public park. Garden, open space, or
park open to and maintained by or for the public. From the time of C18
Enlightenment the desirability of providing public parks for the well-being of town-dwellers was perceived.
Promenades became available in several European cities, and the Royal Parks in London (e.g. St James's Park) were opened to the public by grace and favour.
Kaiser Joseph II (reigned with his mother from 1765, and on his own 1780–90) designated (1766) the huge Prater Park outside the fortifications of Vienna as a place of pleasure for the people, and the
fermier Watelet (no mean gardener himself) proposed (1770s) that, as in England, the Royal Parks in France should be made more accessible. Indeed, C18 saw numerous proposals for public parks, intended not only as places of recreation for the people, but as agents whereby the tone of society could be elevated: among the most eloquent of those pressing for the creation of public parks was
Hirschfeld. However,
Rumford and
Sckell caused (from 1789) one of the first public parks to be laid out from scratch: this was the
Englischer Garten (English Garden), Munich, created under the aegis of
Karl Theodor (1724–99), Elector of the Palatinate from 1742, and Elector of Bavaria from 1777. From the beginning of C19 many redundant town-fortifications in Germany were converted into public promenades and parks (e.g. Frankfurt-am-Main (1807–11) ): in Prussia,
Lenné proposed numerous public parks, and under
King Friedrich Wilhelm III (reigned 1797–1840) created (from 1824) a park on the old fortifications of Magdeburg. Later, in 1840,
King Friedrich Wilhelm IV (reigned 1840–61) decreed that the
Tiergarten (Animal Park), Berlin, which had been beautified by Lenné, should be given to the city for use as a public park. Vienna acquired its
Volksgarten (People's Garden) in 1820, on the site of the fortifications destroyed during the French Wars, and it quickly became a pleasant place of resort. Numerous public parks followed thereafter on both sides of the Atlantic.
Loudon had consistently and often argued in their favour, not just for recreation, but for education (e.g. his Derby Arboretum (1839) ), and was to promote the idea of
cemeteries as public parks, embellished with sculpture, funerary monuments, suitable buildings, and varied planting which would be an educational botanic garden and arboretum (of which
Bigelow's Mount Auburn Cemetery, near Boston, MA (opened 1831), and
Hosking's and
Loddiges's Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington, London (1839–43) were outstanding exemplars). English parks created from public funds for use by the public included Victoria Park, in the East End of London, by
Pennethorne (early 1840s),
Paxton's parks at Birkenhead, Ches. (1843–7), and the grounds of the Crystal Palace, Sydenham (1852–8), and the Manchester parks (1840s) by
Joshua Major (1787–1866). In the USA
Downing, following Loudon, argued that public parks in growing urban centres would ease social problems and educate those using them, and
Olmsted, who had visited (1850) the Birkenhead Park, was profoundly influenced by English precedents, notably when he and
Vaux designed Central Park, NYC (from 1858), and that, in turn, informed numerous other projects. In the 1850s, under
Haussmann, public parks were created in Paris, notably by
Alphand (Bois de Boulogne) and in Vienna (1857) the huge
Stadtpark (Town Park) was commenced (designed by
Josef Selleny (1824–75) and
Rudolf Siebeck (1812–
after1878) ) when the old fortifications were demolished to create the famous
Ringstrasse. The former Imperial garden of the Hofburg, laid out from 1810, was opened to the Viennese public as the Burggarten in 1919. At the beginning of C20 public parks were features of most cities in Europe (e.g. the Parque Maria-Luisa, Seville, Spain (1911), by
C. -N. Forestier (1861–1930) ) and North America, and gradually areas for games and sports were either added or created as separate entities. After the 1939–45 war numerous
plazas and
vestpocket parks were created in towns and cities, as well as
theme parks (e.g. the Gas-Works Park, Seattle, WA (begun in the 1970s to designs by
Haag), the
Landschaftspark, Duisburg (1990s, by
Latz) ), and the somewhat unnerving Parc de la Villette, Paris (1980s and early 1990s by
Tschumi). Public parks are now found in many guises, with both hard and soft landscapes, and have many connotations.
Bibliography
Chadwick (1966);
Conway (1991);
J. Curl (2000a);
B. Elliott (1986);
Garden History, xxiii/2 (Winter 1995), 201–21;
Hirschfeld (1779–85);
Loudon (1981);
Symes (1993);
Jane Turner (1996);
Alan Tate (2001)
