Starting in the year 1870 a new type of public recreation space called “people’s garden” or millet bahçesi started to take root in the Ottoman Empire’s urban centers, from the Balkans to North Africa. These formally landscaped spaces took as their inspiration the Haussmann-era Parisian promenades designed in the “English style.” Proponents of the recreation movement in Europe advocated for the establishment of public parks to give residents of industrializing cities a respite from pollution and overcrowded slums. Calls for the necessity of new public gardens were concurrently being voiced by Ottoman municipal leaders as well as members of Ottoman civic society. Unlike the sprawling Bois de Boulogne or Bois de Vincennes, however, Istanbul’s new parks occupied a much smaller footprint, especially in relation to the city’s plentiful meadows or river banks that were already in use as popular sites of recreation. Ottoman government documents, newspaper articles, and personal memoirs provide documentation of the belief that these new public gardens would promote better public health and hygiene. Yet the establishment of these public gardens were less about giving urban residents much needed access to outdoor recreation and fresh air than about serving as symbols of Istanbul’s modern urban transformation. This paper looks at textual and visual documentation of some of first public gardens built in key Ottoman cities in 1870, and contrasts them to longstanding Ottoman public recreation spaces and their aesthetic lineage. Studying Ottoman urban renewal in the late nineteenth century raises questions about public access, civic engagement, and the health of growing cities and their publics that are still relevant for urban centers caught in the grip of neoliberal transformation today.