In his lifetime, Andrew Haswell Green was known as ‘the Father of Greater New York’, but today he’s barely known at all. Novelist Jonathan Lee discovered Green when happening upon a bench dedicated to his memory in a quiet corner of Central Park, and decided to use his remarkable life and mysterious death as the basis for a novel: The Great Mistake.
With Jonathan’s help, we’ve put together this digital walking tour of Andrew Haswell Green’s New York, taking in many of the institutions and landmarks on which he made his mark (or which made a mark on him).
Locate Green’s bench on the map to hear Jonathan read from The Great Mistake and share how he came to write it.
The Great Mistake
Jonathan Lee
The ‘Father of Greater New York’ is dead. Shot outside his Park Avenue mansion in the year of our Lord, 1903. In the hour of his death, will the truth of his life finally break free?
Born to a struggling farming family in 1820, Andrew Haswell Green was a self-made man who reshaped Manhattan, built Central Park and turned New York into a modern metropolis. Now, at eighty-three, when he thought the world could hold no more surprises, he is murdered. As the detective assigned to the case traces his ghost across the city, other spectres appear: a wealthy courtesan; a broken-hearted man in a bowler hat; and an ambitious politician, Samuel, whose lifelong friendship was a source of joy and frustration.
