Whig candidate for Mayor of New York. Kingsland had little political experience and had not previously held elective office. His nomination was part of a concerted initiative undertaken by New York’s business community to mobilize behind a “Union ticket” promoting the Compromise of 1850 as critical to New York’s future prosperity. New Yorkers’ apprehensions about the nation’s growing disunity, and Kingsland’s high standing contrasted with doubts about the integrity of his Democratic opponent, Fernando Wood, contributed to Kingsland’s election by almost 4,000 votes over Wood. Mayor Kingsland's proposal for a Park "on a scale . . . worthy of the City" Since the mid-1840s, articles and editorials had promoted a “great park” in uptown Manhattan, to remedy the inadequacy of Manhattan’s oppressed collection of small downtown parks; to preserve a large swath of greenspace for health and recreation before the opportunity was lost to imminent uptown development; to create a park that would put New York on a par with elegant European cities and their great parks. Both candidates in the 1850 mayoral elections voiced the need for such a park. On May 5, 1851, Mayor Kingsland sent to the Common Council a message setting forth the necessity and benefits of a large uptown park, proposing that a sum be appropriated to procure a park "of sufficient magnitude" to "become the favorite resort of all classes", that "the establishment of such a park would be a lasting monument to the wisdom . . .of its founders". Kingsland's proposal was the first official step in a tortuous two-year process leading to the State legislation that authorized the creation of Central Park. The proposal, that public monies be appropriated to create a large urban park, was a conceptual novelty. Its eventual outcome – the expenditure of nearly $15 million(about five times the entire city’s 1851 budget), including the purchase of 760 acres out of one of the nation’s most expensive urban real estate markets, to create the nation’s first large landscaped public park, was revolutionary. Kingsland’s proposal did not specify a location, other than that it should be "in the northern section of the island". Ever since William Cullen Bryant’s seminal 1844 Evening Post editorial, calling for "a new park", suggested the 160-acre Jones Wood (situated on the East River between 66th and 75th streets), subsequent new park advocates formed a consensus around Jones Wood as the best site for such a