Last Year's Andrew H. Green Tribute Ceremony in Central Park

On November 19, 2006 some three dozen civic-minded New Yorkers joined the Manhattan Borough Historian, Michael Miscione and a few guest dignitaries in raising a toast to Andrew H. Green at the Green Memorial Bench in Central Park. The event, which has taken place every year since 2003 on or around Mr. Green's death date (November 13), was described in a New York Times audio podcast and in an article in Metro New York. 

At the bottom of this page are directions and a map showing the location of the bench.

 

NEW YORK TIMES: Memorializing Andrew Haswell Green

“Only in New York” audio podcast
By Sam Roberts, metro reporter
November 23, 2006
http://podcasts.nytimes.com/podcasts/2006/11/22/23onlyinnewyork.mp3

TRANSCRIPT:

A modest ceremony was held in Central Park last Sunday for the forgotten “Father of Greater New York,” Andrew Haswell Green.

New York has a lousy record of honoring most of the legendary figures who’ve made a difference in municipal government. Sure, there’s LaGuardia Airport, named for the mayor who was instrumental in bringing commercial aviation to the city after he bought a ticket that said New York but which delivered him to Newark, the closest commercial airport. Real municipal heroes may be few and far between, but even they have had to settle for a school building or an obscure street corner marked by signage that rarely offers a clue to what they contributed or why. And all that Andrew Green got was a bench.

Who was Andrew Green? Professor Ken Jackson of Columbia who edited the Encyclopedia of New York City dubbed him, “arguably the most important leader in Gotham’s long history.” He championed plans for Central Park. As the appointed city comptroller, he helped the New York Times shake loose the Tweed Ring’s implacable grip on the city treasury. As the executor of Samuel J. Tilden’s estate, he helped found the New York Public Library — also the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Bronx Zoo, the American Museum of Natural History. He saved City Hall from demolition.

But Green’s greatest contribution was to tirelessly lobby for three decades for the consolidation of competing counties and municipalities into a single city: New York. That consolidation in 1898 spurred the construction of the subway and the almost uninterrupted growth of the five boroughs into a city that remains America’s largest and now boasts a population of over 8.2 million.

It’s uncertain what happened to all the ambitious plans to memorialize Green after he died a century ago. The most grandiose was a monumental gateway to Central Park at 110th Street, including a fountain, 40 foot-high columns topped with eagles and a bronze statue. That proposal generated some disgust on aesthetic grounds. It was less an entrance than an archway within the park, just the sort of encroachment Green himself would have rejected. I guess you could have called it a “limitation of statues.”

So all Green got besides a portrait that’s off limits to the public in City Hall was the bench and a couple of trees. Two decades after he died, five 55 foot-high elms were hauled down from Westchester and planted in his honor to symbolize the city’s five boroughs. But they were unmarked; also, they later died of Dutch elm disease. In 1929 the granite bench was added, designed by an architecture professor at Columbia. It was installed at around 105th Street, east of the East Drive, right near McGown’s Pass, where George Washington passed on his triumphal return to the city. The site was named Green Hill, but the symbolism was short-lived. The bench was subsequently evicted from its hilltop vista to accommodate a compost heap.

In 1948 a statue of Green was finally commissioned for the city’s Golden Jubilee, but it vanished. Michael Miscione, the Manhattan Borough Historian, recently discovered two copies in a garage in Maine belonging to the sculptor’s daughter. It wasn’t the first time history had been misplaced. A statue of Christopher Columbus, presented to Green himself in 1876, also disappeared. It was later rediscovered, coincidentally, in the basement of McGown’s Pass Tavern, right near where Green’s bench would eventually go.

So far Michael Miscione, the borough historian, has led a lonely crusade to get Green more appropriate recognition. Last Sunday a few dozen people showed up for the ceremony in Central Park, including Green’s great, great nephew. And the city has apparently promised that some other park — somewhere — will be named for Green — someday.

Green, by the way, died in 1903 at the age of 83. He was shot and killed as he entered his brownstone on Park Avenue. You could say that even then, after devoting his lifetime to the city, he was unrecognized. It was a case of mistaken identity.

I’m Sam Roberts.



NEW YORK METRO: Who was Andrew Green?

By Amy Zimmer
November 20, 2006 
http://ny.metro.us/metro/local/article/Who_was_Andrew_Green/5788.html

CENTRAL PARK — He helped create some of the city’s icons: Central Park, the Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Bronx Zoo and the New York Public Library. He was the mastermind behind the 1898 consolidation of the five boroughs. That’s why he’s known as “The Father of Greater New York.”

Yet city planner and former Parks Commissioner Andrew Haswell Green is no longer a household name. Manhattan Borough historian Michael Miscione tried to change that yesterday by hosting a tribute to honor the 103rd anniversary of Green’s death.

There’s no roadway or bridge bearing Green’s name, though there is a memorial bench on a hill in Central Park near East 102nd Street. A handful of history buffs toasted Green there with sparkling apple cider and gingerbread cookies shaped like the Brooklyn Bridge.

“Green made a whole bunch of enemies,” Miscione said, including Central Park designer Frederick Law Olmsted, who thought Green was “stingy” and “stubborn.”

Green made more foes when he cracked down on City Hall corruption after becoming comptroller in 1871. He was also vilified by Brooklynites who opposed consolidation.

“He was very persistent about certain things — not for glory for himself, but for the greater good,” Miscione said. “Green came to the idea of consolidation three decades before it happened. As the movement evolved, it became political and cultural — like Brooklyn’s need for civic identity — but for Andrew Green, it was always about city planning. Consolidation expanded New York from 60 square miles to over 300 square miles, and Andrew Green’s role in that has largely been forgotten.”

Many of Green’s papers have been lost to history and his enemies, like Olmsted, have shaped perception of him since.

“We’re facing some of the same issues he did with [ownership of] public space and parks,” said City Councilwoman Gale Brewer, whose Upper West Side district was designed by Green. “Like Yankee Stadium and Van Cortlandt Park, the encroachment of Hudson River Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park. These issues don’t go away.”

Green’s great-great-nephew Thomas Green, 77, of Brooklyn, didn’t know much about his forebear, except “he was referred to often enough to know he was a real somebody.”

Yesterday was his first trip to the bench. “My father would refer to it as ‘a bench somewhere in Central Park,’ but he had no idea where it was. What impresses me is there’s no graffiti on [it]. Maybe that’s one of the benefits of being in a remote place.”



Directions to the Andrew H. Green Memorial Bench:

Note: Looking at the map, the bench appears approachable from all sides. It is not. Because of hills and drop-offs not shown, it can only be reached using the footpath mentioned below.

From the East Side: At Fifth Avenue and E. 102 Street, enter the park via the automobile entrance road. Bear right, merging on to the main drive. Continue walking north on the drive for about two blocks. When you come to the standing three-sided map on your left, turn left on to the wide, well-paved crossover road that heads to the West Side. Take an immediate right on to the blacktop footpath that heads uphill. Bear right as you walk along the footpath. The bench is at the top of the hill.

From the West Side: At Central Park West and W. 100 Street, enter the park via the automobile entrance road. Bear left, merging on to the main drive. Continue walking north on the drive for about two blocks. Before the drive crosses a stone bridge, turn right on to the wide, well-paved crossover road that heads to the East Side. This road will be marked with an "Authorized Vehicles Only" sign. Continue down this road, passing a little police kiosk on your right. Just before the road intersects with the main east drive, turn left on to the blacktop footpath that heads uphill. Bear right as you walk along the footpath. The bench is at the top of the hill.