Birkenhead Park is today (Saturday) hosting a Victorian Day to mark the moment when an important visitor arrived who was so inspired by what he saw that he went on to create New York's famous Central Park.
American farmer Frederick Law Olmsted arrived in Liverpool in May 1850, but quickly developed a fascination with the neighbouring town of Birkenhead. He described as "the most important suburb of Liverpool, having the same relation to it that... Brooklyn has to New York."
But it was the newly-created park which particularly captured his imagination. It was conceived as an an antidote to the poor living conditions commonly found in other rapidly expanding industrial cities of the time. So visionary was it that Birkenhead's park was constructed before most of the town itself – in anticipation of the rapidly growing urban population that was to settle in the town.
