Garden History

and Landscape Studies

at the Bard Graduate Center

Volume ıı | Number ıı | Spring/Summer 2005

director Peter Minuit made his famous bargain purchase of Letter from the Editor The Changing Landscape Island from the Native Americans who hunted, of fished, and traded there. As Adriana Van Zwieten points out in her 2001 doctoral dissertation “A Little Land to Sow Some Seeds”: he word landscape the ways in which cities and utch settlers and their masters, the owners of the West Real Property, Custom, and Law in the Community of New is commonly used their environs are being con- India Company, which had in 1621 been granted a Amsterdam, Minuit’s purchase signaled policies entirely foreign in reference to tinually transformed by charter from the States General of the Republic of the to the sellers but important to the settlers and their descendants , rural social, economic, and cultural United Provinces to claim for their expansive com- down to the present: namely, the recognition of property rights Tscenery, or social forces. This past fall, some Dmercial empire the northeastern Atlantic seaboard and the transfer of landownership according to commercial and domestic spaces such as recently designed parks in between the Fresh () River and the South (Delaware) transaction. Ever since, Lower Manhattan’s real estate has gener- parks and gardens – plant- Lower Manhattan served as River, could not in their most ambitious dreams have imagined ated a number of private fortunes. dominated places for the opportunities for field study the landscape of Lower Manhattan today nor the technology that The seventeenth-century character of the mother city of most part. We often forget in Professor Erik de Jong’s created it. But commerce, the economic engine that has defined Amsterdam as a multiethnic that great technologically dri- “Reading the Landscape” it all these years, they well understood. With its ample bay at the bourgeois capital of great rich- Left: Niew Amsterdam of Nue ven cities are just as much a continued on page 2 confluence of two navigable rivers, a more fortunate site for a es gained from seafaring trade Nieuw lorx opt ’T Eylant Man[hat- part of nature as any other future port metropolis could not have been chosen. continued on page 3 tan] (New Amsterdam, now New landscape. The complexity of In 1626, after a committee of the West India Company had York off the Island of Manhattan). their contents and the rela- assessed the potential of two other locations, the New Amsterdam Below: The same view today. tionship of their parts to one another are what make them so interesting to historians, especially those who seek to trace the ways in which the physical city both resists and embraces change through time. The first-year survey course for Garden History and Landscape Studies stu- dents at the Bard Graduate Center deals with urban and regional planning as forms of landscape design. It examines

1 class. This part of Calendar May 13 – August 14, 2005 tural, stylistic, and functional Victoria. Two scholarly paper response to contemporary is a particularly fertile area for Glasshouses: The variations. It will also record sessions will be devoted to existential problems, how such attention as more build- Architecture of Light and Air the history of botany, horticul- new research in landscape their owners and visitors have ing and rebuilding of public An exhibition of more than ture, and plant collecting as history. The ten topics includ- responded to these gardens, spaces are happening here Exhibits three centuries of evolving global travel, trade, and explo- ed will range from “Islamic and how garden artists/ now than in many years. architecture, social class and ration grew rapidly. Gardens in India” to designers are continuing to Since the tragedy of February 2 – March 15 style, horticulture, and plant “Eighteenth-Century English creatively confront emerging Location: New York Botanical September 11, 2001, the Twenty-fifth Anniversary collecting. Gardens” and from “The cultural or social issues with Garden: LuEsther T. Mertz reconfiguration of Lower of the Conser- Curated by Social Agenda of Women the invention of new garden Therese Library, William D. Rondina Manhattan has been much vancy “Central Park ., associate Landscape Architects” to types. Most presentations will O’Malley, Ph.D and Giovanni Foroni LoFaro discussed in the press, pro- Conservancy: Celebrating dean at the Center for “The Tennessee Valley and be centered on a single artist. Gallery. (Gallery open moting an unprecedented but Central Park’s 25-Year Advanced Study in the Visual the Rhetoric of Planning.” In On the day prior to the open- Tuesday through Sunday welcomed interest in architec- Transformation.” Arts at the National Gallery addition, a meeting of the ing of the symposium, The exhibit celebrates the from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.) ture and urban planning. of Art in Washington, D.C., newly reconstituted Land- Dumbarton and the achievement of Central Park’s Unfortunately, that