The evening times., 1899-09-01
THE PEOPLE OF THE PARKS.
FOrty-fOur '.Breathing PIacesr Below
the Harlem In New York.
From the New York Evening Post.)

From the New York Evening Post.)
Appropriations for small parks, now apt
ly known as recreation parks, passed the
assembly when other appropriations were
held up. That action was especially char
acteristic in city which has taken pains,
as New York has, to provide really large
number OF very small parks in the most
crowded parts of the city. There is no
difference o opinion concerning the value
of such municipal improvements among
those who study the problem of the poor.
and there can be no difference of opinion
among those who take trouble enough TO
frequent those parks during summer. They
are the airships of the slums.
Near Coenties Slip. with no house be-
tween it and the North River, hemmed in
by buildings given over to wholesale
trade, in the shade of the tallest office
buildings on Broadway, is a small spot of
green, never without its few women and
children. Into it, as into parks sur
rounded by tenements, women wheel baby
carriages early in the morning. TO camp all
day. The baby carriage is moving van;
it holds baby and bottle and jug of milk,
shawls, parasol, sandwiches, and basket
Of household mending. Signs or no signs,
the women establish themselves and their
offspring in the shade of bushes to spend
the entire day. Such days, il appears
must be very long, for during the after
noon the women are usually asleep on
the shawls, with baby asleep under their
arms, and another child or two puttering
near by with other children over childish
things. The men who sit about the
benches of this particular park are better
lot than frequent any other public loung-
ing space below Twenty-third Street. They
appear TO be habituated to the spot it
would not surprise one to learn that
few of the old chaps have their particular
seats, reserved to them as to older and
more respectable members of an old and
respectable club.
Uptown a mile and a half, and on the
other side of the island, is sunken park.
embellished with an imitation of an Italian
portico and fountain. Here the people
crowd always in an intermixture of Jew.
Italian, and negro. The heat of the tene-
ments strikes them more heavily so that
they do not take their airing so much
as an amusement or a relief, but as a ne
ceSSity.
Central Park is so large that, as an air
shaft, il appears less conspicuous than as
playground. Indeed for great, perhaps a
greater, part of its benefcaries, il is lux
ury; for many il is necessity. The peo-
pie who go through its gates vary from
hour to hour, but the variation is so regu-
| lar that the ebb and flow has laws Earliest
| in the morning come nurses; then the
mothers who are cooks at a. M, table
| maids at a. m, dishwashers at a. m
| and nurse girls at 8 a. m, begin to drift
| up the numbered streets, from east and
| west. At Fifty ninth Street they make but
| a poor showing; between Seventieth and
| One Hundredth they are most frequent In
| side the park one may be sure TO find cer-
| tain most favorable spots always occupied
| DUNG daylight. Strangely enough, these
places are in full public view. These
women were, no doubt, courted in the park,
and photographed in their bridal satin and
| cambria orange flowers.
| There are, south of the Harlem River
| forty-four of these small parks in the old
| city of New York. Some of them contain
| less than half an acre, many are mere waste
| triangles where streets meet, some of them
| contain fifteen. twenty, or thirty acres.