New York's Central Park offers a bucolic escape from the grimy confines of the city that surrounds it. Read how this amazing space grew from a two hundred year old grid plan and how it remains the ultimate refuge for city dwellers through every season.
New York's Central Park offers a bucolic escape from the grimy confines of the city that surrounds it. Read how this amazing space grew from a two hundred year old grid plan and how it remains the ultimate refuge for city dwellers through every season.
New York's Central Park offers a bucolic escape from the grimy confines of the city that surrounds it. Read how this amazing space grew from a two hundred year old grid plan and how it remains the ultimate refuge for city dwellers through every season.
Teert8t, by ,municival | decree
anhattan Island, between 14th and
155th Streets, was cordoned off into a
carefully plotted rectilinear street grid
avenues run north and south, streets
feast and west,
The first New World city to adopt
such a plan, New York was ripe for
commercial expansion north from the
oldest settlements at its southern end,
where the burgeoning maritime and
trade economy was poised to rocket the
metropolis into the Industrial Age. This
plan made it
impossible for adventurous adolescents to
street also almost
get lost, at least geographically, which
happily’ discovered in the autumn of
my 16th year
That is, of
Greenwich Villa
pedestrians can easily find themselves at
the intersection of Bleecker Street and the
Yellow Brick Road (
have at least spoken to one person who
identified himself as a ‘munchkin’) of at
the unlikely intersection of 4th and 10th
excluding
., where inattentive
pretty sure I
streets. So, as the grid plan approaches
its bicentennial we can look back on the
steady, profitable and orderly march
north of New York's commercial and
cultural centers - with the exception of
the meandering anarchy of Broadway
which winds diagonally down and across
Manhattan like the sash of a slightly
tawdry, but still alluring, beauty queen,
Central Park Notes
Sete CLM ered Res
The only _ interruption of
topographical regimentation
verdurous expanse of Central Park, one
of the most famous pablic spaces on the
planet, on what is probably the most
valuable three square miles of real estate
in the solar system. As they say in
Brooklyn, you can't make this stuff up.
The idea for a ‘Central Park’ was
hatched only forty years after the grid
laid 59th Street
represented the fashionable northern
was ‘out, when
to)
pw
oot eee
suburbs what — Greenwich,
Connecticut, is today. It was well out of
reach of the downtown poor, so it
seemed the perfect place to build a
spectacular public park for
the privileged,
Yes, despite the altruism of its
cearliest’ supporters Central Park. was
originally constructed as a beautifully
landscaped front yard for the Astors and
Vanderbilts living on Mansion Row
along Fifth Ave. However, time does
ONE number 10, Prison States of Mind +2
»ONE notes,
march on, as does transportation
technology; and by the turn of the 20¢h
century, Lower East Side tenement
dwellers. started making their way
uptown, rendering the new park
democratically central.
While there are still rich people
living along Fifth Avenue, they now
summer in the Hamptons, at the upscale
cend of Long Island. This leaves the park
to the struggling middle class, the
working poor having been priced out of
Manhattan almost entirely. In any case,
for those of us without access 10
fashionable vacation homes the park is
‘our sole respite from the inevitable bouts
‘of metro-malaise — a place where
congested avenues morph into shaded
promenades and cross streets turn into
bucolic walkways. The mighty — grid
tives way to a deftly constructed system
‘of pathways that take the graceful
pedestrian (in this case me) into a
verdant world of rambling clarity
Here, I can escape the gasp and
clatter of the teeming city streets, an
abbreviated walkabout to clear my mind,
That, or at least a place to breathe deeply
without first checking for the proximity
of idling taxis.
‘Often my excursions lead up the
East Park Drive towards the quieter,
more rustic northern end of the park. It
was originally part of the Boston Post
Road, an essential artery of the early
colonies. Ithad also been the path of the
retreating Revolutionary Army in 1776
as well as the avenue of its triumphant
return seven years later. Sometimes I am.
not alone,
‘We had shared walks in the park
many times before. This day was
different. We had reached an impasse.
