Treasures of New York: City Parks

Before moving to their permanent headquarters, the United Nations met in the New York Pavilion on the grounds of what is now Flushing Meadows Corona Park.  It was there the problematic world body witnessed one of its finest moments passing the resolution that led to the creation of the State of Israel.  Perhaps it is time to move them back to Queens.  The history and general greenness of iconic parks in all five boroughs are celebrated in WNET’s Treasures of New York: City Parks (promo here), which premieres this Wednesday on New York area public television.

Many New Yorkers take understandable pride in Central Park, despite the fact it was modeled on the deliberately imposing parks of Imperialist Europe.  Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux’s masterwork of landscaping and design would indeed announce New York as a cultural and commercial powerhouse on the world stage, but they would have to wrestle with politicians during each stage of construction. 

Even though it was literally the centerpiece of Manhattan, Central Park would periodically fall into states of appalling disrepair.  The initial savior was, not surprisingly, Fiorello La Guardia and his controversial Parks Commissioner, Robert Moses.  However, during the Carter malaise, the private, nonprofit Central Park Conservancy stepped in to do the maintenance and restoration work beyond the City government’s competencies.

Indeed, politics would play a role at other parks, particularly at the Bronx’s Pelham Bay Park, where Democrat Jimmy Walker allocated beachfront access to his Tammany Hall cronies.  This was a practice La Guardia halted post-haste and Moses would forever prevent by radically reshaping the park’s coastline.

Brooklyn’s Prospect Park also gets its due, but unfortunately this includes plenty of air time for Brooklyn Beep Marty “Party” Markowitz, in full blow-hard mode.  If grudgingly, Moses still enjoys good PR in the Bronx for his work on the Pelham Bay Park and also in Queens for his vision for Flushing Meadow Corona.  Not so much in Staten Island though, where activists banded together to save the Greenbelt from his proposed Richmond Parkway.  However, they will admit the resulting traffic is kind of a drag.  Lest a review go by without a Tibet reference, it is also worth noting the Jacques Marais Museum of Tibetan Art is peacefully nestled within the preserved Greenbelt.

As was the case for previous installments of Treasures of New York, City Parks is essentially a slickly produced infomercial for New York.  However, the park edition has considerably more civic history than one would expect, making it of potential interest to general viewers beyond the obvious outdoors-oriented target audience.  Pleasantly watchable, it premieres tomorrow night (9/5) on Long Island’s WLIW and airs this coming Sunday (9/9) on New York’s Thirteen.

La Guardia in the Eye of the Beholder

How did Mayor Bloomberg celebrate his inevitable victory overturning the term-limit measure New Yorkers twice approved at the ballot box? Instead of going to Disneyland, he went to Tony Lo Bianco’s one-man show La Guardia. The whole three-termer thing must have appealed to him. For the record, LaGuardia demurred on a fourth term, cautioning mayors tend to get “bossy.” One can see what he meant. You can also see Mayor La Guardia, as personified by Lo Bianco, at the Dicapo Opera Theatre, quite Off-Broadway on Manhattan’s fashionable Upper Eastside.

Distilled from Lo Bianco’s previous one-man productions down to a manageable hour and a half, performed without intermission, La Guardia is a respectful treatment of the progressive Republican icon. The year is ostensibly 1945 and La Guardia is packing up his office on his last day as Mayor, a process nicely suited to prompting reminiscences. Essentially, we hear the highlights of La Guardia’s public career, primarily his terms in Congress, service in WWI, and of course his years in Gracie Manor.

Lo Bianco did his research, acknowledging La Guardia’s little known Jewish heritage. As revealed in Hava Volterra’s documentary Tree of Life, he was distantly related to her Jewish Italian Volterra family-line that included Luigi Luzzatti, the first Jewish Prime Minister ever elected in Europe, and the mystical kabbalist Ramhal (none of which is in the play). Explaining the social pecking-order of turn of the century New York, Lo Bianco’s La Guardia tells the audience as both an Italian and a Jew, he started his career as a third-class citizen. Actually, he could have added Republican, making him a fourth-class New Yorker. In truth, La Guardia shows a better than average understanding of New York’s strange political ins-and-outs. Particularly, on-target was a crack about the “Republican deadbeat district leaders and club loafers,” he had to endure during his early campaigns.

To his credit, Lo Bianco unequivocally portrays Tammany Hall as the corrupt Democrat machine it was. However, he chooses to emphasize La Guardia, the provider of social services and supporter of FDR, rather than La Guardia, the pro-war hawk and crusader against Democrat corruption. Yet, when he covered the WWII years, La Guardia’s words had a ringing resonance for today, at one point warning listeners of his radio broadcast, they can indeed criticize their government in a time of war, but should remember that our enemies are listening as well.

Lo Bianco clearly loves the Little Flower like a brother, but that does not always make for the best theater. We never hear La Guardia holding a grudge or speaking a word in anger against anyone, except the Corruptocrats of Tammany. One-person shows are inherently limited, but La Guardia feels particularly stagy at times. However, Lo Bianco is quite effective channeling La Guardia, getting a standing ovation from an audience that included many who probably remember the great Mayor personally. La Guardia is safe theater and a reasonably diverting history lesson. It runs at the Dicapo through Saturday the 22nd.