Most credit for Central Park goes to its designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, but what about the 3,000-some men who "laboriously remodeled every feature of the rugged landscape?" The laborers were Irish, German, and Italian transients who were drawn from the "poorest, or what is generally considered the most dangerous, class of the great city's population." The bearers of the back-breaking labor were paid about one dollar a day. Consider that the next time you're lounging on the Great Lawn. [ENY; previously]
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