ABSTRACT
So effectually had Olmsted warmed the warmable Celtic temper of his workers. “Hibernians," George Templeton Strong called them, as he sur veyed, from the heights of impregnable respectability, the work of these diggers and delvers in the rough ground of the island. Strong was a capable lawyer who loved his native city and was a connoisseur of new urban sensations. He was keenly interested in the park and included descriptions of it in the secret diary he kept. On June n , 1859, he walked over the ground with his
little boy Johnny and his friend George Anthon. “Improved the day by leav ing W all Street early. . . to explore the Central Park, which will be a feature of the city within five years and a lovely place in A.D. 1900, when its trees will have acquired dignity and appreciable diameters. Perhaps the city itself will perish before then, by growing too big to live under faulty institutions corruptly administered.”3
