Episode 8 Transcript- The Dark History of Central Park Part 3: Politics, Design, Building, and Opening Central Park

[Amanda] Hey everybody, I’m Amanda, and this is New York's Dark Side. 

[Intro Music]

[Amanda] We're on to our third episode on the history of Central Park, and if this is your first time tuning into this podcast, you may wanna go back and listen to the two episodes before this. Just to get caught up to where we are now, the first episode covers the foundation of where the idea from Central Park evolved from, and the second part covers the park dwellers who were the residents of the area that would become what we know as Central Park today. Today we're covering the design competition, the building and opening of the park, and some of its early restrictions when it first opened up. But before I get started, I just want to give a quick reminder that if you're enjoying the show, please take a moment to follow on your platform of choice for updates on when new episodes launch. And if you're feeling so inclined, give the show a share, a rating, or review to help other like-minded individuals find us. I am so excited to see the show is really gaining some real traction in the last couple of weeks and I appreciate all of you so, so much. I literally don't have the words. I thought for sure that I would mostly be talking to myself to be honest and it's great to see others are enjoying the content that I've been putting out. I am excited to keep bringing you more.

[Amanda] Okay, on to what you're really here for. We're heading back in time again to the mid 1850s. In the spring of 1856, New York City officials attempted to get authorization from the state for Fernando Wood, the mayor of the city to appoint a five-person Commission to act as the administrators for the park and do all the planning of the design and the building of the park. Usually this would have not been an issue, but there was a lot of political issues at the time, you know, just like still happens now. The different political parties were fighting with each other, and there was also political fallout between the state and the city. After the 1853 “40 Thieves Common Council” -- and I'm saving that story for another time, I could easily fill this episode with so many side notes and rabbit holes that it takes away from the actual episode topic. And I'm not going to do that to you guys. Due to all the political background issues, there was a lot of suspicion on whose behalf Fernando Wood was working for, mainly because he had been voted into office with the support of Irish and German immigrant voters. And maybe they weren't wrong to be a little suspicious of him, but not because of his political backing. Fernando Wood was hoping to use the parks creation to help him get into a different political seat-- the American presidency. And the state legislature decided to leave the city's request regarding the Board of Commission on the table when they adjourned their session in the spring of 1856 to go get their summer on. Fernando Wood, not one to be deterred, decided not to wait, and just went ahead and persuaded the Common Council of the City to bestow governing authority of the park to himself as the Mayor and the Street Commissioner, and they ended up approving. So, in June of 1856, Wood created a police force for the park. He created surveying teams, he established an administrative office staff, and of course, he developed the board of consultants made-up of ‘Gentlemen of Taste’ to help him decide on the parks design. Let's talk about the Board of Consultants for a moment here, because. I paused when I read the ‘Gentleman of Taste’. Once again, I'm kind of just really struck by the 1850s, so I had to dive into these gentlemen that fit the bill to be on Fernando Wood’s Board of Consultants. We actually have already met two of them in the first episode, Robert Dillon and William Cullen Bryant. But I didn't really go into any depth with them when I talked about them back in part one since there were so many other people to keep track of. So, here's a little bit more background because they're gonna stay with us for a little bit. 

