Restoration of the Park

Now I move to the second and third phase of this project—the disintegration of Central Park as an influential filter to the people of the city and then the restoration of the park. When Vaux and Olmsted set out and created their rules for their park, they created the rules with the philosophy that the park would be a filter for rules and good morals which would then be taken into the city. In other words, the park should be a transformative experience that awakens the senses and carries such an awakened state to the city. In turn, the people, upon learning how to treat a park, would become proper citizens in a city that was tightly crowded and dirtied. It is no surprise, then, that the moral and philosophical state of the city correlates to the decline of the park. As the article discusses, during the turn of the century in the early 19th century, "the social, political, and economic climate threatened the fabric of Central Park and caused its first serious decline." and, after Robert Moses, the Park Commissioner left office in the year 1960, there were no managerial plans to help with the conservation of the park. To put the final nail on the coffin, New York City pulled away from supporting the parks upkeep, and thus the park went into a rate of steady decline.

After years of neglect, citizens took to the stand and devised a coherent management plan for Central Park in order to keep with the restoration and upkeep of the park like any great work of art needs. Under the Central Park Community fund lead by George Soros and Richard Gilder, they implemented two very important steps to ensure the upkeep of the park. "One, that a chief executive officer be given 'clear and unambiguous managerial authority' for all Central Park operations, and two, a Central Park Board of Guardians be created to oversee strategic planning and policy, thereby instituting private citizen involvement in their public park." After the first Central Park Administrator, Elizabeth "Betsy" Barlow, lead three successful campaigns in the restoration of the park, many corporations, foundations, and private individuals joined in on the cause. After Years of decline and then years of restoration, the park was returned to its former glory. The end of the article speaks of how the story of Central Park demonstrates the importance of urban parks for city folk, an issue that echoes Vaux and Olmsted's own philosophy.

Interestingly, the Central Park conservancy team is a group of people that operate under the official title of the city but is not funded or lead by official city government officials. What do I mean by that? In other words, they would be an official group recognized by the city, but would not be bogged down by the politics of money coming from the state of New York. The conservancy team would be led by citizens who are dedicated to the preservation of the park as an important public space for all people. This is very interesting to me because it demonstrates that the park, in more modern times, is very much a park for the people and not for the wealth. It shows, at least to me, what the government does and does not care about. Everyday people taking charge of Central Park is a statement. It’s a statement that if the people wish to have a place for themselves, then they must fight for it.