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CNN Live Saturday
Central Park Turns 150
Aired July 19, 2003 - 18:37 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Central Park is 150 years old today, and New Yorkers have spent the day celebrating their beloved green space with cake, music and memories. The nation's first public park came into being in 1853, when the New York legislature set aside 843 acres of land. Well, nobody's memories today went back that far, but today's partiers have plenty of their own.
Among the birthday celebrants is filmmaker Ric Burns, who produced the epic PBS series "New York: A Documentary Film," and he's in our New York bureau. Good to see you, Ric.
RIC BURNS, INDEPENDENT FILMMAKER: Hi, how are you doing.
WHITFIELD: I'm doing pretty good. Well, the intention was that this would be a place of meeting. It would also be a place to embrace personal space. Do you believe that here, 150 years later it certainly met its goals?
BURNS: Oh, my God, it's the most successful park in the world. Calvert Vaux, one of the two people with Frederick Law Olmsted who invented the park and designed it in the 1850s talked about translating democratic ideas into trees and dirt. I think there's arguably no public space, no park space in the world, certainly not in the United States, that is more democratic, more mixed, more open to the entire range of experience that you see in the city than Central Park, and it's only become more so in the 150 years since Vaux and Olmsted invented it.
WHITFIELD: And here, 843 acres, a place of so many varied plantings, fountains, ponds, et cetera, so many activities that take place there, are there things about this park that you think are underestimated or perhaps even undervalued or overlooked?
BURNS: I think that the park itself is really -- somebody once called Central Park the greatest work of art of the 19th century. I think that's true. We think of a park as a place with green space and grass and trees and places to kick back. I think that what's extraordinary about Central Park is the very carefully and very successfully planned series of vignettes that comprise the entire park. I mean, it's not just one open space, it's not just a sheep meadow with a ramble. It's dozens upon dozens of different scenes, almost like a kind of a natural landscape movie unfolding in front of you before your eyes, and I think that anybody who goes and spends time in Central Park discovers that it's literally an inexhaustible resource. It just goes on forever and ever and ever, and even long- time New Yorkers, who think they know the park, will turn a corner one afternoon on a Sunday, like today, and see something which they had never seen before.
That's the most surprising thing about the park, that in the middle of the largest city in America, it's still a surprise.
WHITFIELD: And in your research, did you find that while much of this took place through osmosis, most of this really was planned, and many of these great discoveries that, you know, folks are making every day also perhaps were intentioned or even cultivated and continue to be?
BURNS: There is not one thing natural about Central Park. They leveled -- Vaux and Olmsted leveled all 843 acres, didn't really leave a twig or a blade or grass standing, and very carefully sculpted it, according to their own ideas of a nascent sort of science of landscape architecture, a phrase invented by Frederick Law Olmsted.
So every hill, every stream, every lake was put there, dug there, blasted out of the granite of the bedrock of Manhattan to create a very unique kind of experience, which Vaux and Olmsted wanted to be an experience as un-urban as possible. They wanted it to be the anti- grid, something which would be the absolute respite from this thriving, driving commercial metropolis, which by the middle of the 19th century looked like it was going to eat up every available piece of recreational space. There was kind of a park panic going on by the 1850s.
WHITFIELD: Well, I think everybody agrees, spending a little time in Central Park, sometimes there are great reminders that you're in a big city, and then there are moments where you feel like you really are alone out there, and you're almost in the wilderness.
BURNS: It is fantastic. I mean, in fact, Fredrick Law Olmsted had been instrumental in the sort of the groundwork for Yosemite itself, and I think he was very conscious in the 1850s that eventually the wilderness will be gone, and even in as urbane a place as New York, that it was important to preserve that sense of the non-urban, of some open spaces, and vistas that go on forever. I think it was a very important thing. It's unique that in the middle of New York City such a larger area has been permanently preserved.
WHITFIELD: All right, Ric Burns, thanks very much, and happy birthday to Central Park. Appreciate it.
