The higher social and artistic elements of every man’s nature lie dormant within him, and every laborer is a possible gentleman, not by the possession of money or fine clothes, but through the refining influence of intellectual and moral culture. Open wide, therefore, the doors of your libraries and picture galleries, all ye true republicans! Build halls where knowledge shall be freely diffused among men, and not shut up within the narrow walls of narrower institutions. Plan spacious parks in your cities, and unloose their gates as wide as the gates of morning to the whole people.
Andrew Jackson Downing, “The New-York Park”, Horticulturalist 6, no. 8 (August 1851), pg. 345–349.
http://viewshed.matinic.us/2011/03/21/212/