Chapter 12:

In terms of the park becoming more public, it seems that this is mostly due to the people themselves, rather than the park’s management. As people moved closer in the city, their physical access to Central Park increased, and therefore the class diversity of attendance increased. Of course, allowing Sunday concerts was a major step for the park’s management, but changes like these in the park seem to happen most frequently when there is large public pressure. As more and more restrictions lessened in the park, it became a site of sexual freedoms, and perceived sexual dangers. Working-class couples and young people found public privacy (anonymity?) within the park, allowing them to express love and affection in the open world. This was still coupled with the policing of the public in the park, and particularly as Rosenzweig and Blackmar indicate, houseless people.

The Ramble, Central Park

Gandy, Queer Ecology:

I was really curious about the implications of Gandy’s arguments, that space itself holds elements of sexuality, and that human sexuality is not just a linear spectrum, but one that includes dimensions of space.

The tensions between what is natural and what is designed in the Ramble and the North Woods might then make them inherently queered spaces, where difference is apparent but uncategorized. Like the cemetery Gandy describes, we know the Ramble was also a space for cruising. However, I would be hesitant to call both the Ramble and the North Woods queered spaces because of their modern explicit use of behavior management and policing. There are forbidden spaces in these spaces, and consequences if they are not followed. This seems different then Gandy’s explanation of the cemetery as a space so uncategorically othered that it can be appropriated as a queered space.