interest and current president of scape Chapter of the Society Botanic Garden restoration by the Conser- has centered almost exclu- the Society of Architectural Conferences of Architectural Historians will host an event at the vancy from 1980 to 2005 sively on the sixteen acres of Historians, “Glasshouses: chaired by Marc Treib will National Arboretum at which with seventy images of park- April 6 – 10, 2005 Ground Zero. In this issue of The Architecture of Light and provide an opportunity for participants will meet some wide projects. These include Annual Meeting of the Viewpoints we wish to widen Air,” will feature more than landscape and garden histori- of the garden creators who before-and-after photographs Society of Architectural the lens of landscape vision to three centuries of glasshouse ans to meet one another. will not be giving presenta- of the park’s meadows, Historians include everything from City evolution and history. It will One of the many themes For an informational tions during the symposium. water bodies, gardens, play- Hall to and from display drawings, prints, of the meeting in Vancouver brochure and registration A picnic on the Arboretum grounds, woodlands, build- the East River to the Hudson paintings, photographs, and will be the architecture, materials, please visit the grounds will follow. ings, bridges, statues and River and the New York illustrated books, many from urbanism, and landscapes of SAH website at www.sah.org. For further information rustic details. The exhibit fea- Harbor, which is the reason the extensive collections of the city. Study tours will If you would like to receive a and registration visit tures park furniture, utilities, for the city’s being located the library itself, including examine landscape and gar- copy of the meeting brochure [email protected]. and sculpture restorations. here in the first place. botanical illustrations of den traditions in a coastal/ by mail, please call the SAH or contact: From its Dutch colonial Location: Urban Center glasshouse plants such as mountain setting. Partic- office at (312)573-1365 or Garden & Landscape Studies inception, Lower Manhattan Gallery, Municipal Art camellias, palms, ferns, ipants will be able to visit the email SAH at [email protected]. 1703 32nd Street NW has been inscribed with more Society, 457 Madison Ave. pineapples, and oranges. It gardens of Cornelia Hahn Washington, DC 20007 Location: Fairmont Hotel, human dreams and drive will cover the structural and Oberlander in Vancouver and (202) 339-6460 Vancouver than perhaps any other land- technological history of the Butchart Gardens in scape in the world. Its natural glasshouses, primarily in May 4 – 7, 2005 site is incomparable. Its Europe, illustrating architec- Dumbarton Oaks and the rapid, dynamic, and continual United States Botanic metamorphosis is unparal- Garden Present: Existence leled. Today the rebirth of and Experience in ’s birthplace is Contemporary Garden being nurtured by many peo- Design ple who are far less celebrated A three-day symposium yet ultimately more important exploring how contemporary perhaps than the competitors gardens have been created in for the highly publicized design commissions at Forcing Garden, in Winter Ground Zero. Theirs is the Hand-colored aquatint story we wish to tell here. Humphrey Repton (1752-1818) in Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening : Printed by T. Bensely 2 & Son for J. Taylor, 1816 on the library committee of Contributors the Horticultural Society of New York, and is the author of Grounds for Pleasure: Four Mac Keith Griswold, a jour- Centuries of the American nalist and garden historian, is Garden (Harry N. Abrams, director of archival research Inc., 2002). at the Sylvester Manor Project, Shelter Island, NY, Melanie Simo is a historian of where the papers date to the art and landscape who has earliest European coloniza- held teaching positions at the tion of America. Griswold has Harvard Design School, taught landscape and garden School of history at Sarah Lawrence Design, and Carnegie Mellon College, where she was recipi- University. She is the author ent of the Noble Chair in Art of several books on landscape and Cultural History, and has history, including Loudon & lectured on gardens and land- the Landscape: From Country scape as cultural history at Seat to Metropolis, 1783-1843 the School of Environmental ( Press, 1989), Design, University of Invisible Gardens: Search for Georgia; The New York Modernism in the American Botanical Garden; and the Landscape (with Peter Walker. School of Environmental MIT Press, 1996), and Forest Design, University of & Garden: Traces of Wildness Pennsylvania. The author of in a Modernizing Land, 1897- three books of garden history, 1949 (University of Virginia she is currently at work on a Press, 2003). A companion fourth, Rediscovering Sylvester volume, Literature of Place: Manor, a Seventeenth-Century Dwelling on the Land Before Slave Plantation on Long Earth Day 1970, is in press. Island (Houghton Mifflin Company), which will be pub- Marc Treib is Professor of lished in 2006. Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. His gave the infant colony – a hud- Redraft of the Castello Plan New Amsterdam’s increasingly prosperous merchant elite to Denise Otis is an indepen- most recent book is Noguchi dle of thirty bark houses – a (Afbeelding Van De Stadt form institutions of self-government and to further institutional- dent writer and editor. She in Paris: The Unesco Garden commercial purpose from the Amsterdam in Nieuw Neederlandt), ize the capitalization of land. holds a B.A. in History and (William Stout Publishers, start. Unlike its rival British 1908, after original pen-and-ink The view of New Amsterdam around 1650 in a watercolor Literature from Radcliffe 2003). colonies of and watercolor drawing of 1665-70. Date drawing found in the Royal Archives in The Hague depicts the College, and was for many Virginia, its cultural complex- depicted: 1660. East River waterfront as seen from Nut (now Governors) Island years an editor at House & ion was more urban than agri- (see page 1). A tall crane dominates the foreground, and beside Garden magazine. She serves culture-based. Initially, landownership in Nieuw Amsterdam it we see what was probably a weighing beam (thought by some was vested in the company; however, freemen (those who paid to represent a gallows). Within the walls of the fort stand the their own seaboard passage or who had fulfilled the term of Governor’s Mansion made of brick, the church built in stone, their company contracts) could claim and transfer by sale and a wooden barracks. At the far right is the tavern, which was parcels of land that they had settled. Then, in 1653, in spite of ownership privileges asserted by the West India proprietors, the city fathers in Amsterdam granted to the colonists a city charter, giving certain democratic powers to the colonists, which allowed 3 converted into the State House (City Hall) after the promulga- which extends along the and East Village up to tion of the 1653 Charter, the same year that the wall (now com- 14th Street. memorated in the alignment and name Wall Street) was built. The renewal of thirteen small, publicly owned parcels scat- By 1660, the year depicted in the redraft from the I. N. tered across Lower Manhattan, including Bowling Green, Phelps Stokes collection of the Castello Plan (so named because the city’s first park, is being funded with a $25 million grant the original, based on a drawing by an unknown artist of an ear- from the federal government to the Lower Manhattan lier one by the surveyor Jacques Cortelyou, is preserved in the Development Corporation, which was created by the New York archive of the Castello in Florence), clearly urbanity was State Legislature in the wake of the attack of September 11, ascendant. In this remarkable view of New Amsterdam just 2001. Heeding Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s directive to accom- prior to the British takeover, the harbor is filled with merchant plish this work within a year, Commissioner Adrian Benepe vessels and local trading craft. The town has grown to a popula- short-circuited the process whereby outside landscape architects tion of 2,500, and the recently enfranchised colonists have made are selected to design city-funded projects. Instead, he had numerous public improvements, notably the digging of a canal Deputy Commissioner Amy Freitag assign several Parks for transporting goods into the heart of the settlement (the Department staff landscape architects to complete designs in model for transport by canal was derived from old Amsterdam) record time using materials that could be bid as a package and the construction of a bulkhead and docks on the waterfront. rather than individually for each park. The canal lies in the middle of Broad Street and has a narrow One of the newly created parks, Drumgoole Plaza, was perpendicular subsidiary arm running down Beaver Street. designed by Steven Whitesell, a landscape architect now Lively traffic passes by the fifty-one houses facing Heere Strraet Saratoga Associates’ $8.5 mil- Warrie Price, the president of the enrolled in the Bard Graduate Center’s program in Garden (our ), and a handsome new city hall has replaced the lion, 8.75-acre Bosque. It will Battery Park Conservancy beside History and Landscape Studies. Previously, its remarkably inhos- temporary one housed in the former tavern. What strikes the contain planting beds by the one of the Harbor Promenade pitable site, a strip of no-man’s-land overshadowed by the giant viewer most, however, is the apparent greenness of the city. noted Dutch garden designer planting beds by Dutch plantsman steel supports for the approach ramp to the Bridge, House lots all have gardens – mostly vegetable but several orna- Piet Oudolf, who also is and garden designer Piet Oudolf. was used for parking. Now, hardy, vigorous-growing, shade-toler- mental ones as well. Trees are planted along property lines, and responsible for the linear plant- ant plants with light-colored