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Research ArticlePeer-Reviewed Articles

Before Parks: Public Landscapes in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Boston, New York, and Philadelphia

Anne Beamish
Landscape Journal, January 2021, 40 (2) 1-17; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3368/lj.40.2.1
Anne Beamish
Dr. Anne Beamish is Associate Professor of landscape architecture at Kansas State University. Her research and teaching interests focus on urban landscape history, the design of public space, and the history of innovative ideas, technologies, and policies that have transformed the landscape. Current research projects include the history of nighttime and public street lighting; the evolution of the Boston Common from a utilitarian space to treasured park; American pleasure gardens; and the cultural life of trees.
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Abstract

By the late nineteenth century, U.S. cities were busy building public parks for residents’ leisure and social activities. Before the development of parks, city dwellers had a variety of public spaces available to them, but these landscapes rarely receive the credit due to them. Using historical newspapers, journals, and city documents, this article argues that the very practical public landscapes of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Boston, New York, and Philadelphia played an important, though frequently unrecognized, role in the development of the nineteenth-century American public park. The very modest utilitarian village green, common, square, and parade ground are the unsung ancestors of public parks. Although they usually did not begin as places for leisure, residents slowly began to layer on new uses and functions, gradually transforming them into park-like places and creating a shared familiarity with the types of activities that would become core to the public park.

KEYWORDS
  • Public space
  • parks
  • streets
  • squares
  • leisure
  • open space
  • history
  • © 2021 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

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Landscape Journal: 40 (2)
Landscape Journal
Vol. 40, Issue 2
1 Jan 2021
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Before Parks: Public Landscapes in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Boston, New York, and Philadelphia
Anne Beamish
Landscape Journal Jan 2021, 40 (2) 1-17; DOI: 10.3368/lj.40.2.1

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Before Parks: Public Landscapes in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Boston, New York, and Philadelphia
Anne Beamish
Landscape Journal Jan 2021, 40 (2) 1-17; DOI: 10.3368/lj.40.2.1
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Keywords

  • Public space
  • parks
  • streets
  • squares
  • leisure
  • open space
  • history
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