Central Park and the Melodramatic Imagination

Abstract

This article explores the influence of “the melodramatic imagination” on Central Park in New York in the nineteenth century. It compares the landscape of the park to the contrived plots and spectacular stagings of popular moral reform melodramas playing in New York while the park was being developed. One parallel emerges in the sensational contrast of the park landscape to its urban context, representing a strong moral polarity. Similarly, the contrived plots of popular theatrical melodramas juxtaposed extremes of good and evil, posing certain moral choices to theatrical audiences. The presentation drawings created by the park's designers, like the tableaux punctuating important scenes in theatrical melodramas, fixed these moral contrasts in public memory. Finally, the author argues that both the plots of theatrical melodramas and the design of the new park relied on a stereotypical cast of characters grounded in prevailing views of social class and gender.