Parks, Urban

Parks, Urban. American urban parks developed from a blending of two traditions—rural landscape parks and urban public space. Many early cities, including New Orleans, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Savannah, Georgia, contained small squares or plazas, while more than three hundred New England towns and cities, most notably Boston, preserved a grassy central area as a common. Landscape parks originated in England from hunting grounds and gardens. Aesthetically complex, landscape‐park principles were first applied to rural American cemeteries in the 1830s and two decades later to the urban park.

The history of urban parks falls into three periods: the romantic (1850s–1890s); the rationalistic (1890s–1950s); and the regenerative (1950s– ). In each, advocates promoted urban parks as social‐reform vehicles that would foster healthy, wealthy, democratic, and orderly societies. In each period, too, the arguments advanced by park advocates reflected changing perceptions of society's major problems so that park landscapes became cultural palimpsests as new features were added. By design and accretion, urban parks and park systems became functionally more complex and spatially segmented.

Romantic parks tended to be large (three hundred or more acres) and so arranged that a strolling or horseback‐riding visitor would encounter a series of natural vistas. To bring the beneficent influence of the countryside into the city, parks provided “uplifting” rural scenery. The first romantic park, New York City's Central Park, followed an initial proposal in 1851 by Andrew Jackson Downing (1815–1852), America's premier landscape gardener, but considerable wrangling preceded the selection of the park's final location in 1854. Much of the land was developed and legally occupied by residents who fought their removal by eminent domain. Calvert Vaux (1824–1895) and Frederick Law Olmsted developed the initial landscape plan for the 778‐acre park in 1858. (It was soon expanded to 843 acres.) Their design of open meadows and lawns backed by thick plantings of border vegetation reflected the ideas of Downing and an English designer, Joseph Paxton (1803–1865). Largely complete by 1860, Central Park became the model and inspiration for numerous other parks during the romantic era. Baltimore, Maryland; Boston; Brooklyn and Buffalo, New York; Detroit; Hartford, Connecticut; Philadelphia; St. Louis, Missouri; San Francisco, and many other cities started similar projects by 1876.

Rationalistic parks, which varied in size from several to several thousand acres, were developed by advocates who saw urban life as chaotic because it failed to recapitulate human social history. Parks, they claimed, would be the settings for surrogate activities. Small rationalistic parks tended to be functionally specialized as, for example, neighborhood flower gardens, playgrounds, athletic fields, or swimming pools. Large parks were spatially segmented to include the same functions as small ones plus other, more didactic features like museums and music pavilions. To promote “efficiency,” municipal authorities organized their parks into integrated systems. These urban‐park systems provided a model for urban planning as well as for the National Park Service, begun in 1916. Recreation facilities and museums dominated urban parks until the 1950s.

Advocates of the regenerative park movement see parks as parts of a larger, unbounded natural ecology that helps reconnect society both to the past and to the physical environment. Parks, these advocates declare, regenerate identity by recalling local and regional traditions even as they provide links in the damaged ecosystem's web. Reflecting this outlook, the National Park Service in 1965 declared Central Park and Brooklyn's Prospect Park National Historic Landmarks. Rather than being remodeled, these and other parks were restored and preserved. Like great paintings by the Old Masters, parks such as San Francisco's Golden Gate underwent restoration to preserve society's roots and act as cultural guideposts. At the same time, urban parks were seen as ecological reserves, acting as floodplains, wildlife corridors, or natural habitats. Clearly, the urban park is a malleable idea, continuing to change form as American society itself evolves.
See also Environmentalism; Landscape Design; National Park System; Progressive Era; Romantic Movement; Urbanization.

Bibliography

Galen Cranz , The Politics of Park Design: A History of Urban Parks in America, 1982.
Stephen Hardy , How Boston Played, 1982.
David Schuyler , The New Urban Landscape, 1986.
Roy Rosenzweig and and Elizabeth Blackmar , The Park and the People: A History of Central Park, 1992.
Ethan Carr , The Twentieth‐Century Landscape Park George Wright Forum 13 (Jan. 1996): 11–26.
Mona Domosh , Preserving Boston's Common and Planning Its Park System, in Invented Cities, 1996, pp. 127–154.
Mike Eberts , Griffith Park: A Centennial History, 1996.

Terence Young