[Amanda] William Cullen Bryant started out his career as a lawyer, but his true passion was poetry. He got into poetry at a young age and that shifted his career from law into editing. To recap on his contribution to the park so far, he had helped the idea for the park along with his discussions in the newspapers regarding wooded estates and that helped gain the following of wealthy citizens being in favor of Jones Wood, a privately owned estate potentially being the site of the Grand Park that the city's elite wanted. I honestly really couldn't find much about Robert Dillon other than he was an attorney that helped push the legal battle forward with securing the land for the current location of Central Park. Another board member was Washington Irving, who would be voted as the board's chairman. Do you know Washington Irving? You actually might. He was a novelist best known for two little tales that you may have heard of-- Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. And I thought that was a pretty cool piece of history when I found it, because I'm a nerd, and I love it, and that's why I'm doing this podcast. And maybe you love it too and that's why you're tuning in to listen to me ramble about things like this. Okay, anyway, I'm keeping it brief here. George Bancroft was another board member, and he was a historian, a statesman and a Democratic politician, and he was out there doing the damn thing. He served in multiple different roles throughout his political career. But two things I thought were just amazing accomplishments that I wanted to highlight, The United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, was established by him when he was the United States Secretary of the Navy. He also was very skeptical initially of Abraham Lincoln as president, but he started writing to him and it really softened him to his leadership, and he used that connection to help promote the abolition of slavery. Bancroft would go on to persuade Lincoln to write out the Fourth of Five known manuscripts of his Gettysburg Address and he would auction that off to help raise funds to care for the Union Army. Another person on this board was Stuart Brown, I couldn't really find anything about him other than he was one of the petitioners that signed Robert Minturn’s petition in favor of building a park mentioned in the first part of this coverage. Our fifth member of the board was James E Cooley. He was a bookseller, an auctioneer, and a politician. And once this board was established, the newspaper editors, they were really in favor of it. But the folks in Tammany Hall were not. The Tammany Democrats were really concerned over Fernando Wood’s level of control of the police force and some other things going on. So, they went to court and they were able to successfully get everyone to back off and agree that they really needed the state legislature to weigh in on the situation. And by the fall of 1856, further changes in the political structure of the city and the state occurred with the election of a Republican Governor and Republican majority of the Assembly. They were concerned that Fernando Wood would utilize the funds and the building of Central Park for his own gain, which he was kind of planning on doing anyway, and they ended up removing control of not only Central Park but also the Central Park Police from Fernando Wood and placed them under state appointed commissions. 

[Amanda] In April of 1857, lawmakers installed an 11-man Board of Commissioners of the Central Park and this consisted of six Republicans, four Democrats and one Know Nothing who would soon become a Republican to replace the border consultants that Fernando Wood had established. Three people on this board were on the board that Fernando Wood had established. That was James Cooley, Robert Dillon and William Cullen Bryant. And I'm not going to go through all the others and their back stories. I don't want to make it too confusing for everyone, but I'm gonna pause here and go down one other quick rabbit hole. There were a few different political terms used in the research for this episode that I had to look up because 1800s and 1800s politics. So, since I had to look it up, I'm of course going to tell you. The know nothings were a political party back in the mid 1800s, they were first known as the “Native American Party”, but there's a reason I put that in quotes, in case you're wondering, and we'll get to that in a moment. They then became the American Party, but because they were required to say ‘I know nothing’ when people outside of their political organization would ask them about specifics of their organization and movement, they commonly became known as the Know Nothings. The Know Nothings were a nativist political party. According to historian Tyler Anbinder, Nativism is defined as “somebody who fears and resents immigrants and their impact on the United States and wants to take some action against it be it through violence, immigration restrictions, or placing limits on the rights of newcomers already in the United States. Nativism describes the movement to bring the goals of nativists to fruition”. Supporters of the Know Nothings movement believed that the Roman Catholics were trying to subvert civil and religious liberty in the United States. They tried to counteract this belief by organizing native born protestants. So, here's why I put the Native American Party in quotes and this little rabbit hole that I put me in some hot water with someone. Because politics is just messy business. But I just gonna put this out there. This political party was founded on xenophobia, religious intolerance, and toxic masculinity. I'm coming back with this one as a future episode, but basically what you need to know about the Know Nothing party is they despised recent immigrants to the country. They would at times violently attack immigrant voters at the polls. The idea of women suffrage was an outrage for them, and they were not afraid to spread conspiracy theories for their own political gain and the impact from this political party can still be felt today. And at the risk of pissing someone off, I'm just gonna state my opinion on this. Most of us born in the United States soil, me included, can trace their lineage back to immigrants. Immigrants are not the problem. The vast majority of them are honest, hardworking people who are not here to steal our jobs and not here to steal our benefits. They came for the same reasons our ancestors did, seeking a new and better life. Are there some that may come here for dark intentions? Sure. But there are also plenty of homegrown Americans that do terrible, terrible, terrible things. Hatred is the problem. Stop the hate. That is all, on with the show.

