Year: 1875

The management or Central PARK.


The Board Of Park Commissioners has sim
cerely tried to give New York good park,
and has in great measure succeeded. Mr.


Stebbins, like Moses, smote the rock and
fountains gushed forth he made many
blade Of grass grow where none grew before,
and has thus, according to Dean Swift, done
better service to his country than if he had
devoted his time to writing volume OF
songs. He bridged the chasm and raised the
vale out of a quarry he created garden.
The achievements of the commission arc
only valued rightly by those who understand
the difficulties, and yet while we freely con-
cede that wonders have been done we are
quite sure that the Central Park is not what
it should be- and that much more remains to
be done before it can be called worthy of the
metropolis.


The arrangement of the roads for carriages,
equestrians and pedestrians is inferior to
that of the parks of other great cities. In
Hyde Park and the Bois de Boulogne the
drives are wide and afford ample room on
clLucI bluC VI tutlu dI6 IDdQB IOI uOTSbDhCk
riding, and beyond these, with an uninter-
rupted view of the constant procession of
carriages and riders, are broad paths for
pedestrians There is nothing of this arrange
ment in Central Park the drives, the walks,
the equestrian roads are separated and the
people-for whom the Park was ostensibly
made-are kept apart from the richer classes.
Nor are the police regulations altogether
satisfactory. You cannot get out of a car
riage in our Park to enjoy walk beside it
without being required by policeman to
get in again. Thus the poor and the rich are
equally deprived of their freedom the one
can't ride and the other is not permitted to
walk.


The great object of the commission should
be to make the Park a compensation for the
classes who cannot afford to keep carriages
and horses and to give them the fullest op-
portunity of participating in every pleasure
The rich, however, ought not to be wholly
excluded. When we recall the experience of
last summer we find that they, too, have
been harshly treated. No man, whether rich
or poor was permitted to walk upon Mr.
Stebbins' grass more than twice week, and
then only in certain portions of the Park
"Keep off the grass r is the great moral pre-
cept of the Commissioners. But they forget
that man was not made for grass but the
grass for man. No man, whether he were
Lazarus or Dives, could play croquet with
his wife, his sister, his daughter, his sweet
heart, or, in fact, anybody else's wife, sister,
daughter or sweetheart, because the Park
Commissioners objected. The two sexes
were as carefully kept apart in the
Park as they are in an old-fashioned
Methodist meeting house But every
body knows that croquet is not game
to be enjoyed by old maids and bachelors in
separate parties, but harmless pastime for
those young people who hope to be neither.
This winter, when skating succeeds croquet
we suppose no gentleman may skate with his
wife. The ice is cold, but colder are the
hearts of the Commissioners who thus make
Central Park, like Illinois, a place for OBJ
tanning temporary divorces


In this way, by mistakes of plan and too
vigorous rules, the Park is made o place
where the rich have a few privileges and
where the poor are subjected to many need
less restraints. 1t is not managed in liberal
spirit; it is not free. We suggest therefore,
if this policy is to be logically continued,
that o large glass dome be placed over Cen
tral Park and that the poorer classes, if they
behave themselves, be permitted to look
through on holidays Or, to execute the
high moral regulations, let the ladies occupy
the Park one day and the gentlemen an
other, 50 that the excluded sex may gloomily
fatten its collective nose against the glass,
like bad boy outside Of candy shop.