Renamed in honor of Marcus Garvey in 1973, the park was built largely as a green space for Boss Tweed's Tammany Hall cronies, many of whom lived uptown by the 1860s. The land for the park had been purchased by the city in 1839, but landscaping was long delayed. Its design was eventually supervised by Ignaz A. Pilat, who would later serve as an able associate of Frederick Law Olmsted during the creation of Central Park.