The agitation for a public park in New York began with an article published by Mr. Downing in 1848 in which he eloquently urged his strong conviction that properly planned and managed public recreation grounds would have a most civilizing and refining influence on the people of our great cities. This was followed from time to time by other papers having the same object until his lamentable death four years afterwards.

Mr. Downing’s writings on the subject were much copied and favorably noticed by the leading newspapers and shortly before he died the Common Council of New York, at the instigation of Mayor A. C. Kingsland, took action which led to an act of the state legislature providing for a park on a tract of 150 acres of land situated on the East River. The following year a small politician, jealous of the advantages which another might gain by the success of this scheme, undertook to “head it off” by an alternate project. The idea striking him that a plausible argument could be made for a larger park more centrally situated, in a moment he adopted for his purpose the site afterwards accepted as that of the Central Park, neither knowing nor caring whether the ground was at all suitable in other respects than its geographical centrality.

The land was not fully acquired until 1856 and, the legislature having as yet made no provision for its government, in the latter part of that year Fernando Wood, the Mayor, near the end of his second term, obtained an act of the Common Council under which he with his Street Commissioner Joseph S. Taylor took charge of it. They appointed a chief Engineer and a large corps of assistants, and expenditures were made and liabilities incurred on account of the park, as was alleged by their opponents, to the amount of $60,000, as the result of which all that could afterwards be found of value to the city was an inaccurate topographical map of the ground.

There is a power which ordinarily lies ineffective back of all the political vices of our cities. At times it is stirred with shame, disgust and indignation;[85] organizes itself and makes a loud demand for reform. The politicians out of office take advantage of the opportunity not only to secure the removal of those who have been in office but to make them as they go forth serve the purpose of scape goats. A few changes of form and method are made and the citizens are reconciled to a system under which the old vices are cherished only more warmly than before.

One of these storms of reform was rising at the period of which I have spoken and Fernando Wood was to be the chief scape goat by whose outgoing the indignation and wrath of the people was to be appeased.

Wood being a Democrat, the Republicans, who held the majority of the state legislature, took advantage of the momentary popular disgust with him and his associates to take the regulation of certain parts of the city business from the elected government of the city and to give it to a series of professedly non partisan Commissions. One of these, composed of nine members, part Republicans, part Wood Democrats, part “reform” Democrats, part non-descript, was appointed to supersede Wood and Taylor in the special government of the Central Park. It had to go to the Common Council of the city for its supplies, and a majority of the members of the Common Council siding with the Mayor were disposed not to honor its requisitions. Eventually they would be obliged to do so unless indeed a decision of the court could be obtained, as they professed to expect, declaring the Act of the legislature unconstitutional. But supplies could be delayed, and when yielded given in driblets, and various difficulties and obstructions could be put in the way of the Commission.

Two considerable influences were working in favor of the Commission: first, a desire with many that some progress should be made in turning to use the property in the land appropriated to the park which had cost the city five million dollars; second, the desire of the laboring population to obtain the employment which the construction of the Park was expected to give. This latter influence was strongest in those parts of the city where Wood and his supporters in the Common Council had hitherto obtained the most votes and on their popularity in which they depended for reelection.

To counteract it, the act of the Legislature was denounced as a tyrannical usurpation of power by which the Black Republicans and Abolitionists were to put themselves in office and plunder the city against the will of the local majority.

But these denunciations had to be uttered in the face of the fact that the Commissioners were to receive no pay; that they had elected a Democrat as their President, another Democrat as the Treasurer, and had reappointed Wood’s whole Engineer corps. They had gone so far in this respect that a clamor was beginning to rise from the Republican side that the Commission was wholly given over to the Democrats.

At this period in its history one of the Commissioners came to spend a Sunday at a sea side inn near New Haven where I had been finishing the[86] manuscript of my Journey in the Back Country. Sitting next [to] him at the tea table, he told me what I have just recited of the history of the Commission and added that they were now taking on a force of laborers. Having no money as yet at their command, each of the men employed was required to sign an agreement releasing the Commissioners from personal liability on account of the wages he might earn, and in lieu of wages, due bills against the city were to be issued which would be payable when the Common Council should make the appropriation, in favor of which an additional element of popular interest would thus be established. He added that at their next meeting they intended to elect a Superintendent and it was thought necessary that he should be a Republican. There were several candidates, but no Republican had offered with whom he was much pleased, and he asked if I knew of a suitable man. I inquired what would be the duties of the Superintendent?

He would be the Executive Officer of the Chief Engineer with respect to the labor force and would have charge of the police and see that proper regulations were enforced in regard to public use of the Park.

