Last weekend my son's girlfriend and I visited New York and discovered the beauty of Central Park, for the first time.
It was a fine autumn day, the Sunday, which helped. But, despite the fact a bazillion movies have been filmed there, we really didn't understand how perfectly pretty, how well planned the place was, until we saw it for ourselves.
It's no secret. Central Park has long been considered a national treasure, which makes me certain Margaret Nicholson took a carriage ride through it in 1902, when she visited the city.
Frederick Law Olmsted, the Park's legendary designer, died in 1903, and his obits tell the story of how much Central Park was valued, even back then, as an oasis from the bustle of the city.
Peek-a-boo. My son's girlfriend took these pictures. She found Central Park too beautiful.An article in the NY Times says "Nearly a half a century later Central Park remains a nearly faultless work of art and one of the chief boasts of Manhattan."
The granite outcroppings of the park are one of its beauties: and apparently that granite (with shallow top soil) was why the land was turned into a park in the first place. It wasn't good for building. It was also a difficult place to put a park, but Olsted, a creative genius, rose to the challenge.
The same article says "The popular success of Central Park is so great that it is the one public possession we have, excepting perhaps the Old City Hall, that has come to be held sacred."
Skating in Central Park November 20th. Why don't we have a rink like this. There's Beaver Lake, but it's seasonal. We're Canadian, after all.
As it happens, Olmsted also designed Mount Royal Park in Montreal in 1872. Montreal does not treat Mount Royal like anything sacred. It just is there. Sure, many citizens do use the place, especially in the summer, but not nearly as many as should. As a young adult, I would go cross-country skiing there, and spend my time falling down. You see, Mount Royal is a vast but much less ornamental park than Central park, up on a tall hill.
So you look down on the city and the skyscapers, and not up, like in Central Park. And it's more accessible by car than by foot. (Rue Camilien Houde winds through it. That's the Mayor who fired my grandfather in 1930.)
In 1972, the 150th anniversary of Olmsted's birth, they held a huge fete in Central Park, but Montreal did nothing to mark the date. That's because the level of environmental consciousness is higher in the US, wrote Dane Lanken in the Gazette.
But Montreal has never been much of a 'park place,' even though it has the mountain and Parc Lafontaine. The city has a very poor green space per capita ratio.
In 1910, during the Tigsholas era, Frederick Law Olmstead Jr. recommended that many parks be created in Montreal, near all public facilities.
I must learn more about this. Perhaps he was invited to speak by the City Improvement League. It was well understood that lack of green spaces was a problem in the inner city. Indeed, people believed that parks, gardens and such were restorative, even rehabilitative.
Google News Archives, however, has removed the date search parameters from their engine. Hmm.
View from the Look Out in Montreal. I took this in 2005.
