OLMSTED RETURNED a week before Christmas 1859. Work on Central Park was proceeding at an astonishing pace. Soon the portion south of Seventy-ninth Street and the old reservoir would be substantially complete. The board’s strategy of garnering popular support had paid off—the park was already a great success. The first winter that the pond froze produced a mania for ice-skating in the city. The bridle paths drew upper-class horseback riders. The so-called carriage parade became fashionable. The rich had their own coaches (and sleighs for the winter); the middle class could rent a hack for one or two dollars an hour. Others came to stroll, feed the swans, or boat on the lake. Starting in July 1859, the board inaugurated free Saturday-afternoon band concerts, attracting throngs. Attendance skyrocketed; Olmsted estimated that some days as many as one hundred thousand people were in the park. A contemporary description sets the scene:
Few landscapes present more attractive features than that of the Park on a music day. Thousands of brilliant equipages throng the drives. The waters of the Lake are studded with gaily-colored boats, appearing now and then in striking contrast with the green foliage that fringes its banks; the water-fowl float proudly over its surface; children play on the lawns; throngs of visitors from divers climes move among the trees, whose leaves, fanned with the soft lays of the music, wave silent approval; all seems full of life and enjoyment; and as some familiar strain breathes a sweet influence around, the whole appears like some enchanted scene.
If this breathless portrait sounds too good to be true, one must remember that for mid-nineteenth-century Americans, Central Park really was a magical place. Not just a pretty setting for recreation, it was an aesthetic experience. A few years later an enterprising photographer published an album titled The Central Park, consisting of fifty-two plates that took the reader step-by-step though the park.1 The accompanying text explained each tableau in such elevating sentiments as “atmosphere,” “sublimity,” and “character.”
Olmsted should have been basking in the satisfaction of a job well done. Yet all was not going smoothly. He was under fire from the board to cut costs. The commissioners cannot be faulted for worrying about expenses. The sum originally authorized for construction was $1.5 million. A year later, as the result of the amendments to the plan, this was increased to $2 million. In January 1860 the state legislature was asked to approve an additional $2.5 million, which raised the total cost to about three times the initial estimate. Some speculated that by the time that the park was finished, the total cost might be as much as $13 million; others put the figure even higher.
Costs were raised by the commissioners’ demand to accelerate the work and to increase the size of the labor force (Central Park was the largest public works project in the country at a time of recession and high unemployment). Then, as now, large construction projects had cost overruns. Vaux and Olmsted had understandably been optimistic in their first estimates. In truth, neither they nor anyone else in the United States had experience building such a large park. The standards of the Engineer Corps were high—and hence costly. A Swiss engineer who was brought in by a state Senate committee to make a detailed evaluation of the work attested to the high quality of the construction and to the excellence of the overall organization. “Much better than any other public work in the United States,” Herr Kellersberger reported.
Still, the legislators in Albany, while supporting the park, pressured the board to reduce costs. Some of the work on the northern portion of the park, such as two sunken roads, was postponed. Bridge materials were changed from expensive quarried bluestone to fieldstone and wood. The elaborate flower garden was deferred—indefinitely, as it turned out; it was eventually replaced by the Conservatory Water. Vaux convinced the commissioners to keep the Terrace as he and Mould had designed it, but plans for the music hall, the palm house, and the conservatory were shelved. Now Olmsted found his independence curtailed. The board demanded that he prepare detailed cost estimates in advance, and that he seek prior approval for expenditures.
It fell on Commissioner Green to enforce this new regime. On October 6, 1859 (while Olmsted was sailing to Europe), Green had been appointed comptroller of the park. Andrew Haswell Green has sometimes been portrayed as a penny-pinching bureaucrat. That is unfair. He was a man of substance, as his later career demonstrates: he served as comptroller of New York, rebuilding the city’s finances after the disastrous reign of Boss Tweed; he initiated and led the movement to consolidate the five boroughs into greater New York; he played an important role in the formation of the New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art; he was a trustee of the Brooklyn Bridge; and he founded the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society.