Must he be a politician?

No, a Republican but not a politician; much better he should not have been a practical politician. The Republicans could do little without the cooperation of the reform Democrats and were ready to compromise, on the understanding that the park shall be managed independently of politics.

“I am delighted to hear it,” I said; “There’s no limit to the good influence a park rightly managed would have in New York and that seems to be the first necessity of good management.”

“I wish we had you on the Commission, but as we have not, why not take the Superintendency yourself? Come now.”

Till he asked the question, the possibility of my doing so had never occurred to me, though he probably suspected I was thinking of it. I at once answered, however, smiling:

“I take it? I’m not sure that I would not if it were offered me. Nothing interested me in London like the parks and yet I thought a great deal more might be made of them.”

“Well, it will not be offered you; that’s not the way we do business. But if you’ll go to work I believe you may get it. I wish that you would!”

“You are serious?”

“Yes; but there’s no time to lose.”

“What is to be done?”

“Go to New York and file an application; see the Commissioners and get your friends to back you.”

“I’ll take the boat tonight and think it out as I go. If no serious objection occurs to me before morning, I’ll do it.”

Accordingly, the next day I was looking for my friends in New York. At that season they were much scattered, but one I found who took up the matter[87] warmly and my application was in a few days fortified by a number of weighty signatures. I shall presently refer to the fact that there among them was that of Washington Irving.

The President of the Commission being out of town on my arrival in New York, I first called on the Vice President, bearing a letter to him from my friend in New Haven.

The Vice President, who was a Republican, repeated that it was desirable that the Superintendent should not be a Democrat, yet that he should be as little objectionable as possible to the Democrats. He seemed to think that my prospects in this respect were good. He offered to introduce me to one of the Democratic Commissioners who was a very practical man, and also to the Engineer who again he described as a very practical man; if their judgment should be favorable, I might count on his support.

The practical Democratic Commissioner having ascertained that I had had no experience in practical politics, even no personal acquaintance with the Republican leaders in the city, that my backing would be from unpractical men, and that I responded warmly to virtuous sentiments with regard to corruption in both parties, after a long conversation gave me to understand that I might hope that if the Republicans brought me forward he should be less inclined to oppose me than a possible Republican who had been deep in the mire of city politics and who disapproved of the practice of virtue in politics.

The Engineer I found at a house on the Park about which was a crowd of laboring men, each bearing a letter addressed to him. On the ground that my letter was from a Commissioner, I was allowed to precede those who had stood waiting outside the door before me. The room in which the Engineer sat at a desk was crowded with applicants for employment whose letters were collected in batches by men wearing a golden star on the breast of a very dirty and seedy jacket and handed to the Engineer. These letters were chiefly from members of the Common Council. As each was opened and its writer’s name recognized, the bearer was either abruptly told that there was no work for him at present or his name was taken and looked for on a list furnished by the writer of his letter in which it appeared that a limited number had been named whom he wished to have preferred among all those to whom he gave letters. If found there, the applicant was without further examination given a ticket and told to call again on a given day.

At the first opportunity I presented my letter and card. Reading a few lines, the Engineer glanced at me, dropped the letter and went on with his canvass of the laborers. I stood among them half an hour and then pointing to my card asked if I might hope to find him less engaged later in the day. As he seemed to assent, I walked out a little way looking at the ground for the park. I returned and withdrew again three times before I found the enlisting business ended. As I came in the last time, the engineer was about leaving. I walked with him & took a seat by his side in the street car running to the city.

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I then had an opportunity to state on what grounds I had ventured to think that he would find me useful as an assistant in his work. He replied that he would rather have a practical man. I did not learn why I could not be regarded as a possibly practical man, but it was only too evident that the gate of hope was closed to me in that direction.

Calling by appointment on the Vice President the next day, I was not surprised to find that doubts had been growing over night in his mind, as to whether the office of Superintendent should not be filled by a practical man.

Some time after my election, which occurred at the first subsequent meeting of the Park Board, another of the Commissioners told me that this objection would have defeated me had it not been for the autograph of Washington Irving on my papers. That turned the balance.

But one member in a full board of nine stood out in the final vote; it was Mr. Thomas C. Fields, the best partisan I ever knew, and he never forgave me for it.

It is hardly necessary to say that even after my election I did not quite feel myself out of the woods. Had it been concluded that it was after all just as well not to have a practical man? Or had they been convinced that after all I was a practical man?

These gentlemen, most of whom had themselves made large fortunes in business, would hardly defer to Washington Irving on such a point. No, I owed my election to something else than their estimate of my value as a practical man—and to what I did not understand.