[Amanda] Back to the park! With the Board of Commissioners in place, it was time to decide on the details, such as the building and the design of the park and there were a lot of differing opinions on these details. This is the part that goes super smoothly, everybody comes together, there's no drama and everyone goes on to live happily ever after… the end, right? No! Aside from the design, the actual transformation of the land from what it started out as a rocky and swampy area to a landscaped, beautiful park was a huge undertaking that would far surpass the budget allotted by the state legislature. Now remember, part of the reason they chose this site was because of the current landscape, thinking that it would make the project cost less. There was a lot of political issues that needed to be resolved first before any work on the park could get started. There was a lot of money on the table to get bring this project to fruition and because of that, the city and the state were arguing over which party would control the project. The Board of Commissioners were arguing over who was going to manage the project. And to make matters worse, the economy had been in a recession. But in the fall of 1857, worldwide financial panic hit. There were a few things that led to the Panic of 1857. Britain had moved some gold out of United States banks. New York banks were waiting on a shipment of gold from San Francisco, which was being transported by the SS Central America in September of 1857. However, a hurricane outside of the coast of North Carolina struck the ship and 400 lives as well as this entire shipment of gold were lost. Another contributing factor was the failure of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company due to embezzlement, which forced the company to stop payments out to people. More and more businesses began to fail and close. The railroad industry was impacted during the Financial Panic of 1857. Hundreds of thousands of workers lost their jobs and their income. Surveying teams that have been appointed by Mayor Fernando Wood had been working since the summer of 1856, but the park project itself was stalled as the Board of Commissioners worked to persuade the Common Council to use bond revenues that had been authorized by the legislature for the construction. Just for a little bit of clarification, the Common Council is what is now the City Council of New York, so they're all city officials. The Board of Commissioners were elected by the state. And the Common Council ignored the request for the bond fund appropriation, which further stalled the project and they did this because in mid-May of 1857 there had been a public meeting. It was open to the public. Thousands of people attended the public meeting and basically denounced the Board of Commissioners because they had been elected by the state. So, the city felt like they were able to do that and that the public was on their side. Politics continued to stall the hiring of workers and the appropriation of the bonds because the council Democrat opposed the funding of Park Commission due to it being a state appointed and Republican dominated, and this continued through the fall of 1857. 

[Amanda] The city's laborers weren't ready to let this dry out indefinitely though, and they began to demonstrate in Tompkins Square on the Lower East Side. The city laborers just wanted to get to work. They needed the money. They wanted to work and make an honest living. So, in November of 1857, more than 2,000 men gathered outside the office of the Park Superintendent, Frederick Law Olmsted to demand work. On November 5th, 1857, six thousand protesters marched through the heart of the financial district to City Hall. Working class immigrants and native New Yorkers were united in their need and their desire for work. Finally, on November 9th, the City Councilman agreed to the appropriation of funds so that workers could be hired. But the politics didn't stop there. Most of the state commissioners kept their hiring decisions discreet, but James Hogg, he was one of the board commissioners would admit that he had told the foreman that if they wanted to continue to work, they needed to ensure that Mayor Fernando Wood didn't win his bid for reelection. This led to the end of Fernando Wood’s mayoral terms at the next election.

