you can walk from from the top
half of it and just kind of gaze out upon
that in 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
um uh by Emma Stebbins, an America artist was called
(25:56):
the Angel of the Waters, and she was awarded that
commission a very famous sculptor, and we gotta gotta acknowledge her.
It's beautiful. One of one of my favorite places in
the world. I've seen it. They found a body there
one of the episodes of Long So I feel like
I've been to the John Lennon Memorial you or was
(26:17):
it with you me? Because I'm almost certain that I've
been to that. I don't know because the only time
I definitely was in Central Park with you. I will
um we went with a former co worker who kind
of baby sat us on an early marketing trip. Remember
that person. Yeah, that's the only time it was with us,
(26:39):
which would explain why you tried to block it from
your memory. Did we go to Strawberry Field? 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, because if I remember correctly, it was more
like this other person was just like, where can we
get a pretzel? That kind of thing. All right, So
back to the design, before we get to the building,
(27:01):
they needed those four roads. Yeah, this is a big one,
which was huge because Olmstead and vow Uh. They sank
their roads eight ft below the surface of the park,
which really, um, I mean 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. Uh. And it really blends
(27:23):
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 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 Olmstead and vow one because like
(27:46):
so a couple of other designs that I saw. One was, um,
all the continents in meadow form interesting okay, interesting, but
also terrible. And then somebody just draw drew a pyramid
on a piece of paper, and apparently it was like boom,
there's my there's my submission. So like they didn't have
the most competition. But when they again, when they were
(28:09):
like sunken roads, meadows and stuff like that, it was
it was very clear that they had the right vision.
Uh you know the movie Arthur, the Dudley Moore movie. Yeah,
they drive through the park. And at the beginning of
that movie, because he says, drive through the park a bitman.
You know I love Jerry's laughing. You know, I love
the park. So do you mean Russell brand? God, you
(28:32):
know Hodgman was in that one. That's right. I never
saw that it couldn't do it. I saw the Hodgman Park.
Just cue that up. No, I just went to the
movies waited went in watching Hodgeman. Uh. Twenty thousand workers
UM worked on Central Park. UM, Irish laborers, German gardeners. Uh,
(28:52):
stone native stone cutters, native born stone cutters. And uh
what do I say? How many two and trees and
shrubs were planted? Yep, they moved at the beginning, they
moved like a six million cubic feet of earth in
and out. Um. Yeah, just the the number of trees
(29:14):
and shrubs that were planted is just mind boggling. And UM,
it was extremely expensive to UM. There was something like
a five million dollar price tag just to acquire the land.
Supposedly that's three times higher than what they projected the
actual park was going to cost. Yeah, so that's like
(29:36):
a hundred and fifty million dollars today. This is at
a time when you know that was that was a
bunch of money to back then. UM, But it was
also I believe there's a financial panic that really made
people say, like, what's this is a crazy amount of money,
what are we doing? But they pressed on. UM. The
Civil War broke out during during this the construction, and
(29:58):
so construction kind of tapered off a while, and they
went and fought the war, and then everybody came back,
and when they came back, they brought with them uh
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 uh rumor or a myth that is that what
(30:20):
bridge is it? One of them was supposedly made of cannonballs. Yeah,
the heart Bridge, I can't remember what it was. Something
bow Bridge, the bow Bridge, the bow Bridge? Is it?
The bow Bridge? Yeah, it was supposedly up until like
nineteen seventy four, like every book you could read said
they had giant cannonballs. That has found as as its foundation. Yeah,
(30:40):
it's like ball bearings because it was like expanded and
contracted so much because of the winters. No cannonballs. They
did a renovation on it, so they're building this thing. Uh.
They finally in eighteen fifty nine, in the winter of
eighteen fifty nine is when it first opened for public use,
and by eight that park received more than seven million
(31:04):
visitors a year. There's 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 when it opened, initially it was kind of like
(31:27):
thanks for the park, chumps, appreciate the taxpayer money. Um.
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 labor if you were part of the working class,
the only day of the week you had off was Sunday. Um.
