The Great Lawn- Central Park
The Great Lawn= 55 acre field was recently replanted and now is a lush field. It doesn’t have any lines for a specific sport besides some baseball diamonds, so it is a multifunctional sporting fields and hang out spot.
One of the most common uses of this space is a meeting spot for all the teens in the city. It is in a prime location centered in between the west and east sides, so an amalgamation of kids comes from all schools. It’s the place to be seen. If you sit in one spot it is also considered lame. To show your social status one should show ease at moving among circles.
I picked this place as an artifact for NYC private school kids since it not only was a physical location of centrality for all of NYC schooling population, it also is symbolic of the life style and pressures of growing up in the city. It demonstrates what is expected of one socially in terms of attitude, activities, and how you hold ones self. A snippet from the Wall Street Journal while interviewing kids on the green states
“There are few things scarier than private-school kids demanding whether you know who their parents are, and who their parents know.” I think its shows well the attitude of superiority present on the great lawn. This feeling makes ora around the lawn, which in turn encourages expectations to be made on how to be considered socially better than others. It is important to think though, the age of the people included in this description is middle school- high school, the perfect age for judgment on aesthetical values, so this is definitely not limited to NYC but maybe heightened.
GARDNER, Ralph. “The teen place to be seen”. The Wall Street Journal. 21 June 2010.