Abstract

"Integrating Commercial Green Spaces in Nineteenth-Century New York City"

Mars Plater, University of Connecticut, Stamford (mars.plater@uconn.edu)

This paper explores how ideas about race shaped a series of commercial green spaces in nineteenth-century New York City, and how New Yorkers of color struggled for inclusion in each one. The story starts in the 1820s in pleasure gardens, where proprietors hired people of African descent to serve drinks while preventing them from entering the lush grounds as patrons. Black entrepreneurs created their own gardens to showcase how people that the system of slavery framed as born laborers deserved beautiful scenery and rest. Then in the 1870s, Black advocates fought for legislation that was supposed to integrate beer gardens that German American businessmen operated in what was left of Manhattan’s primeval forests, but this Civil Rights Act lacked enforcement. Later that decade, a network of suburban waterfront landowners and steamboat owners co-created “excursions”—allowing organizations to charter steamboats and rent private parks to enjoy for the day. As these entrepreneurs accepted money from anyone who had it, Black and Chinese American New Yorkers seized the chance to consume outdoor leisure on equal footing. Frictions continued, though, as racist business owners grappled with the fact that their livelihoods depended on serving people they did not respect. Bridging the fields of Business, Urban, and Environmental History, I explore why commercial green spaces were such fraught sites. How did segregationist policies support the profitability of greenery at first, and how did that calculation change? Why did integrating commercial green spaces remain a key goal for New Yorkers of color searching for belonging in a hostile environment?