CENTRAL PARK!
'Architectural mutation' (Rem Koolhaas' definition from his deliriously interesting book, 'Delirious New York') in the middle of New York!
by Elizabeth Blackmar and Roy Rosenzweig:
Central Park was the first landscaped public park in the United States. Advocates of creating the park--primarily wealthy merchants and landowners--admired the public grounds of London and Paris and urged that New York needed a comparable facility to establish its international reputation. A public park, they argued, would offer their own families an attractive setting for carriage rides and provide working-class New Yorkers with a healthy alternative to the saloon. After three years of debate over the park site and cost, in 1853 the state legislature authorized the City of New York to use the power of eminent domain to acquire more than 700 acres of land in the center of Manhattan.
An irregular terrain of swamps and bluffs, punctuated by rocky outcroppings, made the land between Fifth and Eighth avenues and 59th and 106th streets undesirable for private development. Creating the park, however, required displacing roughly 1,600 poor residents, including Irish pig farmers and German gardeners, who lived in shanties on the site. At Eighth Avenue and 82nd Street, Seneca Village had been one of the city's most stable African-American settlements, with three churches and a school. The extension of the boundaries to 110th Street in 1863 brought the park to its current 843 acres.
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Directions: Between Central Park South Avenue (59th Street) and 110 Streeth (Hight) and Central Park West Avenue and Fifth Avenue (Width).
All in all 843 acres of the Oasis!
Other Contact: above quote is from www.centralp
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on Feb 25, 2003
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