(31:47):
Carriages were very much welcomed and they made up something like, um,
fifty or sixty percent of the visitors arrived in carriages
in the first decade were in carriages, but like five
percent of New Yorkers were wealthy enough to afford carriage
at all, right, exactly. Um. So basically it was just
kind of like a stay out kind of thing. They
(32:08):
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. I go to the cemetery.
You couldn't ride around in a work card, so like yeah,
like if you had an ice truck, yeah, sorry, Like
you want to just put your family in it to
take him out for a Sunday drive. Nope, none of those.
(32:29):
You had to have a nice carriage. So there were
always all these rules, um that were enforced for a
little while. And then finally, um, the rest of New York,
the other New Yorkers said this is b s. Yeah,
let's let's loosen these up a little bit, and they
finally petitioned for some changes in Central Park. Finally, in
(32:52):
the eighteen seventies became a true public park. Yeah, Like
little by little, that's when it started ease on some
of these rules. Um. Apparently Olmstead was not a fan
of children trapesing all over the grass, so he would
have been none too pleased with family picnics and all
(33:12):
of it on the Great Lawn. Um. Obviously that changed
over the years as well. Uh. And since you know,
mid eighteen seventy five and on, it's been a series
of um, 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,
(33:34):
how much for the people, should we add some like
a swimming pool, yeah 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 towards the people.
It's fields, and they said, okay, maybe one or two
of those, and then it would kind of go back,
you know, like, um, you know, the people have screwed
(33:55):
it up a little bit, so let's take it over
and make up some more rules. And it just keeps
going back and between too much for the people, and
the people are taking it for granted, too 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, um,
like the greensword plan was so revered. It was sort
(34:17):
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. Yeah,
until Progressive 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 um example of
(34:38):
all of this in uh, the Casino story. Yeah, so
there was this thing called the Ladies Refreshment Saloon. I
think there was an original Calvert Vo building, one of
the buildings he built. It looked like, um, an upstate
New York cottage, a very like a wealthy person's cottage
house in New York. Is beautiful little house. And originally,
(34:59):
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 twenties, I think New York got
(35:21):
a mayor who was basically a gangster named Jimmy Walker,
gentleman Jimmy Walker, and he was not Jimmy Walker, different
Jimmy Walker, um. And he was super in favor of
speakeasies and like gambling and all this stuff. And he
helped make the casino or the this refreshment saloon into
(35:42):
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 eighteen sixties building UM in Central Park. Yeah,
he said, let's take the Ladies refreshment salon and make
it the opposite of that, right exact. And so during
the day it was a restaurant that was open to all,
(36:04):
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
forty cents a cup at a time when coffee was
like a nickel everywhere else. So, you know, eight times
the normal rate for just a cup of coffee, which
is kind of like what's not good for a public park.
(36:24):
But it was open 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
(36:45):
for the people taking back New York and their park,
and so UM Mayor LaGuardia appointed a guy named Robert
Moses who became the parks commissioner for decades, and Robert
Moses lobbied to tear the casino down. Yeah, he did
a lot, Robert Moses. He built twenty playgrounds on the periphery.
(37:07):
He renovated the zoo that I think had been around
since eighteen seventy one, and it was and still is
very popular. Um he was the first one to accommodate automobiles.
He had an athletic fields, UM benefactors private benefactors in
the fifties and sixties, which was during his tenure. Um
(37:28):
helped contribute to the skating rank, the woman rank, Alaska
ranking pool, the boat houses, the chess and Checker's 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 UM advocate for the park and it had
kind of started to fall into decay around the turn
(37:51):
of the twentieth century, and when he came in in
nineteen thirty four, he just completely turned it around, like
you said, added all this stuff, but also renovated it
and Sally 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 did you say, Um, the park really sorry to
(38:14):
follow the pieces because there was no champion there like
Robert Moses. But there's 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
(38:34):
very quickly. All right, well, let's take a break there, uh,
and we'll come back and finish up from ninety to today,
don't alright, so the park is going downhill in the nineties, sixties,
(39:10):
and seventies. Um, we mentioned a few reasons. Another big
reason was that there was no no ownership. No one
had ultimate responsibility. Like I feel like the buck was
being passed all over the city. No one was happy
about it, but there was no body in place to say, no,
this is we gotta fix this now. And if you
look up pictures of Central Park in the seventies, man,
(39:34):
and I mean it was like all of New York.
