A Clearing In The Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Cent

by Rybczynski, Witold

  A scene in nature is made up of various parts; each part has an individual character and its possible ideal. It is unlikely that accident should bring together the best possible ideals of each separate part, merely considering them as isolated facts, and it is still more unlikely that accident should group a number of these possible ideals in such a way that not only one or two but that all should be harmoniously related one to the other. It is evident, however, that an attempt to accomplish this artificially is not impossible. . . . The result would be a work of art, and the combination of the art thus defined, with the art of architecture in the production of landscape compositions, is what we denominate landscape architecture.

  The Board of Commissioners considered Olmsted and Vaux’s plan for several months. It had state approval to enlarge the boundaries of the park according to Vaux’s proposal, but it had not formally adopted the change, so it took its time making the consequential decision. Meanwhile Olmsted received a letter from Mayor Henry P. Coon of San Francisco, authorizing him to plan a park for the city. In slightly more than a month, he had a preliminary report in the mail.1

  Olmsted called on the city fathers to set their sights high. San Francisco would not remain merely a gold-rush town, he wrote, it would grow into an important city. The park “should be a pleasure-ground second to none in the world.” He conceded that the dry climate of the Bay Area—it did not rain for six months of the year—and the windswept terrain represented a considerable challenge. Under such difficult circumstances, could San Francisco really expect to have a great city park? “I think that it can,” he answered unequivocally.

  The plan for the “public pleasure grounds” had several parts. Olmsted had observed that small gardens did well in protected and well-watered places in San Francisco. He identified a sheltered valley in an undeveloped part of the city near Buena Vista Hill where he situated an intimate park. Roads circled the park, but the main pleasure drive was a four-mile route that he called “the promenade.” The promenade ran for several blocks parallel to Market Street, turned at an angle onto the line of Van Ness Avenue, and continued to the edge of San Francisco Bay. Here Olmsted proposed a plaza, a band pavilion, and a landing quay to serve as the “sea-gate of the city.”

  The first leisure promenades in European cities were on top of abandoned city fortifications. These promenades came to be known as bollevarts, or boulevards, after the German bollwerk (bulwark). Olmsted reversed the historic configuration and depressed the promenade in a trench, twenty feet below ground. The sloped embankments, sheltered from the prevailing east-west winds, were to be heavily planted with a variety of flowering plants, shrubs, and small trees. Along the 152-foot-wide base of this leafy, man-made ravine ran a central pedestrian mall flanked by bridle paths and carriage drives. City streets crossed on bridges and periodically connected to the promenade by ramps. It is difficult to judge something as unprecedented as a sunken linear park; it might have been beautiful—or claustrophobic. But the bold originality of Olmsted’s solution is impressive. Impressive, too, is his foresight. In the next forty years San Francisco would grow from forty thousand to four hundred thousand.

  The city fathers expected a version of Central Park. Instead, they got a plan that reconfigured a large part of the city for what must have seemed to many a distant future. They were unprepared for such an farsighted and expensive venture. Mayor Coon sent Olmsted his consulting fee—five hundred dollars—but advised him that it was unlikely that his proposal would be implemented. “I like the plan myself,” he wrote, “but find at present great opposition to it.” The pleasure garden and the sunken promenade were never built.2

  The unrealized San Francisco pleasure garden does not loom large in Olmsted’s oeuvre, yet it represents a turning point in his career. More was involved here than landscaping; the park and promenade were conceived on the scale of an entire city. The ability to think on a large scale, to project himself into the future, and to quickly master broad issues were skills Olmsted acquired while he was directing the United States Sanitary Commission, managing the Mariposa Estate, and chairing the Yosemite Commission. All these projects depended on his ability to digest and organize large amounts of information, and to integrate diverse requirements. All involved planning in time as well as space. Even Yeoman’s first foray into journalism, which was an attempt to understand an entire region, was a useful preparation for Olmsted’s adopted role of city planner.

