4/5/13 – Shakespeare’s Garden in Central Park and ‘I’ll Eat You Last’ – Bette Midler

With Spring in full bloom, we decided to spend the next few days or perhaps weeks getting to know not only the geography of Central Park but the rich history and the hidden treasures that one only discovers on a guided walk with someone who really loves the Park. So of course we looked to get involved with the tours run by the volunteer staff of the Central Park Conservancy. 

Today they were offering their ‘West Side Stories’ tour – so we trekked all the way over from East 72^nd Street to meet Laurie (our tour guide) at the ‘gate’ at the corner of Central Park West and W81^st Street at 12.30pm on a gloriously hot and sunny Saturday. From there we set off with in a party of about ten to (in which we were the only foreigners … the rest were from Brooklyn and Long Island) to explore the surrounding areas of the Park.  

Wikipedia tells me that: ‘Central Park is a public park at the centre of Manhattan in New York City. The park initially opened in 1857, on 778 acres (315 ha) of city-owned land (it is 843 acres today). In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan.

Construction began the same year, continued during the American Civil War, and was completed in 1873. Central Park is the most visited urban park in the United States with an estimated 37.5 million people.’ What Wikipedia does not say is that, as a result of New York City’s dire financial position, funding to maintain the Park was wound back to such a degree that, by the late 1970’s, the place was basically a rat infested, heavily vandalised slum into which no thinking person would willingly venture without a very good reason indeed. In order to ‘rescue’ the Park the Central Park Conservancy was founded in 1980 by a group of dedicated civic and philanthropic leaders.

They were determined to end Central Park's dramatic decline and restore it to its former splendour as America's first and foremost major urban public space, as envisioned by its 19th-century designers. The Conservancy’s mission is to restore, manage and enhance Central Park, in partnership with the NYPS and the general public, for the enjoyment of present and future generations.

Presently, 90% of the Park's maintenance operations staff are employed by the Conservancy, which provides 85% of Central Park's $45.8 million annual park-wide expense budget through its fundraising and investment revenue. In addition to paying an annual fee to the Conservancy for the services it provides, the City also funds lighting, maintenance of the Park’s drives and police enforcement.

So Central Park as an entity is yet another shining example of the US habit of getting things done by the people and for the people, with or without support from government. Today Conservancy crews care for 250 acres of lawns, 24,000 trees, 150 acres of lakes and streams and 80 acres of woodlands; install hundreds of thousands of plantings annually, including bulbs, shrubs, flowers and trees; maintain 9,000 benches, 26 baseball fields and 21 playgrounds; preserve 55 sculptures and monuments, as well as 36 bridges; remove graffiti within 24 hours; collect over 5 million pounds of trash a year; and provide horticultural support to other City parks.

 

Considering how lush and green and beautiful Central Park looks today it is hard to believe that originally this area was just a barren rocky place containing very little arable soil. There are four different types of bedrock in Manhattan, two of these are exposed in various outcroppings in Central Park, Manhattan schist and Hartland schist (both are metamorphosed sedimentary rock).

The other two types of bedrock on Manhattan are Fordham gneiss, an older deeper layer which does not surface in the Park and Inwood marble (metamorphosed limestone) which overlays the gneiss in the northern areas of the island. Fordham gneiss, which consists of metamorphosed igneous rocks, was formed a billion years ago, during what is known as the Grenville orogeny that occurred during the creation of an ancient super-continent. It is the oldest rock in the Canadian Shield, the most ancient part of the North American tectonic plate.

Manhattan schist and Hartland schist were formed about 450 million years ago. During this period the tectonic plates began to move toward each other, which resulted in the creation of the supercontinent, Pangaea. One result of this tectonic movement was the creation of Cameron's Line, a fault zone that traverses Central Park on an east-west axis.

Various glaciers have covered the area of Central Park in the past, with the most recent being the Wisconsin glacier which receded about 12,000 years ago. Evidence of past glaciers is visible throughout the Park in the form of glacial erratics (large boulders dropped by the receding glacier) and north-south glacial striations visible on stone most of the stone outcroppings.

 

Before the construction of the Park could start, the area had to be cleared of its inhabitants, most of whom were quite poor and either free African Americans or residents of ‘lower class’ English or Irish origin. Most of them lived in small villages, such as Seneca Village, Harsenville, or the Piggery District; or in the school and convent at Mount St. Vincent's Academy.