It wouldn't looked like a waste land. It was like
the warriors in there. Yeah, like these classic places like
the boat House and the Skating Rinker, like graffitied and
likes everywhere. It's just hard to believe broken all the place,
the being vandalized. It's like it is, it's it's so sad.
It is. It's sad to see, but it's also unbelievable
(39:55):
to see now that you know what Central Park looks like,
just how bad it was in the seventies and eighties
and the sixties. It was actually 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 seventies were just like whatever, forget it and
um it was kind of like that broken windows theory
(40:17):
of like policing, where once once you once you reach
this tipping point, as it were, um, it just kind
of all just turns to garbage. And that's Central Park
in the seventies and eighties 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
(40:40):
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
cleared the park out. Uh. And I know this because
I spent the night in the park for Shakespeare in
the Park tickets and you you line up, you hang
(41:03):
out and party with people in line until I can't
remember what time it was, but something like two am,
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 moved the entire
line out of the park. And then then you're sleeping
(41:25):
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
(41:45):
the Park kind of makes it sound like it would
be No, that's just the name of the program, but
it's uh this Yeah, And it was The Seagull with
Kevin Klein and Meryl Streep and John Goodman and Christopher Walking,
Philip Seymour Hoffman, George the Call, Natalie Portman Wow, and
there was like two more directed by Mike Nichols. It
(42:06):
was like one of the most legendary performances ever. And
that's the one where I saw James Lipton wearing a
inside the actor's studio jacket. 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 sleepless
Danzing shirts. So anyway, that's what happens. They move you
(42:27):
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.
It was really something else. So, uh, Central Park is
in Decay And in nineteen seventy four, UM a man
named George Soros who was saved the day the devil
to some people in this country. George Soros and Richard
(42:49):
gilder Um under working with a Central Park Community fund,
underwrote a management study in nineteen seventy four 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
(43:11):
a CEO essentially like one person, one person in charge
so everyone can't go like I thought, he was gonna
fix the thing. One person who who has like not
unchecked authority, but just basically like their their boss, their
decision is final. Yeah. So that was the first thing.
And then the second thing was a central park board
(43:33):
of guardians to oversee all this stuff. Um the guy
suggested the Guardian Angels, but was shouted down, Oh man,
we should do one of those guys. Uh. Nine. Though,
Elizabeth Betsy Barlow, who is now UM Rogers was a
Yale educated urban planner and writer, became that central park administrator,
(43:54):
which was essentially the de facto CEO that they were
looking for. UM. 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. UM too get well healed
New Yorkers involved. Yeah, and they apparently were um bolstered
(44:16):
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 the 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, yeah, I'll be right there. Um.
(44:38):
They and they would fix it, and they they very quickly.
It was that 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 painting, there's already some garbage, you maybe
a little and then you hit that like snowball thing.
They kept the snowball from ever growing by being just
(44:59):
completely vigilant and they attracted a lot of attention, improved like, oh,
this actually will work, and so it's more money started
coming in to kind of resurrect the park. Yeah, And
in nineteen eighty um she uh brought together a couple
of groups, the Central Park Task Force in the Central
Park Community Fund to finally merge and create the Central
(45:19):
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. UH. And then in n UH an arrangement
between the Conservancy and the City of New York UM
formalized that public private partnership. UH. And there was a
(45:43):
man named Douglas Blonch Blonsky, the blons 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 forty nine zones, and every single
(46:06):
zone had its own gardener and its own staff. And
if you look at the size of Central Park, it
that's like probably a few two or three square blocks
maybe per team. Anybody can handle that. But that's the
way to do it, you know, you make it smaller. Well,
there's also accountability, to have the accountability at the top.