Two years older than Olmsted, Green was a large, handsome man of energy, intelligence, and probity. He was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. Despite his lack of a formal education, he determined to follow his father into the law. At age twenty-two he came to New York and apprenticed with Samuel J. Tilden, who operated one of the most successful corporate practices in the city. Green was admitted to the bar only two years later; Tilden made him his partner—and his protégé. He was appointed to the Board of Education and in only four years was its president. Thanks to Tilden, who was then in the state legislature, Green was made a Central Park commissioner. His rise there was equally rapid. He became treasurer and served as president. When the board felt the need to assert a greater control over finances, it created the new position of comptroller specifically for Green. He was “to act as treasurer, and carry out the orders of the board, and devote his entire time to the duties of the park.” The latter point was important. Green was the only commissioner who had a full-time, paid position. This effectively made him the chief executive officer of the park.
Green and Olmsted had much in common. They were old-stock New Englanders from small towns. They had little formal education. They had been farmers (as a youth Green had spent almost a year helping to run a Trinidad sugar plantation). They loved the outdoors. They believed in the primacy of efficient planning and organization. They argued strenuously that the public service should be independent of patronage and politics. They were scrupulously honest. They were ambitious, self-made men, engrossed in their work and devoted to the success of the park.
They began as friends. Green actively supported Olmsted’s candidacy as superintendent and championed Greensward. It was during Green’s presidency that Olmsted had been appointed architect-in-chief. In the early days of the park the two bachelors were often in each other’s company. After Olmsted married, Green, who remained single his entire life, regularly came to Sunday dinner. He visited Mary often when Olmsted was in Europe. When Green became comptroller, the friendship soured. He bombarded Olmsted with letters, demanding explanations for the slightest expenditure, questioning decisions, on occasion even countermanding his orders. Green became overbearing. This rankled Olmsted, who was never good at taking orders. The comptroller was parsimonious in public as in private life, demanding to know where every penny was going. Olmsted, who tended to be large-handed, wanted discretion to spend as he pleased. Green did not understand technical issues. He sometimes demanded foolish economies. Once he objected when Olmsted ordered some willow trees cut down. “It is quite expensive to get trees on the Park,” Green complained. It took several letters from Olmsted to convince him that willows were not particularly expensive trees, and that the removal was ordered to avoid their roots clogging adjacent underground drains.
Both men were right in their own way. Green feared that if costs were not brought under control, the park might not be completed; Olmsted was concerned about posterity and wanted everything done properly, which often meant expensively. Theirs was an uneasy collaboration: both were somewhat imperious; and their management styles were at odds. Green formed his opinions carefully and stuck to them; Olmsted made long-range plans but also made last-minute changes in the field. He once explained to the board, “The best conceptions of scenery, the best plans, details of plans—intentions—the best, are not contrived by effort, but are spontaneous and instinctive.” Olmsted appointed able assistants and gave them a free hand; Green liked to exercise personal control over every one of his subordinates. That included Olmsted.
Mount Saint Vincent, Central Park
Sunday, October 21, 1860
It is a brisk fall day and the trees are already starting to assume fall colors. This low hill overlooks 106th Street, the park’s present northern boundary. A flat area on top of the hill is the site of a group of three-story wooden buildings surrounded by large verandas. One building, of brick, capped by a tall spire, resembles a chapel. Until four years before this was the motherhouse of the Sisters of Charity, who run St. Vincent’s Hospital on Eleventh Street. Now the buildings belong to the Park Commission. Since shortly after their marriage, Frederick and Mary Olmsted have occupied several rooms in the empty convent; Vaux and his family live nearby in what had been the priest’s residence. The offices of the superintendent and architect-in-chief are also here. On Sunday the offices are closed. Instead of the usual commotion, there is quiet.
