Landscape architects and engineers joined social reformers in the mid 19th century to advocate for parks and green space in American cities. The Industrial Revolution brought great wealth to factory owners and provided thousands of jobs to workers who crowded into urban areas from the countryside and abroad. Crowded and often substandard living conditions and polluted air and water were petri dishes for all manner of diseases. Advocates for public health saw public parks as necessary to ease both the physical and mental stresses of urban life.
One would think it would be obvious to all that parks were important, but that was not the case. Establishing parks would not be easy.
Much was written about parks during the years leading up to the Civil War. Landscape planners such as Frederick Law Olmsted saw them as places where everyone, regardless of class or income, could enjoy beauty, find relaxation and fresh air and, for a time, escape from the harsh realities of urban life. Olmsted called parks the “lungs of the city.” One could smell the grass and flowers, watch children play, and just get away from it all for a few hours. Parks were event spaces, too, where someone could possibly enjoy a concert, watch a sporting event, or participate in a picnic or festival.
As universal as that all seems, this recommendation for parks was not universally lauded. Not everyone believed in public health. Some thought open land in cities should be developed and parks were a waste of space. Others liked gardens, nature, and the leisure of a park, but felt that it should only be for the upper classes, and making parks accessible to all would create social mixing that was dangerous and unnatural. Besides, working class and poor people should be working to better themselves, not walking or sitting around in a park. And then there were those who felt that parks attracted hoodlums, thieves, and bums, and were a gathering place for all sorts of undesirables. Why give them a publicly funded space to congregate?…