Cultivating Unity:The Changing Role of Parks in Urban America

Robin F. Bachin

An urban park is uisefidl in proportion as it is rural. The real,the only reason why a great park should be miade, is to bring thecountry into the town, and make itpossiblefor the inh9abitantsof crowded cities to enjoy the calmi and restfidlness which only arural landscape and rural suirroundings can give ... all otherobjects mulst, in a great park, be subordinated to the one central,controlling idea of rural repose, which space alone can give.

- Charles Spraguie Sargent, i8881

Charles Sprague Sargents vision for the value of urbanparks reflected some of the guiding principles that shapedpark development in America in the middle of the nine-teenth century. He highlighted the strong connection inAmerican life between nature, quiet reflection, and civicvirtue. The agrarian origins of the nation meant thatAmerican leaders, most notably ThomasJefferson, linkeda rural landscape with the very foundations of republican-ism and democracy. According toJefferson, politicalautonomy and concern for the public good emerged fromthe process of working the land and being an independentlandowner. Therefore, a decentralized agrarian nationcomposed of yeoman farmers represented the best hopefor fostering a virtuous republic. Yet while these agrarianideals often translated into an anti-urban sensibility, theymore often led to the integration of natural elements intotown and city development.2

Indeed, America's earliest commercial centers incorpo-rated open spaces into their plans. The squares of Savan-nah and Philadelphia, for example, provided sites forpublic gathering, and became places of social as well ascommercial interaction among colonial-era residents. TheBoston Common began as a pasture for sheep and cows inthe seventeenth century, and soon became a site for militiadrills, baseball games, open-air meetings, and festivals. Thedesignation of these spaces as "parks" only appeared inthe nineteenth century, with the new movement to designsuch public areas in a "natural" manner. As a model forsuch new urban parks, American landscape gardenerslooked to the precedent of the British pastoral landscape,which was carefully designed to showcase "the natural" andto disguise the human role in shaping it. American parks,then, brought together the tradition of formal landscapedesign with the recognition of open spaces as sites of publicgathering and recreation.3

A significant number of factors that shaped nineteenth-century park design also inform current discussions aboutAmerican parks. For the last I 50 years, park planners andadvocates have highlighted a variety of functions parkscould serve in shaping urban landscapes. These include

parks as an antidote to urban ills; parks as places of activerecreation; parks as vehicles for promoting public healthand sanitation; and parks as regional commodities and sitesof shared civic identity. While the language used to discussthe significance of parks in American cities has changedover time, many of the conceptual issues and challengespark designers face have remained remarkably the same.

This article explores the history of urban park develop-ment in America to understand the foundations of parkplanning, but also to suggest ways that historical precedentmight inform contemporary practice. By understandingthe value planners and advocates have associated withurban parks in the past, today's park planners and civicactivists may find strategies and goals that resonate withcurrent audiences, politicians, and civic boosters.

Parks as Antidote to Urban IllsThe widespread development of urban parks in America

in the middle of the nineteenth century reflected thenation's changing ideas about nature. The notion of thenaturalist landscape as the basis for American park design,advocated by prominent park planners such as AndrewJackson Downing and Frederick Law Olmsted, emergedat a time when many Americans were calling into questionthe meaning of nature and its function in American history.On the East Coast at least, rural life became romanticizedin the middle of the nineteenth century in part because itwas disappearing. With the growth of commercial farming,the rise of a market economy, and the movement fromfarm to factory, agriculture was losing its place as the defin-ing feature of the American economy and culture. Therewas also the sense that the frontier as a defining feature ofAmerican life was "closing." 4

With nature no longer associated with hard workand farming, it became romanticized as a lost world ofrepublican values. Landscape painting became a dominantart form in this period, reflecting this nostalgia for a lostworld. Painters like Thomas Cole celebrated "ruralnature" as "an unfailing fountain of intellectual enjoymentwhere all may drink & be awakened to a deeper feeling ofthe works of genius & a deeper perception of the beautyof our existence."'

By the I86os and 1870s many Americans began to seenature and the city not as antithetical to one another, butrather as complementary features of what historian DavidSchuyler has called a "new urban landscape." Park promoters, physicians, religious leaders, and social reformers

Opposite: Serenity and tranquility in urban parks. Washington Park in Cihicago

in the late nineteenth century. Photo courtesy of the Chicago Park District.

