The Olmsted Network is thrilled to welcome Salmaan Khan to our board of directors. Khan is a graduate of Fordham University and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and he brings over six years of experience from the Central Park Conservancy.  

As the Vice President for Planning and Research for the Central Park Conservancy, you help ensure your organization’s work remains grounded in the historic context and purpose of Central Park. As the city and park change, why is historic context so important? 

Olmsted and Vaux had a specific vision for the effect Central Park should have on visitors, which was the “single noble purpose” of the Park: to provide a respite from city life for all. In Olmsted’s own words: “The primary purpose of the Park is to provide the best practicable means of healthful recreation for the inhabitants of the city, of all classes… the Park is intended to furnish healthful recreation for the poor and the rich, the young and the old, the vicious and the virtuous, so far as each can partake therein without infringing on the rights of others, and no further.” 

This vision has always been achieved through Central Park’s intentional design and its management: the Park’s design is not important simply because it is beautiful, but because it was ingenious in its successful creation of a work of art that would support a broader social purpose. Central Park’s setting at the center of a densely developed metropolis is its reason for being, and the contrast between the Park and its context was the basis for the design. As the city around it continues to change, the Conservancy’s management of the Park— how it is maintained, talked about, and used— must continue to give agency to this original purpose. 

How were you first introduced to the work of Frederick Law Olmsted?  

I have been working in planning, parks, and preservation my entire career, so I became familiar with Olmsted fairly early on, but my first formal introduction to his work came during my first semester in planning school when we started by studying the Emerald Necklace in Boston. This was really an eye-opening experience— I vividly recall viewing Olmsted’s 1894 plan for the Emerald Necklace, titled “Plan of Portion of Park System from Common to Franklin Park”— which offered a look at what an early comprehensive plan for a verdant public park and open space system could look like. Olmsted’s social vision for what these spaces would provide stuck with me and would inform my interest in Central Park years later. 

You have been in Manhattan much of your adult life— B.A. in history from Fordham University, previously worked at Friends of the High Line— what surprised you most about experiencing Central Park as an employee, as opposed to when you were a visitor? 

Part of Central Park’s beauty is that for such a masterfully and intricately designed landscape that fulfills a bold and forward-thinking mission, it is very easy to take for granted. I have been coming to the Park since I was a child, and for the first nearly three decades of my life, I assumed that the Park was mostly natural, operated simply by the City of New York. The reality, as I have learned first-hand through my work, is far more complex; the most visited public park in the country, it requires significant ongoing care and management and a careful navigation between often competing uses. That, plus learning about the monster that lives in the reservoir. 

Do you have a favorite spot in Central Park? 

Right now, my favorite spot in Central Park is the site of Seneca Village. Before the Park existed, the landscape along what is now the Park’s perimeter from West 82nd to 89th Street was home to a thriving, predominantly African American community known today as Seneca Village. Seneca Village was unique as a relatively prosperous community with high rates of property ownership, which in some cases made the owners eligible to vote. When the City acquired the land for the Park in 1857, its residents were displaced and forgotten. The Seneca Village site is actually one of the least altered parts of Central Park, and the rocks and hills that remain were the literal foundation for the community that was there. The survival and preservation of the original topography and enduring landscape features provides an incredible experience to connect with the past; to experience the landscape as the residents of Seneca Village did. My affinity for this space is also informed by a major initiative we have coming up to engage people with the history of the community, and to start to think through what a permanent commemorative element for Seneca Village in Central Park might look like. 

In a couple of sentences, explain why Olmsted’s parks and principles are still important today. 

One of the most important things I’ve learned about Olmsted is that prior to his work on Central Park, the word park referred to the hunting grounds of European royalty and nobility. The concept of parks as open spaces accessible to all for recreational purposes emerged in Europe and America in the mid-1800s, in response to industrialization and rampant urbanization. Olmsted contributed significantly to an international shift toward an egalitarian vision of parks, which remains just as important today as ever as the world becomes more and more urbanized. His vision of democratic access to public spaces was as important in his day as it is now.