Gramercy Park is a four-acre square given in perpetuity to the residents surrounding it, 170 years ago, by Samuel Ruggles, a real estate developer of immoderate means.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I always thought of the English landscape as being English gardens.
Objects in a park suggest static repose rather than any ongoing dialectic. Parks are finished landscapes for finished art .
I lived at the Gramercy Park Hotel for about 10 years. It was terrific. It was a pleasantly run-down hotel of the '70s and '80s with a mix of older, rent-controlled apartment dwellers, Europeans and new wave and punk bands. The room service was great, the hamburger was terrific, and they had a doctor who made house calls.
Every time I imagine a garden in an architectural setting, it turns into a magical place. I think of gardens I have seen, that I believe I have seen, that I long to see, surrounded by simple walls, columns, arcades or the facades of buildings - sheltered places of great intimacy where I want to stay for a long time.
Beaumont-Hamel sits within a thousand acres of French agriculture. The trenches are under this blanket of grass. In the 1920s, a park was established here and trees from Newfoundland imported to encircle the battlefield so you get the feeling of being within a copse of woods.
A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust.
I got involved in Gateway National Park and just became fascinated with gardens.
It is easy to gain a definite notion of the furnishing of colonial houses from a contemporary and reliable source - the inventories of the estates of the colonists.
I don't know of a single park without serious environmental problems.
It has always been, and still is, my intention to build a playground in Central Park.