[Amanda] Onto the design competition and how that came about. I mentioned earlier that there were a lot of differing opinions on what the final product should look like. William Cullen Bryant, one of the Board of Commissioners. He was really in favor of a conserved nature area. Some of the city aldermen were in favor of having multiple different architectural works throughout the park, so museums, colleges, concert halls and private dwellings all surrounded by fountains, gardens, and statues. Suggestions for the design of the park were coming in from a variety of sources and being sent to the press. The book that I used a lot for this material, and I meant to mention it earlier when I started the podcast, but that was The Park and The People: A History of Central Park really goes more in depth to some of the early designs that were floated for the park. I highly, highly suggest you check it out for more of a deep dive on the park because there's just a massive amount of information on all of this that I could literally spend hours and probably make 20 episodes on the information in this book. I'm going to link it in the show notes, but yeah, check out that book. Now, there was an engineer, Egbert Viele, who had been appointed by Mayor Fernando Wood to oversee the topographical survey of the site, and he actually produced the first plan of the park, and the public was actually pretty on board of it. It had been published in an annual report in January of 1857, but the new state appointed board shut it down as the plan that they were going to go with. They did end up keeping Egbert Viele as Chief Engineer and they wanted him to complete the topographical survey. The reason they didn't want to go with his design for the park was because he had originally been appointed by Fernando Wood to create the park. But the other reason was because he was an army engineer who had no experience designing artistic landscapes and this park was meant to be a city symbol and a symbol for the wealthy citizens and all of their refined tastes. One of the Board of Commissioners, Charles Elliott came up with an idea that they have a design competition and offer prizes for the four best designs. This idea was helped along to pass through the board by an architect named Calvert Vaux. Vaux had connections with some of the Board of Commissioners due to some previous work he had done meanwhile by the fall of 1857. 

[Amanda] The park dwellers, either by having their land bought from them or taken by eminent domain depending on circumstances, they have all peacefully left the site of the future Central Park. And as sad and angry as this makes me, that their livelihoods were disrupted and they were left to scatter and start over, I'm so glad it was without any violence or bloodshed. So at least in all of that, there is a small bit of positivity. Two weeks after the park dwellers left on October 13th, 1857, the Board of Commissioners of Central Park offered prizes for the four best proposals for the layout of the park. They set up some parameters on the contest. They gave each of the competitors a copy of the topographical map that Egbert Viele had created, as well as some specifications that construction cost was limited to $1.5 million as outlined by the state legislature. There were certain other details in the specifications that Viele had laid out that needed to remain like specific cross streets, a parade ground, there were three playgrounds, and there were also some suggestions from prominent people that had been taken into account for specific sites for exhibition and concert halls, a flower garden, a winter skating lake, a fountain and a lookout tower. And they ended up receiving 33 official entries and two additional plans that had been suggested, but they didn't want to compete. The winning prize went to the Greensward Plan, and that was submitted by the park Superintendent, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. Let's continue with our winning designers. 

[Amanda] Calvert Vaux was born in England. His father was a surgeon who passed away when Vaux was 9. Vaux began training and architecture when he was 15. In 1850, he had a showing of some of his watercolors of continental landscapes in a London gallery which was attended by a man named Andrew Jackson Downing who recruited Vaux as an assistant to help run a new architectural department and his landscape gardening practice. Vaux accepted, and he moved to New York, where he would eventually enter a partnership with Downing, which he would carry on. After Downing drowned in a Steamboat accident in 1852, he would move to New York City in 1856, where he joined the National Academy of Design, the Century Club and in 1857 he would be a founding member of the American Institute of Architects. 

