Venue(s):
Central Park Mall
Conductor(s):
Harvey Bradley Dodworth
Price: Free
Event Type:
Band
Performance Forces:
Instrumental
Status:
Published
Last Updated:
30 April 2020
“The Central park Commissioners announce that, if the weather is fine to-day there will be music on the Mall in the Park, commencing at 4 o’clock, p.m. The following is the programme: [lists program].”
“There was an immense gathering of all sorts of people at the Park yesterday, notwithstanding the threatening state of the weather. In fact, for the thousands who were present at the ‘concert,’ the lowering sky and the occasional showers seemed to have no terrors, and everybody appeared to enjoy himself just as well as though the sun was not hidden by mists and a storm was not momentarily threatening to drench everybody to the skin.
Long before the band commenced to play all the seats under the awnings adjoining the pagoda were occupied by sweltering hundreds, and the common itself, which is common to everybody on Saturday, was literally alive with men, women and children, who spread themselves out on the grass as though they were determined to make the most of the extraordinary privilege and monopolize as much space as possible. . . . Although the music was certainly the attraction par excellence which drew the thousands of visitors together, yet the great majority appeared quite contented to listen to the sweet strains of the instruments wafted on the breeze from a distance, while they roamed in out-of-the-way nooks, where the oppressive heat was not so intense as it made itself felt in the unsheltered places about the pagoda. And everybody knows that there are flirtation paths innumerable in the Park, and shady bowers where lovers most do congregate, not so far away from the common that they can't be reached without a guide, and these were patronized, as they are always patronized, by the sentimentally inclined to an extent which made one of the gray coated policemen stare and wonder 'what was the use o' music after all, if folks don't want to 'ear it.'”