  • • • •

  After four months the Prospect Park board appointed Olmsted, Vaux & Co. landscape architects as well as superintendents of the actual construction. The annual fee was eight thousand dollars. Olmsted and Vaux assembled an experienced team: the engineer-in-charge was Joseph P. Davis; his assistants, John Bogart and John Y. Culyer, were both Central Park alumni (Culyer had also worked for the Sanitary Commission); the faithful Edward Miller, who had accompanied Olmsted from California, was appointed assistant architect. For various reasons, none of them was immediately available, so the burden of the initial organization fell on Olmsted. He loved it.

  We have put four hundred men at work and are getting on very nicely. I did not much like the ground at first, but it grows upon me and my enthusiasm and liking for the work is increasing to an inconvenient degree, so that it elbows all other interests out of my mind. When the organization is complete, I shall control this tendency better but at present it is necessary by personal vigilance to make good defects, therefore I give myself up to it. I get very tired every day but it agrees with me & I am in better health than I have been for several years.

  Part of Olmsted’s evident pleasure was due to the degree of managerial freedom he enjoyed. James Stranahan’s methods were not those of Andrew Green. On June 16, 1866, Stranahan called a meeting of the board, and an appropriations bill, based on Olmsted’s estimates, was discussed and passed. Then the commissioners adjourned for the summer, leaving all management decisions in Olmsted’s hands. Earlier that summer, the Olmsted family had moved from Manhattan to Staten Island.3 They rented a house in the town of Clifton, conveniently close to Vanderbilt’s Landing, where the ferries from New York and Brooklyn docked. Olmsted commuted to Brooklyn daily.

  Work began on July 1. By the middle of August, Olmsted had things running smoothly. He and Mary took a three-week vacation. The family spent some time in Ashfield, Massachusetts, at the summer home of Charles Eliot Norton. Norton, who was currently editing the North American Review with James Russell Lowell, and Olmsted had become friends. Another guest was Samuel Bowles, the newspaper editor. From Ashfield, Frederick, Mary, and the children went to Walpole, New Hampshire, to visit Henry Bellows. They traveled north to Franconia Notch in the White Mountains, which Olmsted had last visited with his father, twenty-eight years earlier. It was more crowded than before. “We felt a little cheated of our enjoyment of the mountains by the crowd of infidels—philistines—which occupied them,” he complained in a letter to Norton. They continued their trip by train to the Canadian border and finally reached Quebec City and the nearby object of their northern excursion, the dramatic Montmorency Falls.

  Work on the park proceeded quickly. By the onset of winter, the plaza was graded as well as the first of the three meadows. The bridle paths and carriage drives in the northern part of the park were surveyed and their foundations completed. In their first progress report to the board, submitted on January 1, 1867, Olmsted and Vaux were upbeat. They promised to “enlarge the scale of operations in the Spring, with entire confidence, based upon the experience we have now had, in the ability and zeal with which we shall be sustained, not only by the gentlemen whom we have named [the engineering team], but by all who are engaged in the service of your Board.”

  * * *

  1. The San Francisco plan appears to have been solely Olmsted’s work; the report was signed by him on behalf of Olmsted, Vaux & Co.

  2. Five years later, work began on a city park that did not incorporate any of Olmsted’s proposals; Golden Gate Park, half
a mile wide and more than three miles long, was a larger version of Central Park.

  3. That same summer, Tosomock Farm was—finally—sold. It proved not to have been a poor investment, after all. Bought for thirteen thousand dollars, it sold for more than twenty thousand dollars.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Metropolitan

  SHORTLY AFTER OLMSTED ARRIVED in New York from California, Godkin asked him to become associate editor of his weekly newspaper, now in full swing. Olmsted accepted. Godkin, in turn, was delighted. He informed his stockholders that “[Olmsted’s] reputation is such that his connection with the paper would, I am satisfied, strengthen it with the public, and there is no person whose judgment and sagacity in journalism as in other fields I esteem more highly.”