[Amanda] Frederick Law Olmsted took a very different path from Calvert Vaux. He was born in Hartford, Connecticut to a prosperous merchant, and he would spend the first couple of decades of his life depending on his father's support. His formal education ended at the age of 18 after case of sumac poisoning weakened his eyesight. He would struggle to find his path in life at first, but he eventually settled on agriculture. His father and stepmother were very into gardening and nature, which Frederick also developed a love for. He traveled around the Northeast, then he traveled to England. He took up journaling, and he would publish articles in Andrew Jackson Downing's publication Horticulturalist. Downing would introduce Olmsted to Vaux before his death. Olmsted had a few unsuccessful endeavors before a family friend, one of Central Park's Board of Commissioners, Charles Elliott, suggested that he applied for the position of park Superintendent, which he did. And he got it. And it's not entirely clear how Vaux and Olmsted ended up partnering for the design contest for Central Park. But they did, and they would go on to partner on other projects after Central Park, though it doesn't seem like they always had the easiest of working relationships. Vaux was very much for equal partnership and contribution. However, Olmsted didn't appear to have the same idea. Vaux became upset when some of the newspaper articles written by friends of Olmsted had described Olmsted as the sole designer, and they exchanged some pretty heated letters regarding each other's roles and contributions to the design of the park. Vaux had contributed much more to the artistic design of the park in Olmsted felt that his superintendence over the design was the greater contribution. This unfortunately escalated a bit more when the Park Commission fired Egbert Viele from his position and offered Olmsted the position of Architect in Chief, then appointed Vaux his assistant at a salary of $5 a day. Vaux would end up basically giving up on the argument with Olmsted for what he felt was the greater good of the park. He was concerned the longer the fight between the two of them was drawn out, the more likely the park commissioners would take away from their design and move towards something else. Their partnership would survive their work in Central Park though, as they said they would go on to design several more projects together. And I was recently in Buffalo, NY, and as I was out running, I passed the Olmsted 's Vision historic marker on Delaware Ave. They actually designed the interconnected park systems in Buffalo. Despite their differences in opinion, it sounds like they did in a sense of balance each other out in their working relationship. Olmsted would try to get recognition for Vaux as the co-designer eventually, but unfortunately it seems like it was a little too late for that. 

[Amanda] The first five years of work on the park would involve laborers spending extraordinary amounts of time excavating, moving, and bringing in enough stone and earth to raise an area the size of a football field up 80 stories. That's how much like dirt and rock they had to move. It would take 20,000 men, more gunpowder than what was used in the Battle of Gettysburg, thousands of barrels of cement and of cubic yards of gravel and sand, manure, compost, millions of bricks to create the drives, paths and bridges connecting the hills, lakes, salons, and vistas of the park. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of trees, shrubs and other plants that would need to be placed. The cost would surpass the proposed budget reaching $5 million or what would equate to $182,748,795.18 today. The book The Park and The People really dives into all the work that went into the landscaping, building, finances and changing management of the park project. And I'm not going to go into all of that. Like I said, I could literally probably do like 20 episodes. I wanted to just kind of keep on topic. We're gonna now move on to the opening of the park and some of the really strict restrictions that came along with it.

[Amanda] In December of 1858, a group of a few hundred skaters came to Central Park Lake, which was only partially filled and had frozen over. And they were likely the first to enjoy the park which was still under construction. The following week approximately 10,000 people came. There was no fancy opening ceremony for the park. The wealthy elite would be thrilled when the long awaited roads and paths to promenade their wealth, but they started to come even before they were all complete. The most popular time to ride carriages through the park or to ride on horseback was between 4:00 and 6:00 PM and many of the wealthy elite would dress in their finest clothes and jewels to display their wealth. Some of the guidebooks published for the park would provide instructions on where to go get the best views of all the carriage parades. While the park was marketed when they were trying to get approval to build it to be a park for all the people, the working-class families were vastly underrepresented in Central Park when it first opened. Mostly this was because of the cost to get to the park, which they would need to use public transportation for because they didn't have access to horses or carriages, and their trips to the park, if they were able to even have them, were likely very special occasions. It would cost probably a day's wages for them to just get to the park not to mention getting back. The poor and working class would find their entertainment in many other venues. There were some rules developed for the use of the park which restricted access to the poor and working classes even further. One of them was, at the start, a ban on vehicles seen as vulgar from entering the park, you know to not detract from all the fancy carriages that the common folk couldn't afford to have. Vehicles seen as vulgar included commercial wagons owned by working class, cartman, undertakers and other tradesmen. This would actually lead to altercations happening fairly frequently because the gatekeepers would try to keep these people out. And the people that this ban had, they just wanted to come see the park, they were kept from accessing it. There were also bans on other activities like gambling, gaming, fortune telling, Hawking, peddling, and other unlicensed commercial activity that further helped limit the activities and effectively, many of the people that the wealthy deemed disagreeable. The board would also add rules forbidding swimming or fishing in the ponds, setting off fireworks, playing musical instruments. You could not play musical instruments in Central Park. It was seen as disagreeable. You couldn't display flags or banners or target or transparency postings, any bills or notices and they couldn't parade in any military or other company or civic processions. 

