Post 2

Reading in Lankevich I liked learning a little bit more about the making of Central Park. Back when I lived in San Francisco I remember learning about Frederick Law Olmstead, the landscape architect, and being impressed. We have Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, which is our large park (larger than Central Park), which is from around the same time but it’s design is less manicured. I liked that Olmstead’s design was so clean, and so recognizable. There’s a really good book actually, The Devil In The White City, and it talks about him designing the grounds for the Chicago World’s Fair. Anyway, I liked learning more details about Central Park,  how it’s construction was delayed because of the Civil War, which I guess could be implied when you know the date of it’s construction but I frankly never thought about it. I also didn’t know that Bryant Park and Madison Square Park are the oldest parks in the city, that’s interesting to me because I’ve eaten lunch in Madison Square Park plenty of times. It was also interesting to learn that CentralsPark’s land was useless “Goose Pasture”, that’s pretty funny considering how expensive that area is now. I guess the other funny thing from the reading was that people wanted to prohibit alcohol in the mid 19th century, I only knew about the prohibition of the 1920’s. Also, that there were mob bosses at that time, I didn’t know that, and that they were actually beneficial and did a lot.

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