Impressionism in Herbert Von King Park

Today's featured Blogger is Bedford-Stuyvesant Architectural Historian Morgan Munsey. He looks at Von King Park from an historical context:

This morning when I looked at the Patch, I read a on Herbert Von King Park. It hurt me to hear of the lawn being overgrown, benches needing a new paint job along with an outdated amphitheater.

How did Von King Park -- a world-class park -- become the stepchild of NYC parks? Do we need a Bedford-Stuyvesant Parks Conservatory? 

Bedford Stuyvesant is not a neighborhood of abundant green spaces, so you would think with the little park space we have, the city and community would keep this rare park clean and neat. So why do I call this park rare? Lets look at the unique history of this old Brooklyn park:

Originally called Tompkins Square Spark this park is one of the oldest parks in Brooklyn. The Square dates back to the 1850's maybe even earlier. In the 1850s this area was called East Brooklyn but today if you look at google maps the neighborhood is called Tompkins Park North a sub neighborhood of Bedford Stuyvesant. 

Tompkins Park was redesigned in 1871 by the famous Vaux & Olmstead. If you look at there map it depicts the park as a whole and includes pathways, individual trees, and fountains. The streets and avenues surrounding the park are also noted.

The layout of Von King Park shown here reflects Vaux and Olmstead’s 1871 design. Like their most famous works, Central Park and Prospect Park, Vaux and Olmstead were meticulous in their design of the park, with every tree, pond, and bench planned. Olmstead wrote: “Every foot of the parks surface, every tree and bush, as well as every arch, roadway, and walk and been placed where it is for a purpose.”

Today, because of Vaux and Olmstead’s efforts, the citizens of Bedford-Stuyvesant have the privilege of enjoying a fine urban public recreation area in New York City.

By the 1880's the new Tompkins Square Park was maturing and Bedford resident and artist William Merritt Chase painted two works in the park. These two paintings called In Tompkins Park which is housed at the Art Institute of Chicago and Tompkins Park which is at the Colby College Museum of Art, in Maine .

The Chase paintings are probably the first color images of Bedford Stuyvesant. William Merritt Chase is responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later would become Parsons The New School for Design.

Chase was a member of the Ten (Ten American Painters), but also devoted much of his time to teaching, first at his New York studio, than at the Students League.

He also taught at his summer home in Shinnecock, Long Island, at the Chase School (which he founded), and later at the New York School of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

His students included Marsden Hartley, Charles Demuth , Edward Hopper , Georgia O'Keeffe , and Charles Sheeler. His achievements as an artist and teacher reflect the impact of the Impressionist movement in American culture; Chase not only pursued artistic innovation, but also brought progress to academic institutions of art. He died in New York in 1916.

To learn more about Bedford Stuyvesant history please join us for a walking tour this Saturday in front of the Old Girls High School (Nostrand Btwn Halsey and Macon) at 11 am.  For other walking tours of Bedford Stuyvesant please click here. To read more on William Merritt Chase and Bedford Stuyvesant history please go here.