Author: Nat Harvie

Cabin at Walden Pond (1845): Performative Dwelling, Freedom Aestheticised, and the Fetishization of Poverty

Post author By Nat Harvie
Post date April 1, 2021
No Comments on Cabin at Walden Pond (1845): Performative Dwelling, Freedom Aestheticised, and the Fetishization of Poverty

From July 1845 to September 1857, Henry David Thoreau lived in a small, self-built, single room cabin. It stood beside Walden Pond on the property of Ralph Waldo Emerson, just outside of Concord Massachusetts within the territory of the Pennacook Nation. The structure itself was extremely simple, occupying a ten by fifteen foot footprint with […]

Garden/park/landscape North America Race Settler colonialism

Central Park, 1858: “Public” Space and Black Land Dispossession in Antebellum New York

Post author By Nat Harvie
Post date February 16, 2021
No Comments on Central Park, 1858: “Public” Space and Black Land Dispossession in Antebellum New York

In 1857, Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux won the design competition for New York’s iconic Central Park with their “Greensward Plan”. This design carried a pastoral vision and the stated intent to “supply to the hundreds of thousands of tired workers,who have no opportunity to spend their summers in the country, a specimen of […]