  As associate editor, Olmsted solicited articles, corresponded with contributors, and set policy. “We go over all the editorial matter together,” wrote Godkin, “so that he is in fact, as well as in name, responsible for all it contains.” Olmsted was listed among the “regular or occasional contributors.” Authors were not identified, so it is difficult to attribute specific articles to Olmsted. A reference in “The Week” to A Journey Through Texas must have originated with him; an editorial titled “The Progress of Horticulture” reads like Olmsted; the slightly cranky “Why Are Our Railroads not Luxurious?” reminds me of his earlier complaints about Southern hotels. Olmsted’s editorial voice—if not, indeed, his pen—was probably responsible for “Health in Great Cities” in the May 11, 1866, issue, as well as an earlier editorial titled “The Future of Great Cities.”

  The Nation—as the paper was called—consisted of thirty-two densely packed pages of reporting, opinion, and criticism, and sold for fifteen cents.1 Each issue began with a section titled “The Week,” which reviewed the national press and commented on the events of the previous seven days. This was followed by editorials, articles, literary notes, poetry, and book reviews. There were several regular features: letters from London and Paris; “The South As It Is,” written by a traveling correspondent obviously inspired by Yeoman; and a “Financial Review” column (preceded by a carefully worded disclaimer). Some of the people who wrote for the journal at this time included Longfellow, Lowell, Henry James, and John Greenleaf Whittier, as well as Norton, Bellows, and Charles Brace. The tone of the self-styled “Weekly Journal of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art” was progressive, bright, opinionated. It was not a runaway commercial success, but it quickly established itself as an influential periodical. “ ‘The Nation’ is a weekly comfort and satisfaction,” Norton wrote Godkin. “I hear nothing but good of it. Emerson . . . spoke to me last week in warmest terms of its excellence, its superiority to any other journal we have or have had.”

  The working capital for The Nation had been raised among forty stockholders. These included fervent abolitionists who became displeased with Godkin and Olmsted’s moderate stance on Reconstruction and threatened to withdraw their support if the editorial direction did not change. In July 1866 Godkin, unable to mollify them and unwilling to alter his politics, took preemptive action. He liquidated the publishing company, raised new funds, and paid off the investors. He then formed a new company with only three owners: himself (holding three-sixths of the shares); the original backer, James Miller McKim (two-sixths); and Olmsted (one-sixth). This placed control of the paper in the hands of the two editors, something advocated by Olmsted. But his tenure as associate editor was short-lived. As the summer wore on and Prospect Park and other work consumed more and more of his time, he withdrew from the world of journalism that he loved so dearly. He did continue as part-owner of the Nation for another five years and remained lifelong friends with Godkin.

  Olmsted still found time for extracurricular activities. In January 1867 he joined several friends, including Howard Potter, to mount an effort to combat a disastrous famine in the Southern states. He had been critical of Southern society, but now that the war was over, he felt a different sense of responsibility. As a member of the executive committee of the Southern Famine Relief Commission, he wrote the reports and used his newspaper contacts to raise public awareness and support. At this time he also learned his plans for Yo Semite had been sabotaged. He had left a copy of the final report with his fellow commissioners, who were to submit it to the governor. Without informing Olmsted, they decided that his recommendations were too expensive and shelved the report. He resigned in disgust.

  • • • •

  The Nation carried several pages of advertisements. Next to William Bradbury’s Pianos and B. T. Babbit’s medicinal Saleratus was the following announcement:

  Olmsted, Vaux & Co.,

  LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS.

  The undersigned have associated under the above title for the business of furnishing advice on all matters of location, and Designs and Superintendence for Buildings and Grounds and other Architectural and Engineering Works, including the Laying-out of Towns, Villages, Parks, Cemeteries, and Gardens.