Bachin / Cultivating Unity: The Changing Role of Parks in Urban America

Research & Debate

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saw the benefits of combining the morality and spiritualuplift they associated with nature, and the refining influ-ence of cultural institutions in cities. Urban parks wouldserve as an antidote to the disorder and materialism of citylife. These reformers, then, drew a strong connectionbetween morality, social order, and the physical shape ofthe city.

Many park proponents envisioned the park as the com-plete antithesis of the city, highlighting nature and subor-dinating the manmade to fully achieve moral and spiritualharmony with nature. Frederick Law Olmsted and CalvertVaux's Central Park in New York City was the first majorattempt to bring the natural landscape into the city andremove the "contaminating" influences of the urban envi-ronment. Olmsted and Vaux's Greensward Plan brought apiece of the country into the city to serve the spiritual andpsychological needs of city residents. In doing so, it madeuse of such design devices as extensive lagoons, curvilinearpaths, and native shrubbery and tree plantings.

Olmsted wrote that the beauty of the park "should bethe beauty of the fields, the meadow, the prairie, of thegreen pastures and the still waters. What we want to gainis tranquillity [sic] and rest to the mind."6 Yet untamednature did not represent Olmsted's vision of the properdesign for urban parks. Instead, he argued that naturehad to be carefully constructed in order to foster the expe-rience of tranquility. Olmsted believed in "the restorative

qualities of nature" to bring about this social order andharmony. For Olmsted, the "contemplation of naturalscenes of an impressive character" helped overcome thestresses of modem city life.' Where the grid plan of NewYork was designed for efficiency and commercial growth,the curvilinear paths of Central Park shaped places forquiet contemplation and reflection. Simply by experienc-ing the order and tranquility of properly designed parks,argued park proponents, city residents would ascribe toan urban vision of civility that transcended the immediatepark experience.8

Parks as Sites of Active RecreationYet quiet contemplation was not the only feature of

urban park development. Many critics of large urban parksargued that these spaces did not serve the explicit needsof local communities and neighborhoods. Residents ofcrowded wards wanted public parks and playgrounds tomeet their social and recreational needs, as well as to pro-vide open spaces to relieve overcrowding and unhealthfulconditions. Critics also argued that sites for active recre-ation, especially for children, were essential features ofcities. Chicago reformerJane Addams captured thisconcern with recreational play space when she touted theachievements of the playground movement at the turnof the century:

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If there is to be any conflict as to which ise shall be made ofthe land, there is no doubt at all in mty mind that it should bedecided in favor of the playgrounds. The adults can get almostas much good out ofplaygrounds as the children, while the chil-dren cannot get the goodfrom the parks. If the grass and treesare to be carefutlly preserved the children must still be made toplay in the streets.9

Addams explicitly rejected Sargent's notion that urbanparks necessarily should be rural and promote quiet con-templation. Instead, her call for playgrounds reflected agrowing movement among urban reformers to recognizethe benefits of strenuous activity. Psychologist G. StanleyHall, who linked the importance of play to advances insocial psychology, was extremely influential in the play-ground movement. His recapitulation theory stressedthe role of play in childhood development, arguing thatas people advance through stages of life, they recapitulatethe evolutionary development of the species. In this regard,play enabled children to replicate precivilized activitiesthat aided cognitive development and moral characterformation.

Other reformers highlighted the importance of play inthe lives of children from the perspective of concerns overdelinquency. Many playground advocates like Hall equated"wholesome" recreation with outdoor activity, especiallyin park spaces overseen by trained supervisors who helped

structure the experience. By providing parks and play-grounds, cities could combat the lure of "illicit" entertain-ment and counter the spread of juvenile delinquency.'°According to one politician, establishing "that environ-ment which produces sound bodies and clean habits"would solve "the crime problem which confronts everylarge city.""

Of course, the design of neighborhood parks differedsignificantly from that of large-scale parks. Neighborhoodparks typically were rectangular, working with the existingplat plan of the city rather than subverting it. Becausethey were designed to promote active recreation ratherthan quiet contemplation, they usually featured symmetri-cal plans that differentiated the functions of each sectionfrom the others. Many small urban parks included swim-ming pools, wading pools, outdoor play apparatus, andlarge playing fields. They often also included a fieldhouse,composed of separate men's and women's gymnasia, read-ing rooms, a library, and a community meeting hall. Suchbuildings highlighted the larger civic role these parkswere intended to play in bringing neighborhood residentstogether for shared activity and dialogue. Like earlieradvocates, then, those who promoted small neighborhoodparks saw parks as arenas of civic engagement; they just

Above: Neighborhood parks as sites of active recreation. Mark White Square,

Chicago, circa i 9o. Photo courtesy of the Chicago ParkDistrict.

