The Search for Sanctuary

📍 Meet here

Grand Army Plaza — 5th Ave & 59th St

"Overtaken by wide, busy streets, and buildings of towering new heights, Manhattan Island scarcely resembles its previous wetland state. As the city spread ever northward, it became increasingly harder for New Yorkers to experience nature. Realizing that progress could not exist without tradition, park architect Frederick Law Olmsted secured valuable city land dedicated to bring "tranquility and rest to the mind". Originally a marshy undeveloped landscape, Olmsted sought to shape Central Park into nature that people could experience, blasting away rock, importing soil to create meadows over the swampland, designing lakes and streams -- seemingly natural -- and hiding stories in the many statues and monuments throughout the park. Stepping past the laurel-bearing victory trailed by General Sherman, you enter a world of mystery, inquiry, and discovery. A world strictly engineered at its builder's whimsy, preserving tales of courage and humility, and the triumphs of human ingenuity. This record of civilization was left to nature to govern, the architect retreating, as its new host surprisises visitors with its cleverness, beauty, and perennial resoluteness."