Olmsted is sitting on a veranda on the south side of the building. Since the veranda is glassed-in, he is comfortably warm in the afternoon sun. Immediately adjacent to the building is an attractive garden, with grass and clumps of trees whose leaves are starting to change color. Beyond, the landscape is in disarray, a giant construction site. The trace of the old Boston Post Road cuts an ungainly diagonal between piles of excavated earth and fresh gravel. There are few trees and the ground is strewn with boulders. There is still no sign of the great meadow that he and Vaux have planned for this area. About half a mile away he can see the banks of raw earth that mark the edges of the new reservoir being built by the Croton Aqueduct Board. This area should have been planted over by now, but relations between the board and the Park Commission have not been smooth. But they are making progress.
He is in an easy chair. His extended left leg is supported by a footstool. The leg is bound in a splint and bandaged from hip to toe. A pair of crutches lie on the floor. He has been writing a letter, and as he awkwardly shifts his position, the movement causes him to wince. It is six weeks since the accident and he is mending, but slowly. Today is the first day he has been able to sit himself down without assistance. The leg still hurts.
He can’t complain. His thigh is broken in three places. It was so badly shattered that the bone protruded from his torn flesh. The surgeons concluded that if the leg was not amputated, gangrene would probably set in. Gangrene was fatal—he would be dead in a week. Yet he was in such a weakened state that if the leg were cut off, he might not survive the operation. They decided to do nothing. He had less than one chance in a hundred of recovery, his doctor later told him. One chance in a hundred—and he is still alive.
It had happened this way. One Monday evening after work he had gone for a drive with Mary and their new baby, John Theodore. He wanted to try out a new horse that he was thinking of buying. As they were passing through Carmansville, near Washington Heights, the horse bolted. It was Olmsted’s own fault—he was exhausted and had fallen asleep, dropping the reins. As he stood up to retrieve the reins, the runaway carriage struck a lamppost. He was flung out and landed on a large boulder. The next thing he remembered, he was lying on the ground unable to move. He looked up to see Mary clutching the baby, both of them unhurt. She quickly took charge and he was carried on a shutter to a house across the street. The oddest thing was that it belonged to his boyhood friend Charlie Trask, whom he had not seen in years.
Olmsted resumes his letter. It is addressed to his father. He has been describing his slow recovery, but he does not want to harp on his injury. He writes instead about John and Charlotte’s new tutor, Miss Centayne. “It is a regular school business, with silence, order & discipline for two hours, which order & discipline is the best of it for them. They have music & dumb-bell exercise & ten runs across the court for ‘recess.’ ” He discusses the current campaigns of Garibaldi in southern Italy. He tells him that his friend Friedrich Kapp, with whom he worked on the free-soil cause in western Texas, has just published a history of American slavery. The book is prefaced by a handsome dedication to Olmsted. He describes the recent visit of Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales, to Central Park. The prince ceremoniously planted an English oak; Green, who had appropriated the role of host, planted an American elm alongside. Olmsted and Vaux witnessed the ceremony, but were not introduced to the prince. “Only as they were leaving, some one pointed me out to the Prince & he turned & bowed to me several times until he caught my attention and I returned his salute.”
Olmsted writes of everything except the one thing that is foremost in his thoughts. His son, John Theodore, is dead. He died suddenly of infant cholera, only eight days after the carriage accident. He was exactly two months old. Olmsted knows that his father, who has lost three of his children, sympathizes with him and would like to know how he and Mary are doing. He will have to read between the lines. “Mary rather worse—pretty constant sharp and sick headache. Took advice of doctor yesterday—simply ordered to be quiet & take it easy. Only wants strength.” Poor Mary! It has been hardest on her. He has his work to occupy him. He is still not mobile, but his staff make their reports at his bedside, and he has himself carried about the park regularly on a litter chair. Without the activity he might have been overwhelmed.
He has stopped writing now. He is staring out at the park—his park—but his eyes are unfocused. The sheet of paper slips from his fingers and flutters to the floor. He does not notice. He sits a long time. Eventually, as the sun swings around to the west, the shaded veranda turns cool. He painfully eases himself out of the chair with the help of the crutches and limps indoors.
1. By coincidence, the author of the text was Frederick Perkins, the brother of Olmsted’s ex-fiancée, Emily. Although Olmsted knew Perkins well, he had nothing to do with producing the book.