The vast urban park system in New York City (over 29,000 acres) has its origins from a 1686 charter by Governor Thomas Dongan which provided for municipal stewardship of vacant and unappropriated land. This charter enabled the city to acquire and maintain public spaces including a marketplace, a military and parade ground, and a public commons in today's lower Manhattan. Constructed on part of the land from the original public spaces, Bowling Green, the oldest public park in New York City, was established in 1733. The establishment of public parks in Manhattan during the 18th century, combined with the popularity of the park-like Green-Wood Cemetery (1838) in Brooklyn, led to the establishment of the first major park in Brooklyn, Washington Park (now Fort Greene Park) in 1848.
Beginning in the mid-19th century, some of the city's greatest parks were designed and constructed. From 1858, when Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted won the design competition to construct Central Park, through the end of the 19th century, Vaux and Olmsted designed and constructed Riverside Park and Central Park in Manhattan and Prospect Park in Brooklyn. They also planned Eastern Parkway (1868-1874) and Ocean Parkway (1869-1876) which were intended to be landscaped routes connecting the parks in Brooklyn.
As early as 1839, the City of Brooklyn had plans to establish 11 public parks. But Brooklyn was slow to build enough parks to meet the needs of its fast growing population, so in 1859, the State Legislature appointed the Brooklyn Board of Park Commissioners. Within a year, the Board had proposed a site for what would become Prospect Park. In 1870, New York City established a new city agency to head both park construction and park management, the Department of Public Parks. When Brooklyn was incorporated into New York City in 1898, the borough of Brooklyn continued to maintain its own agency to manage its park system. In 1934, under Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, the once separate borough park systems were unified into one organization and Robert Moses was appointed as its parks commissioner. As of 2011, the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation remains the steward of the 29,000 acres of public spaces throughout the city.
-
Sources:
- Kuhn, Jonathan. "Parks." In
The Encyclopedia of New York City, edited by Kenneth T. Jackson, 882. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press; New York: New-York Historical Society, 1995.
- New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. “A Timeline of New York City Department of Parks & Recreation History." Accessed February 4, 2011. http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_about/parks_history/historic_tour/historic_tour.html
From the guide to the Department of Parks, City and Borough of Brooklyn records, Bulk, 1885-1910, 1856-1945, (Brooklyn Historical Society)
