Animating Central Park: A Multispecies History
by Dawn Biehler
The entangled human and more-than-human histories of one of the world’s iconic urban green spaces
From deer and beavers to “free range” pigs and goats in and around Seneca Village, what we now know as Central Park has long been home to an abundance of animals. In 1858, the city adopted the Greensward Plan and began the long process of reshaping the 843 acres of land into a park where everything—from the trees to the trails to the inhabitants—would be meticulously planned to benefit New Yorkers and to promote the city as a global metropolis among the likes of London and Paris. But this vision of Central Park embodied white elite European values, and disagreements about which creatures belonged in the park’s waters and green spaces have often perpetuated systems of oppression.
Illuminating the multispecies story of Central Park from the 1850s to the 1970s, Dawn Day Biehler examines the vibrant and intimately connected lives of humans and nonhuman animals in the park. She reveals stories of grazing sheep, teeming fish, nesting swans, migrating warblers, and escaped bison as well as human New Yorkers’ attempts to reconfigure their relationships to the land and claim spaces for recreation and leisure. Ultimately, Biehler shows how Central Park has always been a place where animals and humans alike have vied for power and belonging.
Click Here to Purchase
by Dawn Biehler
The entangled human and more-than-human histories of one of the world’s iconic urban green spaces
From deer and beavers to “free range” pigs and goats in and around Seneca Village, what we now know as Central Park has long been home to an abundance of animals. In 1858, the city adopted the Greensward Plan and began the long process of reshaping the 843 acres of land into a park where everything—from the trees to the trails to the inhabitants—would be meticulously planned to benefit New Yorkers and to promote the city as a global metropolis among the likes of London and Paris. But this vision of Central Park embodied white elite European values, and disagreements about which creatures belonged in the park’s waters and green spaces have often perpetuated systems of oppression.
Illuminating the multispecies story of Central Park from the 1850s to the 1970s, Dawn Day Biehler examines the vibrant and intimately connected lives of humans and nonhuman animals in the park. She reveals stories of grazing sheep, teeming fish, nesting swans, migrating warblers, and escaped bison as well as human New Yorkers’ attempts to reconfigure their relationships to the land and claim spaces for recreation and leisure. Ultimately, Biehler shows how Central Park has always been a place where animals and humans alike have vied for power and belonging.
Click Here to Purchase
Reviews
"Dawn Biehler's wonderful book Animating Central Park: A Multispecies History reminds us that any complete history of Central Park must necessarily be a more-than-human one. . . . A must-read!" -Cultural Geographies
"Dawn Day Biehler's remarkable debut, Pests in the City: Flies, Bedbugs, Cockroaches, and Rats, set the bar dauntingly high, but Animating Central Park confirms Biehler's place as a leading scholar in animal history, historical geography, and environmental history." -Animal History
"In Animating Central Park, Dawn Biehler brings to life our multispecies urban world, showing us that we have never been able to disentangle our treatment of creatures from our treatment of each other." -Catherine McNeur, author of Mischievous Creatures and Taming Manhattan
"From the bittersweet tale of Flaco the Eurasian eagle owl to the forgotten histories of livestock, wildlife, and even pests that have roamed the park’s grounds, Biehler weaves an intricate tapestry of human-animal interactions that helped shape its multifaceted history. She challenges us to see Central Park anew, not just as a manmade landscape or a masterpiece of art, but as a dynamic ecosystem shaped by the actions, desires, and conflicts of its human and nonhuman inhabitants." -Sara Cedar Miller, author of Before Central Park
"Biehler reveals Central Park as we have never seen it before: alive with animals, humans, and interconnected battles over the uses and meanings of public space. Essential for anyone interested in the history of Central Park, human-animal relationships, and the urban environment." -Andrew Robichaud, author of Animal City: The Domestication of America
Dawn Biehler is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She is a broadly-trained human geographer focusing on social inequalities in urban environmental health, environmental justice, urban and feminist political ecology, urban open space, urban animals, and urban environmental history. She is author of the book Pests in the City: Flies, Bedbugs, Cockroaches, and Rats (University of Washington Press, 2013) and Animating Central Park: A Multispecies History (University of Washington Press, 2024). An affiliate of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, she has been a co-Principal Investigator on the Baltimore Mosquito Study, an interdisciplinary project that examined environmental injustices, disinvested neighborhoods, and mosquito ecologies in West Baltimore from 2012 to 2017.
Additional Resources:
Dawn Biehler is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She is a broadly-trained human geographer focusing on social inequalities in urban environmental health, environmental justice, urban and feminist political ecology, urban open space, urban animals, and urban environmental history. She is author of the book Pests in the City: Flies, Bedbugs, Cockroaches, and Rats (University of Washington Press, 2013) and Animating Central Park: A Multispecies History (University of Washington Press, 2024). An affiliate of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, she has been a co-Principal Investigator on the Baltimore Mosquito Study, an interdisciplinary project that examined environmental injustices, disinvested neighborhoods, and mosquito ecologies in West Baltimore from 2012 to 2017.
Additional Resources:
- Interview with Dr. Miranda Melcher on the New Books Network podcast
- Interview with Dr. Catherine McNeur on the Gotham Center blog
- Q&A with the UW Press blog
- Website about more-than-human geographical connections with Central Park