  FRED. LAW OLMSTED,

  CALVERT VAUX,

  FRED’K C. WITHERS.

  Towns, villages, parks—an ambitious range of services. In fact, the business of Olmsted, Vaux & Co. included all this. The firm undertook a dozen large commissions during its first two years of operation. The plans for the College of California were completed although work did not begin immediately (a few years later the college ran into financial difficulties and the Berkeley site was transferred to the newly established University of California, which did not adopt the design). Olmsted and Vaux drew up campus plans for the new Massachusetts Agricultural College in Amherst and designed a layout for a residential subdivision in Long Branch, New Jersey. They prepared preliminary reports for major parks in Newark and Philadelphia. But Prospect Park consumed their greatest energy. In the report that accompanied their initial plan, Olmsted and Vaux spelled out the range of their ambition:

  We regard Brooklyn as an integral part of what to-day is the metropolis of the nation, and in the future will be the centre of exchanges for the world, and the park in Brooklyn, as part of a system of grounds, of which the Central Park is a single feature, designed for the recreation of the whole people of the metropolis and their customers and guests from all parts of the world for centuries to come.

  This struck a chord with James Stranahan, the president of the board. An exceptionally farsighted individual, he would, a few years later, be one of the prime movers behind the Brooklyn Bridge. He would also serve as vice president of the commission that led to the creation of Greater New York. He encouraged Olmsted and Vaux to expand the scope of their planning and examine how streets leading to the park could be improved. In their second annual report they concluded that it would be expensive for the city to widen streets in the already occupied areas west and north of the park, but that such improvements could economically be undertaken on unbuilt suburban land. Even if an approach road were not built immediately, they observed, “the ground might be secured and the city map modified with reference to its construction in the future.” This suggestion intrigued Stranahan and the board. Public meetings were held. A topographic survey was made. Olmsted and Vaux were requested to prepare more detailed studies.

  Their next report (1868) began by arguing that the chief advantage of Brooklyn was its capacity to grow. “The city of New York is, in regard to building space, in the condition of a walled town,” they wrote. “Brooklyn is New York outside the walls.” They foretold a change in the functional organization of the city: a greater separation between the center, which would be devoted to business, and the residential neighborhoods in the suburbs. This peripheral growth would make access to the countryside difficult, increasing the need for recreational space within the city.

  The report observed that “the present street system, not only of Brooklyn but of other large towns, has serious defects for which, sooner or later, if these towns should continue to advance in wealth, remedies must be devised, the cost of which will be extravagantly i
ncreased by a long delay in the determination of the outlines.” The chief drawback, according to Olmsted, was the undifferentiated grid plan with its network of intersecting, uniform streets. He had already spelled out his opposition to this characteristic nineteenth-century device in his report on San Francisco. “On a level plain, like the city of Philadelphia, a series of streets at right-angles to each other is perfectly feasible, and the design is as simple in execution as it appears on paper,” he had written, “but even where the circumstances of site are favorable [emphasis added] for this formal and repetitive arrangement, it presents a dull and inartistic appearance, and in such a hilly position as that of San Francisco, it is very inappropriate.”

  Olmsted and Vaux proposed modifying the grid. Their solution was a new kind a street, part avenue and part green space. They called it a “Parkway.” The parkway was a 260-foot-wide avenue divided into five traffic lanes, each separated by a row of trees. The two outside lanes were reserved for commercial vehicles and gave access to the residential lots facing the parkway; the central carriageway was reserved for recreational traffic. Between the carriageway and the service roads were shaded pedestrian malls. Olmsted and Vaux also proposed that the next streets on each side of the parkway be widened to one hundred feet. These streets would be planted with double rows of trees so that “the house lots of these streets will be but little inferior to those immediately facing the Parkway.” In the rear of these lots they introduced a service lane, “convenient sites for stables being thus provided.” In total, this arrangement cut a 1,400-foot-wide green swath through the dense city.