the ways that unsanctioned consumption of parks threatened to upset the conceptual arrangement of the urban space and park space within a new economic imaginary. In sum, I argue that a range of practices—from the use of photographs as part of a didactic practice of public education to the physical policing of park spaces and the transgressive activities of park users—suggests that these sites have always been occupied, and cared for, by a wider range of constituents than typical histories would suggest. Further, paying close attention to the contested meanings and uses of urban in the nineteenth century helps to restore this sense of complex “nature” negotiation among individuals and groups (including nonhumans) whose aims and desires did not always conform to dominant narratives of industrial economic development. Hill The Lemon Hill estate, built in 1800 by a wealthy merchant named Henry Pratt, held and still holds special significance in narratives about the formation of urban parks in Philadelphia. The estate’s importance derives in large part from the way it symbolized the juxtaposition of unspoiled urban nature against the modern capitalist city. Those seeking to create a new park valued the Lemon Hill estate highly because of the views it offered of the burgeoning metropolis and the Schuylkill River, prompting its purchase by the city in 1844—the first such purchase in a twenty-five-year campaign to protect the urban water supply through land acquisitions. According to an anonymous antebellum journalist writing in 1854, only requires a glance at “It the map or a visit to the ground to convince any one how important it is to secure this piece of land, to make Lemon Hill as it should be—a most eligible and beautiful tract with boundaries free from objectionable features.” In the 1850s, however, to the dismay of many, the German tenants of the Lemon Hill property operated a popular beer-garden, a purpose that park
the ways that unsanctioned consumption of parks threatened to upset the conceptual arrangement of the urban space and park space within a new economic imaginary. In sum, I argue that a range of practices—from the use of photographs as part of a didactic practice of public education to the physical policing of park spaces and the transgressive activities of park users—suggests that these sites have always been occupied, and cared for, by a wider range of constituents than typical histories would suggest. Further, paying close attention to the contested meanings and uses of urban “nature” in the nineteenth century helps to restore this sense of complex negotiation among individuals and groups (including nonhumans) whose aims and desires did not always conform to dominant narratives of industrial economic development. Hill The Lemon Hill estate, built in 1800 by a wealthy merchant named Henry Pratt, held and still holds special significance in narratives about the formation of urban parks in Philadelphia. The estate’s importance derives in large part from the way it symbolized the juxtaposition of unspoiled urban nature against the modern capitalist city. Those seeking to create a new park valued the Lemon Hill estate highly because of the views it offered of the burgeoning metropolis and the Schuylkill River, prompting its purchase by the city in 1844—the first such purchase in a twenty-five-year campaign to protect the urban water supply through land acquisitions. According to an anonymous antebellum journalist writing in 1854, “It only requires a glance at the map or a visit to the ground to convince any one how important it is to secure this piece of land, to make Lemon Hill as it should be—a most eligible and beautiful tract with boundaries free from objectionable features.” In the 1850s, however, to the dismay of many, the German tenants of the Lemon Hill property operated a popular beer-garden, a purpose that park
2016c_Gabriel_Greene-country-towne.docx