It has been more than 200 years since the Square was established as the core of Mansfield’s downtown, and during that time it has gone through many stages of appearance.
The period when it was most photographed—1852 to 1958—was the era when it stood as a shady grove of trees, like an island in the city’s sea of commerce. In 1852 the area was fenced off and protected as a civic green space called Central Park, and that’s when the trees were planted and the lawn encouraged. In 1958, Central Park was cut in half in order to accommodate asphalt and traffic.
These three photographs were taken in the time period between those two Central Park milestones.