And then ever since then it's been humming. There's a UM.
(46:30):
The big thing moving forward is a three hundred million dollar. Um,
what do you call it, like a like a fund
to keep it going in definitely, Yeah, which is funny
because that's double the original price in adjusted for inflation.
That is funny. And in March of last year, uh,
Elizabeth Betsy another Betsy Betsy Elizabeth Betsy Winberg Smith became
(46:55):
president CEO of the Conservancy. And all of these people
that do us do it because they love the park.
I mean, I'm sure she's paid and stuff, but they're
not volunteers. But it's not like uh, 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,
(47:17):
I mean, clearly, that's kind of the proof is in
the pudding, because I mean they've they've done a pretty
great job in bringing Central Park back, especially if you
go look at those pictures from the seventies and eighties
and then think about it today. Yeah. Man, Yeah, you
see a picture from five, you see a law in
order from totally different. I just got one more thing.
(47:38):
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're like as opposed to you know what's
funny he he made his his arc is a master
(48:01):
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
(48:21):
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's
a ton of stuff. 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. Um.
(48:43):
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 eleven year old super fan.
(49:04):
We got a lot of letters from read some of
them money air. Then Sarah disappeared from us, and uh,
in those ten 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. Uh. She says, Hey, guys, listen to can
(49:27):
you can your Grandfather's Diet Short in your Life? And
this was from a while ago. It's like ten Yeah,
but that was a select episode. She heard it as
a select and said, and heard the thirteen year old
version of myself get a shout out. Well, guys, I'm
now twenty one. It's been entirely too long, and I
owe you an explanation. Um. She said, her iPod broke
(49:47):
way back then, a likely story, that's like the modern Yeah,
I broke, so her iPod broke. Um. It took a
while to get back to get the smart phone. Once
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
(50:09):
though I dearly loved it admired you uh the entire time. Um.
The fun facts I learned throughout the years also came
incredibly handy during my quiz Bowl career and throughout high school.
So yes, I am very much a nerd ha U.
Currently I'm a senior in college, which is even crazy
for me to say back to being a regular listener.
And boy did I miss you guys. I am so
(50:29):
sorry we lost touch, um, 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 eleven year old version of myself. Uh.
You inspired me to pursue every opportunity I was given
to learn. You showed me that there is always a
story behind everything, and then I should always ask questions
(50:50):
and she she got it. Man. Uh. 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. Um.
So she graduated in two thousand fifteen, 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.
(51:12):
The Scotland Ghana you want she set. Aside from travel,
I had a chance to lead on our campus. Was
elected student government president. This is all leading to a like, Hey,
this is what happens when you listen stuff. You should know.
This is advice for kids. Um, weirdly have to thank
you for spurring the beginning of that leadership. It might
seem like a weird thing to attribute to your podcast,
(51:33):
but I truly have to thank you for helping develop
my critical thinking skills early on in my education. You
guys truly fostered uh a mentality within me. The education
is always a strength. So how about that man that's
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. She'll do great. She says, I feel
(51:53):
like you're all old friends that I've lost connection with
and I'd love to fix that. Sarah, twenty one year
old super fan, thank you so much for getting back
in touch. She gave a little picture, she said, a
picture like this is me now, just adorable, adorable. Thank
you very much. For writing in Sarah, And I would say,
if you're like Sarah and you want to get in touch,
(52:13):
but nobody's really like Sarah, but the original eleven year
old super fan now turned twenty one year old successful
um fan. Yeah, it just goes as well. One day
we will read an email called Sarah the middle aged
super fan and I will be like a million close
to sixty. Yeah, which is so weird. I won't be
(52:34):
sixty now, you'll be just a few years behind me. Well,
thank you against Sarah. And if you want to get
in touch with us, so let us know how we
impact your life. We'd love hearing that. Stuff. You can
go on to Stuff you Should Know dot com. Check
out our social links. I'm at the Josh Clark Way
dot com. You can send us an email the Stuff
podcast how stuff Works dot com for more on this
(52:58):
and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff works
dot com? Hm, hm,
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