Activity 7, Mousumi Haider

The Greenacre Park
Have you ever heard about Greenacre Park? I never did. When this activity was given to us, I choose the Greenacre Park because I liked the name. Although I wasn’t sure the Greenacre Park was located but I was excited to check out a new place. As not knowing where is Greenacre Park, I google search the location. Surprisingly, The Greenacre Park is located in Midtown Manhattan, on East 51st Street between Second and Third Avenues. It is very close by Hunter College. If you like walking, the park is around the corner. Greenacre Park might be new to some of us, but the park opened 1971 and has been maintaining it since.
I went inside the park amazed by the quite atmosphere. First, I sat upper label because I wanted to look at people. I went there around 6pm which is after office hour. That day, 2 or 3 tables were fill number of people but most people where alone. There were mostly elderly people with coffee and others were having their snacks. There is also a café, where you can buy coffee, sandwiches. I had coffee which was good and the price for food is reasonable. In Greenacre Park, there are movable chairs and tables so people can be comfortable and can have some control over where they sit. “The possibility of choice is as important as the exercise of it. If you know you can move if you want to, you feel more comfortable staying put. This is why, perhaps, people so often move a chair a few inches this way and that before sitting in it, with the chair ending up about where it was in the first place. The moves are functional, however. They are a declaration of autonomy, to oneself, and rather satisfying” (Whyte, William. The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, Pg 35).
The Greenacre Park consider as good public space. So, here my question comes. If Greenacre Park is a public space, why we are not allowed to take pictures? I was taking pictures of the fall in the Greenacre Park. I got one or two photos when a guy (I think, he works in the café) comes up to me and told me not to take pictures. I informed him, I was taking picture for my class project. He said, “It doesn’t matter”. If it is a public space, why there isn’t any permission to take pictures?