Articles on Central Park Concerts

“Saturday afternoon concerts are a good and ‘big thing,’ to be sure, although, I never had the delectable opportunity of attending any one of them; but they are of no avail to a large class, of whom I am one, who cannot find leisure from business, even on Saturday afternoons, at 4 o’clock, ‘if the weather is fine,’ to attend them.

          The fact of it is, Dodworth’s fine programme rendered on the Mall on Saturday afternoons, is almost entirely monopolized by the ‘upper ten,’ who have plenty of money and leisure; while many of those who are engaged through the day, cannot enjoy them, because they take place at an hour when they cannot be spared from their business.

          Whether the experience of last year demonstrated Wednesday evening concerts, ‘by moonlight,’ to be failures I do not know; but if it did not, and the cost is the only reason they are not had, let those who have the matter in charge review their penurious determination, and have the Wednesday evening concerts ‘by moonlight’ instanter [sic].

          This, it seems to me, is a duty they owe to a large class of men and women who have other matters of mere dress and fashionable dissipation to think of; also a duty they owe to hundreds of business men, who, though staid and blessed with plenty, can not tear themselves away from business to attend a concert on the mall, at 4 o’clock on Saturday, P.M.

          And now when the mercury ranges in the 90’s, and the streets are redolent with decay, when news of the cholera reaches us from the East, filling us with apprehension, and when the physical energies languish and the agency of good air is needed to revive the wasted system, let not the benefit which would arise from the Wednesday evening concerts be withheld.  Let the money be forthcoming, the arrangements be made with Dodworth, ‘or any other man;’ and let ‘moonshine, love and music’ run rampant on the mall on Wednesday eves, as fashion and elegance do on Saturday afternoons.

          For the sake of suffering, enerpated [sic] and super-heated humanity, let us have Wednesday evening’s concert ‘by moonlight.’  R. S. W.”

“Your correspondent . . . says that he never had an opportunity of attending an afternoon concert, and then remarks that they are ‘almost entirely monopolized by the Upper Ten.’  Now, if he never was there how does he know what kind of people are attracted thither?  The fact is that the ‘Upper Ten’ are not found there at all, but thousands of the ‘plain people’ and their children, the best behaved and most thoroughly democratic crowd I ever saw on such occasions.  I do not believe that there are ‘thousands of business men, blessed with plenty,’ who cannot afford twelve Saturdays in the dullest time of the year, to ‘attend a concert on the Mall’ at 4 P.M. . . . I deprecate the introduction of ‘moonlight concerts,’ unless the police force be increased an hundred fold.”