[Amanda] Frederick Law Olmsted would also enforce a rule in 1860 to not walk on the grass in all areas except for the Commons, which pushed even more for the class restrictions of the early park. This limited even further the activities that the working-class folks could do at the park, because they needed to walk even further to get to areas where they could picnic and lounge around. They had to stay on the path. Before the park opened some of the city's baseball clubs had been reaching out to the Park Board of Commissions, urging them to make sure that there were ball fields for them to play on. And as time went on, more and more petitions started to come in. Baseball was like growing hugely in popularity as the national sport, noting that having baseball and cricket fields would be beneficial to the public. Again, this is one of the things that the wealthy had pushed for to help pass the parks bill because they wanted areas for manly activities and for exercise. The guidebooks that had been coming out about the park were promising that there would be baseball and cricket fields that would allow for thousands of people to come and spectate comfortably because there had been three areas designated in the specifications for the design competition for playground areas but this has been left out in the actual building of the park for a reason. And that reason was because the composition of the sporting teams had started to change from being composed of mostly wealthy urban gentlemen to being mixed social class teams of working and middle class players. The unskilled and the working poor, they were excluded from the team. They really couldn't participate because they were working. Another change was the popularity of the sport, like I kind of mentioned, it drew much bigger crowds of what the wealthy saw as less desirable people, and it would take nine years from the opening of the park and nine years of intense discussion before the Park Board would actually open the playgrounds, but only to school boys. Only schoolboys would be able to come and play, and they had further restrictions. They had to have a certificate of good attendance and of good character from their teacher in order to be able to come play, and they were only allowed to play on the fields three days a week. Working class youths, they were not really able to play because a large number of them rarely went to school beyond elementary school because they ended up going to enter the workforce to help support their families. And for the girls, they were able to play croquet on the wants 3 afternoons a week because it was a genteel and restrained game that the male park managers deemed appropriate for women to do. And this pisses me off. I am so glad we're past the 1850s in this regard, though there's still there are a lot of men out there who believe they have control over what women can and can't do with their bodies and with their lives. But that is a topic for another time.