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differed in theirviews of how to promote that engagement,and what the best design options were for facilitating it.

Parks, Sanitation, and Public HealthScientific problem-solving also played a role in shaping

the movement for parks in urban America. By the turnof the twentieth century, reformers and park advocateshighlighted how parks might alleviate conditions of over-crowding, lack of ventilation, and improper sanitationthat plagued urban America. This emphasis on reshapingthe urban environment as a means of improving sanitaryas well as social conditions resulted from the emergenceof ecology as a science. Chemist Ellen Swallow Richards,among others, helped shape the notion of "human ecol-ogy," which linked conditions faced by humans to theirnatural surroundings. Richards connected the study ofhuman environments directly to efforts to improvesanitary conditions in cities. And she called for "municipalhousekeeping" as a vehicle for urban residents, especiallywomen, to promote sanitation in the city by cleaningstreets, managing garbage and waste, alleviating the smokenuisance, and promoting park development."

The emerging field of sociology went even further byhighlighting how changes in the urban environment couldfoster broader social reform. Sociologists believed that byscientifically observing urban life, they could understandthe social, economic, and cultural factors shaping society,and formulate methods for social improvement. Progres-sive-era social scientists and urban reformers used densitystudies, crime statistics, and mortality assessments toidentify the locations of the worst urban conditions. Bymapping the physical geography of the city, reformerscould identify areas of "pathology" and attempt to amelio-rate their problems through management of the urbanenvironment. Physicians, sociologists and politicianssaw parks as one antidote to unhealthful cities. If parksserved as the "lungs of the city," investment in more suchspaces throughout the city could improve the health ofurban inhabitants.'4

Moreover, many landscape designers linked thepromotion of natural resource conservation directly withthe promotion of parks in cities. JensJensen, for example,recognized the toll rapid urban growth was taking onthe land and called for efforts to preserve it. Throughthese efforts to preserve the native forests and vegetationin developing urban areas,Jensen and other conservation-ists hoped to teach Americans to appreciate their regionallandscapes. Urban park designers were also attractedto some of the ideas of forester Bernhard Fernowand conservationist George Perkins Marsh, who argued

that natural areas should be preserved for futuregenerations, not exploited for the immediate gain ofthe few.',

Parks as Regional Commodities and Sites of SharedCivic Identity

In the first decades of the twentieth century park devel-opment also flourished in urban America as a way to sellcities. The rise of the City Beautiful movement at the turnof the century illustrated how commercial interests andcivic concerns could go hand in hand. Municipal govern-ments increasingly worked with merchants clubs and localimprovement organizations to introduce comprehensivebeautification plans on a regional scale. According to archi-tect and planner Daniel Burnham, "Beauty has always paidbetter than any other commodity and always will."'6 ForBurnham, beauty and financial prosperity were intimatelylinked. Beautifying American cities, argued Burnham,would attract visitors, promote the efficient flow of goods,and enhance the civic life of the city.

Parks were an essential feature of these beautificationprojects. Public parks became icons of cities, imprintingthem with physical spaces that reflected the unique envi-ronmental and naturalistic features purported to connectthe culture of a city to its locale. Parks fostered a sense ofplace and left indelible marks on visitors, who took awaywith them a lasting image of distinct urban environments.Well-designed parks became regional commodities thatpromoted tourism and economic.growth byvirtue of theunique qualities they contributed to the urban landscape.Boston's Emerald Necklace, the Benjamin Franklin Park-way in Philadelphia, the Mall in Washington, D.C.: theseare all spaces that help define and give shape to theirrespective cities. World-class public parks came to be seenas a reflection of civic-mindedness and a testament to thedegree to which a city valued the public good.