BURNS: Happy birthday to it.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired July 19, 2003 - 18:37 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Central Park is 150 years old today, and New Yorkers have spent the day celebrating their beloved green space with cake, music and memories. The nation's first public park came into being in 1853, when the New York legislature set aside 843 acres of land. Well, nobody's memories today went back that far, but today's partiers have plenty of their own.
Among the birthday celebrants is filmmaker Ric Burns, who produced the epic PBS series "New York: A Documentary Film," and he's in our New York bureau. Good to see you, Ric.
RIC BURNS, INDEPENDENT FILMMAKER: Hi, how are you doing.
WHITFIELD: I'm doing pretty good. Well, the intention was that this would be a place of meeting. It would also be a place to embrace personal space. Do you believe that here, 150 years later it certainly met its goals?
BURNS: Oh, my God, it's the most successful park in the world. Calvert Vaux, one of the two people with Frederick Law Olmsted who invented the park and designed it in the 1850s talked about translating democratic ideas into trees and dirt. I think there's arguably no public space, no park space in the world, certainly not in the United States, that is more democratic, more mixed, more open to the entire range of experience that you see in the city than Central Park, and it's only become more so in the 150 years since Vaux and Olmsted invented it.
WHITFIELD: And here, 843 acres, a place of so many varied plantings, fountains, ponds, et cetera, so many activities that take place there, are there things about this park that you think are underestimated or perhaps even undervalued or overlooked?
BURNS: I think that the park itself is really -- somebody once called Central Park the greatest work of art of the 19th century. I think that's true. We think of a park as a place with green space and grass and trees and places to kick back. I think that what's extraordinary about Central Park is the very carefully and very successfully planned series of vignettes that comprise the entire park. I mean, it's not just one open space, it's not just a sheep meadow with a ramble. It's dozens upon dozens of different scenes, almost like a kind of a natural landscape movie unfolding in front of you before your eyes, and I think that anybody who goes and spends time in Central Park discovers that it's literally an inexhaustible resource. It just goes on forever and ever and ever, and even long- time New Yorkers, who think they know the park, will turn a corner one afternoon on a Sunday, like today, and see something which they had never seen before.
That's the most surprising thing about the park, that in the middle of the largest city in America, it's still a surprise.
WHITFIELD: And in your research, did you find that while much of this took place through osmosis, most of this really was planned, and many of these great discoveries that, you know, folks are making every day also perhaps were intentioned or even cultivated and continue to be?
BURNS: There is not one thing natural about Central Park. They leveled -- Vaux and Olmsted leveled all 843 acres, didn't really leave a twig or a blade or grass standing, and very carefully sculpted it, according to their own ideas of a nascent sort of science of landscape architecture, a phrase invented by Frederick Law Olmsted.
So every hill, every stream, every lake was put there, dug there, blasted out of the granite of the bedrock of Manhattan to create a very unique kind of experience, which Vaux and Olmsted wanted to be an experience as un-urban as possible. They wanted it to be the anti- grid, something which would be the absolute respite from this thriving, driving commercial metropolis, which by the middle of the 19th century looked like it was going to eat up every available piece of recreational space. There was kind of a park panic going on by the 1850s.
WHITFIELD: Well, I think everybody agrees, spending a little time in Central Park, sometimes there are great reminders that you're in a big city, and then there are moments where you feel like you really are alone out there, and you're almost in the wilderness.
BURNS: It is fantastic. I mean, in fact, Fredrick Law Olmsted had been instrumental in the sort of the groundwork for Yosemite itself, and I think he was very conscious in the 1850s that eventually the wilderness will be gone, and even in as urbane a place as New York, that it was important to preserve that sense of the non-urban, of some open spaces, and vistas that go on forever. I think it was a very important thing. It's unique that in the middle of New York City such a larger area has been permanently preserved.
WHITFIELD: All right, Ric Burns, thanks very much, and happy birthday to Central Park. Appreciate it.
BURNS: Happy birthday to it.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