‘An unannounced visit, a few things
stuffed into a bag and the return of my
keys. asked if we could talk, We walked
towards the park in silence. The
purposeful click of her heels became
muted as we entered the park. Still no
words came, no argument or rationale,
to rescue the inevitability of the moment,
A breeze met us, wind through the early
autumn trees, rustling like a giant skirt
Theard an impatient sigh. A lone leaf
sailed by, clearly an early adapeer. 1
stopped to watch. She didn't. Didn't
slow down, didn't turn her head. Simply
20
tossed “goodbye” over her shoulder and
kept walking. I threw “good luck” at her
retreating figure aad turned back.
Five months baer I sat looking out
over the Great Lawn, a rolling green
expanse at the park's center. Tablet
perched on lap, pen intently gripped in
my right hand, staring wes, a ifthe sun
setting over New Jersey could inspire
some insight into my straitened existence.
‘A squirrel perched nearby, anticly
alert and entirely indifferent. The
‘occasional dog-talker passed and 1
ruefully eyed their charges, their panting.
insouciance mocking my studied
distemper. A woman strolled up and 1
allowed myself an appreciative glimpse
of her legs. Hmm. My glance up was met
by bright, green eyes and the slightest of
wry smiles. She sat down at the end of
my bench and removed a small, leather
bound notebook from her bag. A pretty,
smiling, writing, woman, Hmmm, Wait,
no, that’s what got me on the be
alone, staring at New Jersey in the first
place’. my hard learned misogyny
‘would not be so easily breached. I stuck
to my disdainful observation of the
canine parade.
T think I sensed them before they
came into view, a subtle shudder
travelling up my spine and tingling the
base of my scalp. Then I heard it, a
scurrying, scutting sound punctuated by
series of high picched yips. I turned to
see a phalanx of tiny, furry, clearly insane
white dogs all desperately straining at
their leashes, the ends of which were
‘masterfully clenched in the hand of a
very large man. He was not fat so much
as perfectly symmetrical, his mid-section
equal to his height. He wore a Hawaiian
shirt so large that the entire cast of
south Pacific” seemed to be waving
from its billowing expanse. I watched as
he sailed by, the manic dogs straining
frantically in froat of him, their tiny
paws scrabbling across the smooth
pavement. Suddenly one broke from the
pack and rushed towards me. He was
bout to leap into my lap when his tether
reached its limit. “Come, Bernardo,
don't bother the nice man.
With that he was tugged back,
pulled into a precarious standing
position. His tiny, bulging black eyes
stared into mine for just an instant
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before he fell back. But for one moment
there was no mistaking his yearning, the
silent, desperate plea: “Kill me, please,
just kill me...”
Yes, well, perhaps my inference of
the dog's mental state was slightly
influenced by my own, But there was no
mistaking the singularity of the event,
which seemed almost biblical, the
portent of greater events to follow. As 1
‘gazed after them in mute wonder I heard
voice from the far end of the bench,
“End of Days,” she pronounced,
Tturned back towards the woman,
now staring in, what I assumed to be,
smock horror.
“Excuse me?”
“e's the sign.”
“What sign is that
“Don't you read the Bible? The six
poodles of the Apocalypse, obviously.”
Her wry smile returned.
Tlooked back for one more beat,
then something broke, and it wasn
God's wrath
“Yes, I believe you're right,” 1
answered. “Second book of
Gromitious...” Sorry, short notice, I
hadn't bantered in a while. But then
again, we were just volleying for serve.
“Nothing to do now but wait for the
rapture, I suppose,” was the reply, her
smile joined by slightly raised eyebrows,
Hmmm,
“Um, maybe a coffee beforehand
would be acceptable, don’t want to nod
off at the right hand of the almighty,
afterall.”
We rose from the bench and she fell
in beside me as we walked north to meet
the returning army.
Central Park's 843 acres cover 6:
of Manhattan. I features a variety of
terrains and vistas, ranging from the
beautifully sculptured balustrades of
Bethesda Terrace to the woodsy solitude
of the Ramble, Here, New Yorkers,
however jaundiced and jaded, can escape
the clamorous confines of the urban
environment and access an insight into
ourselves, not to mention the restorative
glimpse of an occasional raccoon.
And sometimes, Central Park just
lets us off the leash
www-CentralParkbloggercom