When I next came to the office on the park, my first experience was repeated until I said to the Engineer; “I was instructed to report to you for orders, Sir;” Upon this he called to one of the starred men: “Tell Hawkin to come here.” Then to me: “I have given my orders to Mr. Hawkin. He is what I call a practical man and I will tell him to show you what you have to do.”

Mr. Hawkin, a cautious, close-mouthed, sensible looking gentleman, wearing no coat and with trousers tucked in the legs of a heavy and dirty pair of boots, here opened the door and said, “Want me?”

“Yes; this is Mr. Olmsted, the new Superintendent. Take him round the park and show him what work is going on and tell the foremen they will take their orders from him after this.”

“Now?”

The Engineer looked at me.

“I am quite ready, Sir.”

“Yes, now.”

In truth, as I had intended this to be rather a call of ceremony or preliminary report to my superior officer, I was not quite as well prepared as I could have wished to be for what followed.

Striking across the hill into what is now the Ramble, we came first upon[89] a number of men with bill hooks and forks collecting and burning brush wood. Under a tree near by a man sat smoking. He rose as we approached:

“Smith, this is Mr. Olmsted, your new Superintendent. You’ll take your orders from him after this.”

All the men within hearing dropped their tools and looked at me. Smith said, “Oh! that’s the man is it? Expect we shall be pushed up, now.” He laughed and the men grinned.

“What is Mr. Smith doing?” I asked.

“He’s grubbing round here and burning up what he can get together,” and Mr. Hawkin moved on.

“See you again, I suppose,” said Smith still laughing.

“Yes Sir; good day for the present.”

And this process was repeated with little variation as we passed from gang to gang to the number of perhaps fifteen, there being at this time about 500 men at work. As they were nearly all Democrats and all appointed by a Democrat, and a Democrat who had himself been appointed first by Wood, and as they were mostly introduced to him by Democratic members of the Common Council, the presumption that the Commission was to be managed exclusively in the interests of the Republicans and as a means of defeating Wood was considerably weakened.

As I stood in the office, I had not been able to observe that the slightest consideration was given to the apparent strength or activity of the laborers. Each man undoubtedly supposed that he owed the fact of his preference over others, often much abler than himself to do a good day’s work, to the fact that a member of the Common Council had asked his appointment. He also knew that the request of his patron was made not because of his supposed special fitness to serve the city or the park, but because of service that he was expected to render at primary meetings and otherwise with a view to the approaching municipal election. He knew too that he was for an indefinite period to receive no pay for his work, but only a promise to pay which he must turn to account by selling it at a discount.

Under all the circumstances it was plain enough that when Foreman Smith pleasantly remarked that he supposed that they would be pushed up now and the men laughed with him at the suggestion, it was because the idea that I might expect a day’s work from them for each day’s due-bill was thought a good joke.

Neither Foreman Smith nor any other that day said anything aloud to me about my not being a practical man, but I saw it in their eyes and their smile and I felt it deeply. In fact, for other reasons, I could have wished long before our round was finished that I had worn a pair of high legged boots and left my coat behind me, for it was a sultry afternoon in the height of the dog days and my conductor exhibited his practical ability by leading me through the midst of a[90] number of vile sloughs in the black and unctuous slime of which I sometimes sank nearly half leg deep.

He said but one word to me during the afternoon beyond what his commission strictly required. As I stopped for an instant to kick the mire off my legs against a stump as we came out of the last bog, he turned and remarked:

“Suppose you are used to this sort of business.”

I believe that he was some years my junior and it is probable that I had been through fifty miles of swamp for his one. There was not an operation in progress on the park in which I had not considerable personal experience, and he spoke with apparent gravity. Nevertheless, I felt very deeply that he was laughing in his sleeve, and that I was still a very young man. So I avoided a direct reply by saying that I had not been aware that the park was such a very nasty place. In fact the low grounds were steeped in [the] overflow and mush of pig sties, slaughter houses and bone boiling works, and the stench was sickening.

For several days there continued to be something that stimulated good humor in my appearance and in the inquiries and suggestions which I made as I walked from gang to gang feeling my way to an intelligent command of the business. It was as if we were all engaged in playing a practical joke. The most striking illustration of this good fellowship that I remember occurred, I think on the third day, when a foreman who was reading a newspaper as I came suddenly upon him, exclaimed “Hallo Fred—get round pretty often, don’t you?”

Having no power to discharge or secure the discharge of a man, I found it was better to give every offender the benefit of the largest possible assumption of ignorance, forgetfulness and accident and urge him to give more attention to his duties and use more care.