100, With Charm Intact

When New York City bought 840 acres of private property in 1856 for $5.5 million, the city hired two of the country’s most brilliant landscape architects, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Valix, to draw up the master plan for the lakes, ponds, rolling terraces, walks and playgrounds that became Central Park.

When Col. Griffith J. Griffith offered 3,015 acres to Los Angeles 40 years later, the city’s reaction was less enthusiastic. City leaders took two years to accept what one newspaper called Griffith’s “rock pile.” They finally took the gift not to build Griffith’s “accessible and attractive resort” but to excavate its sand and gravel, log its trees and turn riverfront into aqueduct.

Nevertheless, the park, celebrating its 100th anniversary this week, has thrived, in part because of the spontaneous enthusiasm of Angelenos like Amir Dialameh, an Iranian immigrant, who over 24 years used his pick and shovel to transform a park ridge devastated by a 1970 brush fire into a lush, tree-shaded garden. Dialameh still visits “Amir’s Garden” almost daily to water its thousands of plants.

Griffith Park has its problems: While crime there is down from 1989, when six bodies turned up over one 15-day period, it is under-patrolled and suffers its share of prostitution and gang activity. But while the park would benefit from more law enforcement, too much civic intervention could kill the open spirit that has enabled it to thrive and adjust to the needs of a changing, growing population. Amir’s Garden could not be truer to Griffith’s founding wish that the park remain accessible to “the rank and file . . . of all creeds, races and colors.”