History
Thornden Park began as a farm owned by Zebulon Ostrom, who sold it to a wealthy salt miner James P. Haskins around 1850. In 1921 the city purchased the land as part of the nationwide City Beautiful movement and added recreational features such as the ballfields and swimming pool. During the 1960s, however, budget cuts threatened the cleanliness of the park, a threat that was countered by neighborhood initiatives. The 1970s brought the Dutch Elm Disease, which killed approximately 600 elm trees in the park. Maple trees were planted as replacements. The Thornden Park Association was founded in 1983 to advocate for, restore and revitalize the park.
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“Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
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“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)