Central Park's Dark History Part One: Laying the Foundation

In this episode, we go down to New York State and discuss the dark history behind the development of New York City's famous Central Park. We discuss some of the key players in bringing the idea of the park to life- Robert Bowne Minturn- a wealthy shipping merchant, Mayor Ambrose Kingsland, and Senator James Beckman- who tried to play dirty to get the park built the way he wanted. This is a story of wealthy people looking out for themselves under the guise of "working for the people". As a bonus, I bring you the story of a wealthy merchant with a name most people would cringe if it was theirs to bare- Preserved Fish. This story is a multi-parter, we're only just getting started! https://www.nydarksidepodcast.com/episodes-6-10/episode-6-9-dark-history-of-central-park/episode-6-transcript The Majority of the information for this episode comes from: Rosenzweig, R., & Blackmar, E. (1992). The Park and the People: A History of Central Park. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. The complete resource list can be found at https://www.nydarksidepodcast.com/episode-6-9-dark-history-of-central-park The intro theme for this podcast are sections of Nightmare Machine by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nydarkside/message