> Actually CP was a real-estate scheme to take
> land off the market and raise prices. The
> working class was opposed.
This confuses me. Googling I get the following:
HISTORY OF CENTRAL PARK
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Central Park was the first landscaped public park in the United States. It has created to copy Paris and London and to establish its international reputation. It needed 3 years of debate over the park site and cost, finally in 1853 the state legislature authorized the city of New York to use the power of eminent domain to acquire more than 700 acres of land in the center of Manhattan. .
Before, it was an irregular terrain of swamps and bluffs occupied by 1.600 poor residents who lived in shanties on the site. The political control was a point of contention throughout the 19th century. .
The architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux sought to create a pastoral landscaped in the English Romantic Tradition. Open rolling meadows contrast with the picturesque effects of the Ramble on the more formal dress grounds of the Mall and Bethesda Terrace. A plan’s circulation system was established to separate carriage drives, pedestrian walks, and equestrian paths. More than 40 were built to eliminate grade crossing between the different routes. .
The building of Central Park was one of 19th century New York’s most massive public works project. It necessitated more than 20.000 workers, 3 millions cubic yards of soil and more than 270.000 trees and shrubs were planted. .
By 1865, there were more than 7 millions of visitors every year. More than half of the visitors arrived in carriage; costly vehicles that fewer than five percent of the city residents could effort to own. But during the first decade, there were a lot of stringent rules.
Full at: http://www.zdc-fr.com/htm/projets/efl/newyork/parkhist.html
Working class opposition in 1853?
Carrol