The process of setting aside park spaces in cities histori-cally has reflected the provision civic leaders made forshared gathering and social interaction among residents.According to many advocates, the park was a site whereboundaries separating groups could be erased. Comingtogether for shared experiences, whether quiet contempla-tion, recreational activity, or large public festivals, alloweda city's population to see itself as united, to have a sharedvision of civic identity. Frederick Law Olmsted, for exam-ple, believed parks could be places that fostered interactionamong various classes of urban dwellers. This is why thepromenade was such a central feature in all of his designs:

Places 15.3 IS

The promenade] is an open-airgatheringfor the purpose of easy,friendly, unceremaonious greetings, for the enjoyment of change ofscene, ofcheerfil and exhilarating sights and sounds, and ofvar-ious good cheer, to which the people of a town, of all classes, har-moniously resort on equal terns, as to all comm,on property."

Here, the inequalities so glaring in other parts of thecity could fade away. The park provided a shared leisurespace around which a vision of urban order and harmonycould be structured.'8

While Olmsted's view represented an idealized andhierarchical notion of how parks function, it nonethelesssuggested important ways in which parks could foster asense of shared civic identity by bringing people togetherin a central public space. This shared civic space alloweddifferent ethnic groups to make use of local parks toexpress their heritage and traditions, but it also offered aplace in which ethnic difference could be overcome. DanielBumham made this point to a group of businessmen inChicago in the I89os. "When a citizen is made to feel thebeauty of nature," he argued, "when he is lifted up by herto any degree above the usual life of his thoughts and feel-ings, the state of which he is a part is benefited thereby.[Park planning] goes a long step toward cementingtogether the heterogeneous elements of our population."' 9

Burnham, like Olmsted, focused on the goal of unity asa central function of parks in cities. More recently, park

planners and urban activists have highlighted the recogni-tion and celebration of diversity that urban parks makepossible. In cities across the country, a variety of groupshave used public parks to stage parades, heritage celebra-tions, rallies, and protests as a means of expressing theirsense of ethnic, racial, religious, and sexual identity. Ofcourse, park spaces (along with other sites of urban congre-gation such as public transit and marketplaces) have alsobecome contested areas, where ethnic and racial tensionmay spark conflict and violence. Yet the ideal is that publicparkland has made it possible for diverse groups within acity to lay common claim to land invested with civic sym-bolism. Creating and maintaining parks as essential fea-tures of the urban landscape not only added naturalisticand aesthetic dimensions to urban America, park planningalso signaled the importance of shaping spaces of civicinteraction that had the potential to transcend class, ethnic,and racial difference.

Trends TodayAll of these aspects of park history are relevant to cur-

rent discussions about the future of urban parks in Amer-ica. They can be places of serene natural beauty; sourcesfor improving public health, recreation opportunities, and

Above: Qi Kung and tai chi on the Mall in Washington, D.C., ,999.

Photo by author.

Bachinl Cultivating Unity: The ChangingRole of Parks in Urban AmericaI6

Research & Debate

fitness; world-class attractions imprinting cities with dis-tinctive signatures; and great civic spaces fostering sharedcommunity interaction and public engagement among therich ethnic cultures that shape our cities. Yet park planners,designers, and grassroots advocates face difficult hurdles inpreserving, restoring, and shaping urban parks.

Vhile some cities, such a Boston, San Francisco, Port-land, and Milwaukee, have invested in large-scale parkplanning projects, many more have witnessed the erosionof fiscal support for the maintenance, preservation, andcreation of public parks.2" Moreover, some city residents(as others have through history) today find their access toso-called public parks severely restricted. The creation of"bum-proof" benches designed to keep the homeless fromsleeping in parks, increased surveillance using remote tech-nologies, and the development of private parks in gatedcommunities have all forced park advocates and urbanplanners to address the changing relationship betweenparks and public space.

As urban growth and commercial development continueto put pressure on public resources in American communi-ties, politicians, commercial leaders, and civic boostersmight do well to look back at the park planning that tookplace I 50 years ago and consider all it has done to enhanceour national landscape, sense of place, and commitment tocivic engagement.

Notes

1. Charles Sprague Sargent, 'Prospect Park," Garden and Forest X uly 4, 1888),

pp. 217-18. Sargent was the director of Harvard University's Arnold Arboretum

and one of the founders, along with Frederick Law Olmsted, of Garden and

Forest magazine.

2. ThomasJefferson, 'Notes on the State of Virginia," in Merrill D. Peterson, ed.,

Tbe Portable Thonmasjcffcrson (NewYork, Viking Press, 195), p. 2 1o7.