foliage – golden black locust on larger tracts of land there are orchards. ing beds that line the Conservancy’s graceful redesign of the (Robinia pseudoacacia ‘Frisia’), gold-variegated Japanese angelica Fast-forward to today, 340 years after the Castello Plan was Harbor Promenade. Partially funded is a new $60 million exhi- (Aralia elata ‘Aureovariegata’), golden barberry (Berberis thungergii drawn. Lodged in the canyons of Lower Manhattan is a scatter- bition and performing space that will occupy a restored and deli- ‘Gold Nugget’), and other yellow-leaved shrubs and grasses – ing of tiny triangles created where the awkward juncture of old cately expanded , one of the city’s most historic mitigate the gloom of its almost sunless location. With benches pregrid-plan Manhattan streets left parcels of land too small for structures (it has sequentially served as fort, concert hall, immi- and a curvilinear swath of simulated brick-asphalt paving run- developers to build on. Designed to serve as small parks, these gration center, aquarium, and National Park Services visitor cen- ning down its center, Drumgoole Plaza has begun to attract visi- are the only remaining fragments of Lower Manhattan’s old ter for tourists bound for Ellis Island and the ). tors and no longer seems forbiddingly derelict. green townscape. Along with infilling the old slips, previous Price’s dream is for the city to enlarge the park by acquiring Nearby, at Hanover Square, another of the small triangular generations of New York City developers swelled the girth of the land to the east, now occupied by U.S. Coast Guard (with the parcels that punctuate the Lower Manhattan streetscape, the Lower Manhattan by adding landfill for additional streets. Later, evacuation of the Coast Guard station from nearby Governors British Memorial Trust has begun construction of a $3.5 million engineers added more landfill for Manhattan’s twentieth-century Island, its onshore administrative building has lost its principal garden honoring the sixty-seven victims who perished in shoreline-hugging highways. Now, with the relocation of the reason for being in this location). This would be the first step the World Trade Center disaster. Its design is the result of an city’s port activities to and New Jersey, this water- toward creating a continuous pedestrian linkage via Battery Park invitational competition won by the British landscape architects front is being transformed into a chain of parks. between the East River shoreline and the series of promenades Julian and Isabel Bannerman, who are perhaps best known for ’s handsome public art-studded, 1.2-mile- now edging the Hudson. their work for Prince Charles and other members of the royal long waterfront promenade was begun in the 1980s in conjunc- Along the East River there are more structural impediments family. A jury of public art experts, including Therese O’Malley, tion with the World Financial Center and a cluster of new to waterfront regreening than along the Hudson. In addition, landscape historian and current president of the Society of residential apartments built on landfill created by spoil excavated the roadbed of the FDR Drive crowds the water’s edge. But Architectural Historians, selected the artist Anish Kapoor to for the footings of the nearby World Trade Center. It is now urban designers are coming up with imaginative ideas for cir- create the twenty-foot-high black granite sculpture to honor the joined on the north by 550-acre , whose 150- cumnavigating the choke-point at the Battery Marine Terminal unity of the United States and the United Kingdom, which will acre land-and-pier deck is a landscape in progress, and on the in order to carry a proposed stretch of waterfront parkland to the replace the over-life-size bronze statue of Abraham De Peyster, south by historic 23-acre Battery Park. There, the Battery South Street Seaport and then further north to , a Dutch colonial merchant and prominent city official (the De Conservancy led by urban visionary Warrie Price is exchanging Peyster statue is being moved to ). Kapoor’s sober seedy decrepitude for landscape beauty with the installation of monument of polished stone will stand in bold contrast to the

4 Bannermans’ English Country House-style landscape composed conceals from one another the rolling lawn for picnicking response to the selected memorial design can best be described of a sinuous water rill flanked by topiary, curving benches, and the sandy “beach” for children’s play. as lukewarm, it satisfies some parties’ hope of reconnecting the boxwood hedges, and paving stones from Caithness, Scotland, At the confluence of West Broadway and Greenwich memorial site with the surrounding neighborhood by creating into which the sculptor Simon Verity has engraved the names Street, landscape architect Ken Smith was commissioned an at-grade plaza.” of the sixty-seven victims. by developer Larry Silverstein to create a plaza at 7 World Even before September 11, Lower Manhattan was a landscape There are other Lower Manhattan projects