[Amanda] Anyway, by the 1860s, there were also arguments over the use of the park on Sundays. Members of the Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed and Methodist Church argued for a quiet church centered Sunday, where more liberal and free-thinking denominations, as well as many of the European immigrants, were in favor of a wider range of activities on Sundays to be allowed. In the early fall of 1859, anti-Sabbatarian American Society of the Protection of Civil and Religious Liberty applied for permission to have music concerts on Sunday, but the board tabled the motion. There were also arguments the following year in 1860 on whether or not there should be an allowance made for visitors to the park to use boats on Sunday, which stirred up the conflict again between the Sabbath Committee and the anti-Sabbatarians. In some sense this created concern that this was another attempt to keep the working class and the poor out of the park, as Sundays was the day that they could come and freely enjoy the park because they weren't working. The board kept it so that no concerts and no boat rentals were allowed in the 1860s, but people could end up purchasing refreshments with the exception of beer on Sundays, because there was also limited commercial sales on Sundays. By the 1870s it was easier for the poor and working class to access the park due to the increase in public transportation and actually many people had ended up moving closer to be within walking distance. The structure of the city was really changing at this point and people were moving and it was becoming more of an urban area. Sundays seem to end up being what the wealthy elite feared. The working class and the poor made-up the vast majority of visitors on Sundays because it was the only day that they could access the park due to the fact that they were working the rest of the week to support themselves, they didn't have the luxury of being rich and being able to access the park at all times like the rich could. Due to this, by the 1870s, some of the previous Sabbatarian restrictions started to loosen boat rentals, pony and gilt carriage rides for children that became a regular Sunday occurrence. By 1877, Sunday concerts were allowed to occur after 7:00 PM, but there were still restrictions on the drinking and rowdyism By the late 1870s, the ban on commercial vehicles had also been lifted only for Sundays. But the carriage parades they would continue the rest of the week in their fancy fashions. As the rules began to loosen, the park commissioner at the time, Matthew Borden, who fun fact, was a distant relative of the famous Lizzie Borden, sought to bring back the ban on the use of swings, goat rides, sailing boats and the carousel because he felt that the park was turning into a circus ground. Other restrictions also began to loosen on other days of the week. They increased space for activities and active sports, but they kept a restriction on working men and youth to join the schoolboys and being able to play baseball. The official ban on adult baseball games would actually remain in place until the 1920s, which is just crazy to me. Let the people play ball! In the 1880s, the commissioners began to allow archery, lacrosse, football and tennis on the lawns, roller skating on the path and bicycles in some areas of the drives. They kept the keep off the grass ban, though, but it was many times ignored. 

[Amanda] By the 1870s, Frederick Law Olmsted was really getting disturbed with his perception of the lack of manners displayed by the working-class visitors. And it wasn't just Olmsted that seemed to be bothered by the changes in the decorum, but newspapers were publishing articles lamenting the park's relapse to barbarism. Though the most frequent complaint published was about the people picking flowers, ferns and breaking off branches of lilacs and rhododendrons. But another growing concern was the etiquette and that was the act of courting couples and public displays of affection. There were multiple publications that warned of the dangers of the park for young women who seem to be enjoying the freedom of the park, the men folk such danger for the women. The National Police Gazette wrote of the park perils, including concerns that men might expose themselves to women, which it referred to as  “murderous attacks on the chastity of pure minded young females”. And I feel like I shouldn't have to say this, but I will. Women shouldn't have to hide themselves. Be escorted around, dressed conservatively to be protected from men. Men, you need to learn how to control yourselves and behave appropriately. The papers really sensationalized fears for women and fear for their safety far more than the police reports back then seem to actually warrant the need for it regarding the park. The authors of the book The Park and the People, speculate that the fear was really more around the women themselves and the changes that were occurring in the relationship between men and women, and the strong feminist voices pressing for equality to men, as we should be. We should be equal! And this may be why the paper spoke of the women being vulnerable when they were alone and unprotected, and this would expand actually further with the increased use of bicycles in the 1880s and 1890s, which gave women further freedom to move around on their own. As time would continue to go on, the park would continue to change. And management would change, social changes would continue to come into fruition, and the park would grow into what it is today. And this is where I'm gonna wrap up this episode. And I'm not gonna lie, this coverage, it really feels unfinished, and I may revisit this in a future episode. To cover the park evolution in the 19th century. But again, for anyone that really wants to do a deep dive further into Central Park. I know I said it earlier, but I'm serious. Check out the book The park and The People it covers so, so, so much. It's so much more than I could ever fit into these three episodes. I've got all my other resources linked in my website for the show www.nydarksidepodcast.com Just putting out another reminder, please don't forget to follow the show for updates on when new episodes launch. You can also follow the New York’s Dark Side Facebook page or my Twitter and Instagram page @NY Darkside Pod. I also have an e-mail if you want to reach out to me at nydarksidepodcast@gmail.com. Thank you so much for your patience while I have worked through this coverage. I've loved learning so much about Central Park and getting to share it with you. And I hope you'll join me the next time for a new topic. I think I'm feeling the true crime vibe, and in the meantime, I hope you stay curious.