3. For further discussion of the formal and vernacular traditions of parks, seejohn

BrincklerhoffJackson, "The Origins of Parks," in Dirvmeing tbe Vcrnacular Landscape

(New Haven;Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 127-30.

4. See FrederickJackson Turner, 'The Significance of the Frontier in American

History," in The FrontierinAmerican History (NewYork: Henry Holt and Co., 192o).

5. Thomas Cole, as quoted in David Schuyler, Tbc New Urban Landscape: The Redefi-

nition of City Form in Nineteen h-Cen yAmerica (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins Univer-

sity Press, 1986), p. 32.

6. Frederick Law Olmsted, 'Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns,"Journal of

Socal Scince, no. 3 (187 1), p. 23 .

7. Quoted in Anne Whiston Spirm, "Constructing Nature: The Legacy of Frederick

Law Olmsted," In William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human

Place in Nature (NewYork: W.W. Norton and Co., 1996), p. 93.

8. For further discussion of Victorian notions of park design and moral uplift, see

Thomas Bender, Toward an Urban Vision: Ideas and Institutions in Nineteentb-Centary

America (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975); Paul Boyer, Urban

Mases andMotal Order inAmerica, 182o-192o (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

University Press, 1978); Galen Cranz, The Politis of Park Dcsign (Cambridge, Mass.:

MIT Press, 1982); Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar, The Park and the People:

A History of CentralPark Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 0992); Schuyler, The

Ncw Urban Landscape; and David M. Scobey, Empire City: The Making and Meaning

of the New York City Landsrape (Philadelphia: Temple University Press 2002).

9. Chicago Record-Herald, June x, 0902, Lincoln Park Commission Newspaper

Clippings, Chicago Park District Special Collections.

1 0. Sophonisba P. Breckenridge and Edith Abbott, The Delinquent Child and the

Home (New York: Charities Publication Committee, 1912), p. 157.

I1. Galesburg,lIllinois Register,July 27, 1903. South Park District Clipping Files,

Chicago Park District Special Collections.

12. For further discussion of small parks as sites of active recreation and civic

engagement, see Rosenzweig and Black-mar, Tbe Park and the People; and Robin

F. Bachin, Building the South Side: Urban Space and Civic Culture in Cbicago, zs9o-

1gzg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming).

13. See David Lowenthal, George PerkinsMarsh, Propbet of Conservation (Seattle:

University of Washington Press, 2000); Carolyn Merchant, The Columbia Guide to

American EnvironmentalHiscory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002);

John Opie, Nantres Nation:An Environmental History of thc United States (Fort

Worth: Harcourt Brace, 0998); and Ted Steinberg, Down to Eartb: Natureto Role

inAmerican History (New York Oxford University Press, 2002).

14.John H. Rauch, PthlieParks TheirEffertUpontbeMoral,Physical,andSanitary

Condition of thc Inbabitants of Large Cities i rtb SpecialReferene to Chicago (Chicago:

S.C. Griggs, 0869), p. 6 .

15. Robert E. Grese,Jenso7ensen: MakerofNaturalParksand Gardens (Baltimore;

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).

16. Daniel H. Burnham, "The Commercial Value of Beauty," reprinted in Charles

Moore, Daniel H. Burnbam:Arrhitect, PlannerofCities (NewYork Da Capo Press,

0968), pp. xoo-z.

17. Olmsted,Vauxand Company, PreliminaryReport Upon theProposed Suburban

VillagcofRiverside,nearChicago(NewYork Sutton,Brovvne, 868),p.12.

18. See David Scobey, Anatomy of the Promenade: The Politics of Bourgeois

Sociability in Nineteenth-Century NewYork," Social History 07 (May 1992),

203-27.

19. Quoted in Daniel H. Burham and Edward H. Bennett, Plan of Chicago

(New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1993 10909]).

20. For further discussion of current efforts at park planning and its role in

enhancing urban environments, see Arnold R. Alanen and Robert Z. Melnick, eds.,

Preserving Cultural LandscaprsinAmerica (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University

Press, 2ono); Paul S. Grogan and Tony Proscio, Comeback Cities A Blueprintfor

Urban Neighborhood Revival (Boulder, Westview Press, inn0); and Richard Moe

and Carter Wilkie, Cbanging Places. Rebuilding Community in tbeAge of Spraswl

(NewYork: Henry Holt and Co., 1997).

Places 15.3 X7

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