Wild City by Thomas Hynes

Author:Thomas Hynes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-03-25T00:00:00+00:00

Sheep

Latin Name

* * *

Ovis aries

Collective Noun

* * *

a flock of sheep

St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the original one south of Houston Street, opened its doors in 1815. Previously, the area around the church had been farmland, as had been most of Manhattan. As the city grew, however, it became increasingly difficult for Manhattan farmers to keep their pigs, cows, and sheep. Incidentally, the city’s rapid urbanization eventually led to the creation of Central Park in 1858, a green ward, lungs for the city. It was a manufactured sylvan oasis, meant to replicate the natural order that so recently had been displaced by the city’s growth.

Central Park was an instant success, and initially, sheep were given a chance to remain in Manhattan as its groundskeepers. (The other farm animals, particularly the pigs, had to go.) For over fifty years, sheep roamed Central Park, specifically in the appropriately named Sheep Meadow. Out in Brooklyn, Prospect Park had sheep too.

The sight of sheep and honest-to-god shepherds, along with their dogs, cast a pastoral spell over the otherwise crowded and usually polluted city. Plus, they kept the lawns cut and fertilized naturally.

Central Park’s sheep were eventually evicted in 1934 by Robert Moses, the legendary parks commissioner and “master builder,” who, through the creation of public authorities, wielded incredible power in New York City for nearly half a century, despite never actually being elected to any office. Moses was famously indifferent to the humans he displaced and relocated all around the city. It stands to reason he showed equal concern for the opinions of the livestock he uprooted. The Manhattan sheep were not slaughtered; instead, they were relocated to Brooklyn where they were joined with the Prospect Park flock. But this arrangement didn’t last long. The next year, this newly combined Brooklyn flock would be removed from its park, for reasons not entirely clear. There’s some suggestion that the cash-strapped city couldn’t maintain a flock of sheep during the Depression. Another theory says that park officials feared the sheep would be captured and eaten by hungry and desperate Brooklynites. In any event, like so many pet dogs, the landscaping sheep were moved to a farm upstate to live happily ever after. Or that’s the story, anyway.

Either way, the sheep went away. The country went off to war, and afterward, its cities, most notably New York, generally went to shit. By the 1970s, it was hard to imagine sheep ever having lived in the city’s parks, because it was hard to imagine anything living there.

Happily, all that has changed. New Yorkers stood up for their parks, and as a result, the city and its open spaces have never been better (though the sheep have still not been hired back by the Parks Department).

Sheep have found part-time employment, however, back down in SoHo, on the former farmland that became the first St. Patrick’s Cathedral. They come for about two months every summer, usually in August and September, right around the Feast of San Gennaro. They eat the grass in

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