by prominent Trade Plaza, one of the tiny triangular parcels dotting Lower where the precincts of death laid claim to valuable real estate, landscape architects that recently have opened or are on the Manhattan. Scheduled to open in 2006, the plaza will contain thus creating open spaces where otherwise there would be none. drawing boards. At the northern end of Battery Park City, set a large bench-surrounded, multijet, circular fountain, geometric- The city’s earliest remaining cemeteries are here at Trinity within a frame of new residential buildings is Michael Van ally aligned beds containing azaleas in the spring and boxwood Church and Saint Paul’s Chapel. The eighteenth-century African Valkenburgh’s 1.8-acre , so named because of its in the winter, and attractive bollards (a standard security feature Burial Ground, discovered in 1991 in the course of digging shape. In contrast to the ornamental, stately home approach these days for almost all new Lower Manhattan architecture) foundations for a new federal building, quickly became a sacred adopted by the designers of Hanover Square, Van Valkenburgh adjacent to Silverstein’s rebuilt office tower. On the opposite site for many African-Americans and a cause for historic preser- has sought to create a rus in urbe, an evocation of the wild side of downtown, at 55 Water Street, is another new plaza vationists. Battery Park has been a magnet for memorials to war Hudson River scenery to the north. Inspired perhaps by designed by Smith. In contrast to Van Valkenburgh’s plant- heroes and others who lost their lives in defense of their country Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s design of Central rich, nature-evoking aesthetic, both of these small spaces bear as well as to the emigrants who came through Castle Clinton to Park, he has created a rolling topography with a meadowlike Smith’s stamp of minimalist elegance. find freedom and opportunity in America. A few blocks to the lawn and a miniature woodland stream similar to the one in the It goes without saying that no other new landscape in the north is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial honoring the 250,000 Ramble. An architectural doorway at the base of a sloping “cliff” country has drawn more recent public interest than the site of men and women of New York City who served in the armed of quarried blocks of Hudson Valley alcove bluestone set to the World Trade Center. Ground Zero will have at its heart the forces from 1964 to 1975, especially the 1,741 who died in the resemble the uptilted strata of some geologic formation allows memorial to the victims of the September 11 inferno: architect Vietnam War. Its architecture – a wall of translucent glass the visitor to pass from one area into the next with a sensation Michael Arad’s austere and emphatically subterranean proposal blocks – lacks the emotional impact of Maya Lin’s much of surprise since here the steeply graded topography with its Reflecting Absence, the winning entry in the independently juried admired Vietnam Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C., protruding rocky ledge into which the door is intriguingly cut design competition sponsored by the Lower Manhattan Develop- but its moving inscriptions of excerpts from servicemen’s ment Corporation. Less diaries, poems, and letters give it poignant immediacy. Its loca- banally sentimental than tion in Jeannette Park, built when Coenties Slip was filled in some of the other entries, 1835 and redesigned several times over the years, is now a three- it honors the buildings’ foot- quarter-acre plaza with views of Pier 6 and the East River. Its prints with a pair of reflective $7 million restoration in 2001 by the city and a coalition of other pools submerged thirty feet sponsors makes it an attractive setting for the memorial as well below street grade. The jury as an important contribution to downtown serenity. subsequently mandated col- Although funded in the wake of catastrophe, with or without laboration with Peter Walker, memorials, the new parks of Lower Manhattan are more than the landscape architect whose healing gardens, a stricken city’s response to sudden violence. design aesthetic probably cor- They are needed, lobbied for, and still inadequate to meet the responds better to Arad’s needs of the residential population now moving into renovated minimalist approach than commercial buildings and newly built apartment towers in that of any other. As Robert Lower Manhattan. While the market for office space continues Yaro, the president of the to lag behind that for the rest of Manhattan, the housing market Regional Plan Association is flourishing. Lower Manhattan below Chambers Street now and leader of the Civic has a residential population of 30,000 that is expected to Alliance, the coalition of grow to 50,000 by 2008. Tax incentives from the Liberty Bond citizen advocates that spear- program created by an act of Congress following September 11 headed the revisioning of the combined with an earlier program allowing a tax break to devel- future of the site after the opers for office-to-residential building conversion have sparked first disappointing architec- the construction of several new residential buildings and the tural scheme was scotched, puts it, “While public

