Early financial security enabled a rare civic turn in a New York Jewish businessman

Evidence

By the time he was fifty, Bernhard, security assured, was leaving business affairs largely in Samuel’s hands and taking an interest, unusual among Jewish businessmen in New York in the 1870’s, in civic affairs. Becoming convinced of slum residents’ need for more “breathing space,” he launched a successful campaign to persuade the city fathers, who were not at all sure that they hadn’t already made a gigantic mistake by removing a huge hunk of land from the tax rolls to create Central Park, to set aside other, smaller areas for more parks. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 113

Categorization

• SHARE: Bernhard Cohen’s mid-1870s parks campaign is a curiosity worth flagging for someone interested in New York’s park history, coming so soon after Central Park’s controversial creation.
• XREF: connects to: Landed wealth freed some Jewish immigrants from the relentless pursuit of money — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 113