In 1857 the 1,600 residents who were occupying the area at that time were evicted under the legal rule of ‘eminent domain’. (This rule gives all levels of government the power to acquire or resume, for fair value, any form of private property that is reasonably required for a public purpose.) Eventually the whole of Seneca Village and parts of the other communities were razed to make room for the Park. 

Andrew Haswell Green, the former president of New York City's Board of Education took over as the Chairman of the commission that was charged with the responsibility of creating the Park and, despite the fact that he had relatively little experience, he managed to accelerate the construction, as well as to finalize the negotiations for the purchase of an additional 65 acres (260,000 m2) at the north end of the Park, so that it would extend all the way up to 110th Street.

This northern section of the Park was of great historical significance because of the role it played in the American War of independence and the War of 1812, so the decision was made to preserve it in its original "rugged" form except that, as a public health measure, the swampy northeast corner was dredged, and reconstructed as the sparkling expanse of lake land we now know as Harlem Meer. 

As war and Indians had removed many of the trees, and as there was a distinct lack of good soil to begin with, it was necessary to bring in more than 18,500 cubic yards (14,000 m³) of topsoil from Long Island and New Jersey and to plant a huge number of trees, shrubs, and plants, as was called for by the so called ‘Greensward Plan’.

When the Park was officially completed in 1873, more than ten million cartloads of material had been transported out of the Park, including soil and rocks and more than four million trees, shrubs and plants representing approximately 1,500 species had been transplanted into the Park.

 

While planting and land form in much of the Park appears natural, it is in fact almost entirely landscaped. All of the water features are artificially constructed and more gunpowder was used to clear the rocky outcrops and sink the cross streets than was used at the battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War.

The Park contains several natural-looking lakes and ponds that have been created artificially, extensive walking tracks, bridle paths (in 2007 the stables closed but one can still ride one’s horses, if that is what one desires, provided one is prepared to bring one’s own horse into the City for the day), two ice-skating rinks (one of which is converted into a swimming pool in July and August), the Central Park Zoo, the Central Park Conservatory Garden, a wildlife sanctuary, a large area of natural woods, a 106-acre (43 ha) billion-gallon reservoir with an encircling running track, and an outdoor amphitheatre, the Delacorte Theatre, which is the site of the original Croton reservoir and which today hosts the annual "Shakespeare in the Park" summer festival.

Indoor attractions include Belvedere Castle with its nature centre, the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theatre, and the historic Carousel. In addition there are seven major lawns, a "Sheep Meadow", and many other smaller scale grassy areas; some of them are used for informal or team sports and some set aside as quiet areas; there are also a number of enclosed playgrounds for children.

The paths were designed as separate but equal and Olmsted and Vaux cleverly constructed 36 bridges that allow the walking and carriage paths to pass over each other without interference. Evergreens were used to mark the carriage path so that there would be green foliage in winter to break up the monotony of the thick white snow that would, in the days before global warming, routinely blanket the Park in Winter. Today the six miles (10 km) of ‘drives’ within the park are used extensively by joggers, bicyclists, skateboarders, and inline skaters, especially when automobile traffic is prohibited, which is the rule on weekends and also on weekday evenings after 7:00 pm.

There are only two planted gardens the first at Park Avenue and in the second in the Shakespeare Garden (which was established in 1913 and is so named because all the plants in it appear in the works of Shakespeare). Our first stop on our tour today was the Shakespeare Garden and from there we wandered down to the Ladies Pond and newly repaired/replaced Eagle Vale Bridge.

The Ladies Pavilion (which was originally the trolley station to Columbus Circle) was where the women of the day would put on their skates before skating over to the Ladies Pond as they were not permitted to show their ankles and could therefore not skate in the Lake itself. Today, on the broad banks of what was once the Ladies Pond we observed several girls who were exposing to the warm sunshine much, much more than their ankles!

We really enjoyed our tour of the Park, but the day was not done yet. After lunch and ‘a little rest’ back at our apartment we jumped a cab and dropped into the Booth Theatre on W45^th to see Bette Midler in her hit one woman show: ‘I’ll Eat You Last’. Needless to say it was classic Bette as she took us through the life and times of the famous 1970s Hollywood agent – Sue Mengers.

Ms Midler was the only performer in the production and that was exactly what we’d come to see. Great night and at 67 she is still in sensational form on stage as well as doing a wonderful job with the NY Restoration Project transforming the open spaces in under-served communities into parkland that can help to to create a greener and more sustainable NYC!