Abstract: From 1887 to 1906, rising in the place of what were once blocks of squalor, poverty and slum tenements, eight small parks thrilled the children their respective New York City neighborhoods. Created under the Small Parks Act of 1887, these parks were intended to bring better health, light and air to neighborhoods where the city’s poorest lived. Four of the parks (Mulberry Bend, Hudson, Hamilton Fish and William H. Seward Parks), were clustered below 14th Street, where many of the city’s newest and poorest immigrants settled in the mid to lat...
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