Teardrop Park, Michael Van Valkenburgh & Associates, 2004. 5 $4 million contribution by the Lower Manhattan Development sion of Stone Street from a forlorn, traffic-choked alley into a Corporation, Broadway between City Hall Park and Battery historic district for pedestrians according to a $1.8 million Park – the spine of Lower Manhattan – has acquired a streetscape redesign by Beyer Blinder Belle and executed by the face-lift. Placing its faith in the ability of present-day designers RBA Group and landscape architect Signe Nielsen has sparked to create new lines of street furniture more appropriate to the an array of new restaurants and sidewalk cafés with umbrella- contemporary cityscape of tall glass office buildings than the shaded outdoor tables on the bluestone sidewalks and traffic- miscellaneous pseudohistoric and just plain ugly items that free roadbed of Deer Isle granite paving blocks. A Soho in clutter the sidewalks today, eight years ago the Alliance commis- miniature. sioned and has now overseen the installation of new streetlights Just above Stone Street is the heart of the Financial District at and litter receptacles designed by the architectural firm of the intersection of Wall and Broad streets. As anyone who walks Cooper, Robertson and Partners. there now knows, the area is under heavy police and military Suzanne O’Keefe, the Alliance’s vice president for design surveillance and is closed to through vehicular traffic except for who has been in charge of this effort to use private Business truck deliveries at certain specified times of day and taxis that Improvement District funding to spark innovation in the New have been checked by security guards. It is now perforce a York City Department of Transportation’s design vocabulary, also pedestrian zone. Sealed off by ugly concrete barriers and planter worked with the New York City Department of Sanitation to boxes in which hardly anything can grow on the skyscraper- install a companion litter receptacle and to make these items shadowed narrow streets, its appearance seems designed to of street furniture the standard municipal ones for Lower repel rather than attract visitors. Here, in order to protect the Pedestrian amenity, public art, rehabilitation of a number of Manhattan streets, as is now the case. At the same time, new New York Stock Exchange and other important nearby build- or safety feature? NOGOs prevent old office towers. At this time, environmental graphics developed by Pentagam have produced ings, New York City Planning Commission staff members under vehicle entry on Wall Street. there are 4,000 residential better-looking signs on Broadway as well as navigational cues the direction of Manhattan Office Director Vishaan Chakrarbarti units in construction and anoth- for visitors wending their way through the tortuous side streets are working in conjunction with the New York City Police er 6,900 that are estimated to be built by 2008. New schools, in the area. O’Keefe has overseen the replacement of broken Department, the Department of Transportation, and the Alliance stores, shops, and restaurants are opening to serve the current concrete curbs along Broadway with twelve-inch granite ones, for Downtown New York to install a series of artfully disguised and expected population growth. and these are also now accepted as standard throughout Lower security features that are also genuine pedestrian amenities. Given the push ever since Dutch colonial times toward Manhattan. At intervals of every ten to fifteen feet between Drawing on $10 million of the funds made available through the turning as much land as possible into marketable real estate, Bowling Green and Vesey Street one is prompted to wonder whether there can in fact be a next to City Hall Park, new light- unified network of public and private landscape spaces connect- gray concrete sidewalks have ed by pedestrian-friendly streets in Lower Manhattan. This been inset with two hundred depends upon interagency cooperation, something that has horizontal bands of black granite been difficult always to achieve in New York City and nowhere incised with the names of more so than in Lower Manhattan where there are multiple visiting kings, American presi- jurisdictional claims. Nevertheless, the same kind of thinking dents, military generals, sports that envisions the waterfront as an unbroken, continuous champions, aviators, and astro- promenade is going on with regard to creating crosstown nauts who once waved to cheer- linkages, a strategy impelled by the perceived need to restrict ing crowds as ticker tape rained traffic on Wall Street and keep other areas car-free as both an down from brokerage-house antiterrorist measure and as a means of making Lower windows on the parades held in Manhattan a more inviting tourist destination. their honor. The City Planning Commission and the Alliance for Paving provides perhaps the Downtown New York, the business improvement district that most subliminal yet powerful extends from Murray Street to the Battery, are thinking about visual cue that makes a street opportunities for connectivity, and this involves improving inviting to walk on. The conver- the streetscape and increasing pedestrian amenity. Thanks to an investment of $22 million by the Alliance that includes a

