The second "Explorations of the Urban Outback" class will meet in the field on Monday morning, September 15. Here are the details:
PLACE: Grand Army Plaza subway station in Park Slope, Brooklyn. (We will meet by the token booth.)
TIME: 9 am APPAREL: Remember to wear sneakers, hiking boots, or other shoes good for walking.
WEATHER: If class must be cancelled/rescheduled due to bad weather, we will contact you via cell phone BEFORE 8 am on Monday morning.
DIRECTIONS: Take the 4 or 5 subway train (Lexington Ave. Express) downtown (toward Brooklyn) from 42nd Street/Grand Central Station. Get off at the Nevins Street Station in Brooklyn and switch to the 2 or 3 train across the platform. Take the Brooklyn-bound 2 or 3 train three stops to Grand Army Plaza. The trip should take about 50 minutes, so leaving from the Williams Club at 8 am will allow you enough time.
LUNCH: You will be back on the F train to return to Manhattan no later than 12 noon. You can either bring a packed lunch, or arrange lunch for when you get back to the Williams Club.
Also note: Please start reading the assigned book Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan, which will be the subject of our September 22 class.
Assignment #1: Central Park
1. Reading
Read all four pages of this short history of Central Park from The Encyclopedia of New York and this excerpt from J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Then make sure to read the entire assignment below and to look over the Central Park map before embarking on your field study. 2. Field Study- Enter Central Park at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue.
- Using the map, follow the walkways (use pedestrian paths rather than roads) along the eastern edge of the Pond and make your way to the Mall.
- Walk through the Mall to Bethesda Terrace and the Lake.
- If you’re feeling adventurous (that means that this part is not required), navigate through the Ramble (a woodsy tangle of paths that’s easy to get lost in) to Belvedere Castle.
3. Questions to Answer
Write your responses to the following 5 questions on fauna, rocks, trees, architecture, and the park as artwork. There is one bonus question.
4. Due Date
Please complete and return this assignment via e-mail by Monday, September 22.
Here are the questions:1. Fauna
The Pond in the park’s southeast corner is the lagoon that Holden Caulfield refers to in The Catcher in the Rye. Although the mallard ducks in the pond usually migrate south for the winter, many other species of waterfowl spend their winters in the waterways around New York City.
Name 3 animals you see during your walk; briefly describe what each of the animals is doing; and mention the location where it was observed.
2. Geology
The rock outcrops dotting the park are part of the bedrock of New York City. Formed an estimated 400-450 million years old, the rocks are metamorphic and are the eroded remains of an ancient mountain range.
In some cases, these rock outcrops presented obstacles during the park’s construction—having to be blasted away to make room for roads and other design elements. However, many rock outcrops were left as is and incorporated into the earthwork design for the park—making them the park’s only truly wild design features. But even here, artifice was used: the ground around the outcrops was carefully sculpted; sometimes soil and plants were added atop the rocks, and sometimes soil was removed to expose a deeper section of an outcrop.
Design note: Olmsted and Vaux, the park’s designers, intended the park to inspire emotions and sensations. Part of the trick of engendering such responses was the development of contrasts—for example, as you walk into and through Central Park, the scene shifts, sometimes abruptly, from one environment to another.
a. Briefly, how would you describe the rock outcrops?b. What might have been Olmsted and Vaux’s intent in leaving these outcrops and working them into the landscape?c. What emotions, if any, do you think the rock outcrops might evoke in park-goers, who leave the surrounding city environment for the park environment?d. In a more utilitarian sense, how do you see the rock outcrops being “used” by park-goers?
(Your response to this section should be 1 to 2 typed pages.)
3. The Mall—TreesOlmsted and Vaux were not fans of straight lines in their landscape designs—but the Mall breaks that pattern and extends in a straight line for six full blocks. This austerity is mitigated by an allée of trees that shade the promenade.
Once common in the wild and very popular as a street tree, the species of North American tree that lines the Mall is now rare—due to a killer fungus brought over from Europe in the 1930s. To keep the allée alive, the trees in the Mall regularly receive limb-by-limb inspections and injections of fungicide. However, several of the Mall’s trees succumb to the disease every year.
The author Michael Pollan wrote the following about the Mall's dominant tree species in a 1993 New York Times article. Please fill in the blanks with the tree’s name.
There is something about the very form of these trees that seems to imply public space, in the same way that a weeping willow implies water, or a great, old gnarled oak seems to uphold the authority of tradition. If this sounds sentimental, consider that long before we embraced the _______, the Indians favored its shade for tribal councils. No doubt the unusually high canopy has something to do with the tree’s exalted civic status: an ______ commits to a branching pattern much later than most trees, with the result that the vault formed beneath its canopy is as grand as a train station’s, more conducive to encounters with strangers than intimates.
4. Bethesda Terrace: Art, nature, and architectureOverlooking the Lake, Bethesda Terrace was designed by Calvert Vaux, with the assistance of architect/sculptor Jacob Wrey Mould, as were numerous other architectural features in the park. Before Bethesda Terrace was built, Vaux said the structure was meant to blend into the naturalistic landscape, not dominate it.“Nature first, second, and third -- architecture after awhile,” Vaux said.
Briefly describe some features of Bethesda Terrace that suggest a tribute to nature.
5. OverviewFrederick Law Olmsted called Central Park “a single unified work of art.” He and his partner, Calvert Vaux, wanted their work to be identified with art—particularly the art of landscape painters. It has been said the Olmsted painted with trees, water, lights, and shadow.
In the 1860s, New York City had a population of about 1 million. Today, the city has approximately 8 million residents. Olmsted and Vaux foresaw these future crowds, and the park was designed as a respite from the physical crush of the city. Today, people—musicians, film crews, the homeless, tourists, birdwatchers, cyclists, etc.—are inextricably part of the park’s landscape. And the sights and sounds in the 21st-century park are beyond anything the Victorian-era Olmsted and Vaux could have imagined.
--Thinking about these ideas—that the park might be considered an artwork and that its audience (park-goers) constantly transforms it—what section of the park that you walked through worked best for you personally?
--Which was your least favorite area?--What sensations, if any, did you experience—positive and/or negative?
(Your response to this section should be 1 to 2 typed pages.)
6. Bonus question
What was the strangest/most unusual thing you saw, heard, or experienced in the park?
