CHAPTER IV
THE PARK AND THE CITY

1860

During 1860, Olmsted had more opportunity than previously to consider the problems of providing for the use of Central Park. As the documents in this chapter show, the subjects he addressed included the day-to-day cleaning of the park and the accommodation of large crowds for concerts and for skating. Olmsted also continued his efforts to fashion the fifty-five Central Park keepers into an effective force for protecting the park’s visitors and instructing them in its use; but he faced constant pressure from park commissioners and aldermen to hire park employees for political reasons.

Even more ominous was the deterioration of Olmsted’s relationship with Andrew H. Green. As comptroller of the park, Green increasingly restricted Olmsted’s freedom of action, demanding full explanation of the necessity for expenditures, even when they involved small sums and were essential to the realization of the Greensward plan. As the letters to Green at the end of this chapter indicate, Olmsted’s patience had begun to wear thin by the end of 1860. Already he felt oppressed by the “systematic small tyranny” to which he believed the comptroller was subjecting him.

Despite the difficulties he experienced, Olmsted remained convinced that Central Park would win a special place in American life and in the history of park design. In the letters in this chapter he expresses this optimism to his literary friends James T. Fields and Charles Loring Brace as he seeks their help in explaining the park to the public.

With the year 1860 also came new opportunities for Olmsted to look beyond Central Park to other aspects of the planning of New York City. His letter to Mayor Fernando Wood indicates his desire for improved public transportation [244]to the park, including steamboat service on the Hudson and East rivers, which would connect with the broad approaches to the park. In the spring of 1860 Olmsted and Calvert Vaux were appointed landscape architects to a newly formed commission responsible for laying out the street system of Manhattan above 155th Street. Olmsted’s letter to Henry H. Elliott provides a graphic prediction of the fate of that part of the city if it were poorly planned. The letter, with its colorful examples and conversational tone, is one of Olmsted’s most engaging statements on urban design. It represents his first systematic exposition of the way in which permanently attractive residential neighborhoods can be secured by the proper designing of streets. It states in a remarkably comprehensive way the design concepts that he would later employ in planning Riverside, Illinois, and other suburban communities.