Learn More
To learn more about the history of the public park in America, please explore the sources below. They were used to both inform this exhibit and offer a more in-depth, nuanced exploration on the history and legacy of this topic. Although this exhibit does not delve heavily into the issues of race, gender, and class that express themselves in the development and maintenance of the public park then and now, the readings below speak to some of those issues.
Interested parties may also want to explore texts related to the history of the Transcendalist movement (particularly the writing of Margaret Fuller), the development of the American National Parks System, Native American perspectives on land rights and use, and current conversations regarding the policing of black and brown bodies in public space.
Further Reading
Crompton, John L. "The health rationale for urban parks in the nineteenth century in the USA." World Leisure Journal, vol. 55, no. 4, Sept. 2013, pp. 333-46.
Eisenman, Theodore S. "Greening Cities in an Urbanizing Age: The Human Health Bases in the Nineteenth and Early Twenty-first Centuries." Change Over Time, vol. 6 no. 2, 2016, p. 216-246. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/cot.2016.0014.
Evelev, John. "Rus-Urban Imaginings: Literature of the American Park Movement and Representations of Social Space in the Mid-Nineteenth Century." Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 12 no. 1, 2014, p. 174-201. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/eam.2014.0004.
Freidel, Frank, and John Naisbitt. "United States." Age of Reform. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2020, www.britannica.com/place/United-States.
Griffin, Toni L, et al., editors. The Just City. vol. 1, The J.Max Bond Center on Design for TheJust City at the Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York, Next City and The Nature of Cities, 2015, The Just City Essays, www.thenatureofcities.com/the-just-city-essays/#TOC.
Hern, Mary Ellen W.. “Picnicking in the Northeastern United States, 1840-1900.” Winterthur Portfolio, vol. 24, no. 2/3, 1989, pp. 139–152. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1181262. Accessed 29 Apr. 2020.
Hunter, Marcus Anthony, et al. “Black Placemaking: Celebration, Play, and Poetry.” Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 33, no. 7–8, Dec. 2016, pp. 31–56, doi:10.1177/0263276416635259.
Jones, Karen R. "'The Lungs of the City': Green Space, Public Health and Bodily Metaphor in the Landscape of Urban Park History." Environment and History, vol. 24, no. 1, Feb. 2018, pp. 39-58.
Jordan, Harriet. "Public Parks, 1885-1914." Garden History, vol. 22, no. 1, Summer 1994, pp. 85-113.
Mackenzie, Annah. “Black Lives and the (Broken) Promise of Public Space.” Blog, Project for Public Space, 13 July 2016, www.pps.org/article/black-lives-broken-promise-public-space.
Mock, Brentin. "The Toxic Intersection of Racism and Public Space." Citylab, 26 May 2020, https://www.citylab.com/equity/2020/05/amy-cooper-christian-cooper-fear-in-central-park/612094/
Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. Doubleday, 1906.
Stormann, Wayne F. "The ideology of the American urban parks and recreation movement: Past and future." Leisure Sciences, vol. 13, no. 2, 1991, pp. 31-41.
Tilden, Freeman. Interpreting Our Heritage. Fourth Edition, Expanded and Updated ed. The University of North Carolina Press, 2009. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/book/44059.
Ward D. "The ethnic ghetto in the United States: Past and present." Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 1982;7:257–75.
“‘We the People’—Thoughts on Freedom of Assembly.” Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, by JUDITH BUTLER, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts; London, England, 2015, pp. 154–192. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvjghvt2.8. Accessed 5 May 2020.
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