Manhattan’s new green edge at Battery Park City looking across the 6 Hudson River toward New Jersey. federal government’s Community Development Block Grant Rensselaer’s History of the expanded world, thanks to He engages in a lively program for the rebuilding of this part of the city in the wake of Books City of New York in the 17th Shorto. stylistic hunt for Adriaen Van September 11, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation Century [1909] or E. B. This is also a timely der Donck, who is his protag- commissioned the architectural firm of Rogers Marvel to design O’Callaghan’s even hoarier publication in view of the onist (Peter Stuyvesant is security-oriented street furniture. Prominent among these is a The Island at the Center but equally wonderful History documentary torrent pouring more or less his villain), as large bronze-sheathed, cubelike structure made up of variously of the World: The Epic Story of New Netherland [1848]). out of the New Netherland the author of unattributed angled planes. When set in different ways depending on which of Dutch Manhattan & More recently there has Project at the New York State arguments that eventually surface is used as the base, these appear slightly dissimilar to the Forgotten Colony That been a rush of scholarly arti- Library in Albany. Shorto pushed the Dutch govern- one another. Called NOGOs, these stationary building guards Shaped America cles such as Karen Ordahl gives Charles Gehring, the ment to give New Netherlan- might appear to be a constellation of sculptural forms constitut- by Russell Shorto Kupperman’s “Early Amer- scholar who has been trans- ders broader liberties than ing a public art project. Or one may wish to think of them as (New York: Doubleday, 2004) ican History with the Dutch lating and editing the Dutch other colonies enjoyed. sidewalk seats put there as a consideration for passersby. At Put In” in The Journal of Colony’s papers for more Shorto notes that Van der least, this is what the planning team hopes will be the case. Nieuw American than thirty years, his proper Donck, the only trained jurist There will be new streetlighting at each of the seven Amsterdam, the History (21, due. These papers and the in the colony in the period to entrances to the stock exchange area. Broad Street across from capital of the 1993), fruits of recent scholarship they have hold such political views, had the stock exchange has been repaved with a product called short-lived a broad new inspired provide irrefutable used the highly unusual word Euro-Cobble, preset-by-hand paving blocks of Italian granite that colony of Nieuw interest in the testimony to Shorto’s thesis “American” to describe the come in 20 x 20 square-inch forms. Claimed to be equal to Netherland, seventeenth- that we should significantly Indians in one document. asphalt as a roadbed surface, it will signal the street’s new established by century world alter the commonly held He correlates the use of the pedestrian character. Newly designed barriers will prevent the Dutch in of exploration, belief that America’s colonial word in eight other docu- through traffic, but they will be retractable so as to allow vehicles 1626 and peace- conquest, and story begins with the Pilgrim ments, all of which frame the to enter the area for specified purposes at certain times of day. fully taken over trade – newly settlement at Plymouth. same views in the same legal A second phase of the Financial District improvement by the English configured as Shorto is also well aware language. On this basis, project envisions the reintroduction of water as a latter-day echo in 1664, is at “the Atlantic that giving primary sources he proposes (as have other of the canal that ran up the middle of Broad Street from the last enjoying a world.” By ample space pays off, quoting scholars independently and harbor. (The planners clearly consulted the Castello Plan for this well-deserved the beginning generously to portray Man- simultaneously with Shorto) inspiration.) If funded, the water will be fed from a series of revision of its of the seven- hattan’s vanished landscape that Van der Donck is the fountains into a channel that will replace the forbidding-looking history with the publication teenth century, “the Atlantic and society as a place rich in indisputable author of all of barrier fence that now keeps sidewalk traffic away from the of The Island at the Center of world” stretched from the wildlife and opportunities for these documents. This stock exchange. the World: The Epic Story of Baltic ports of the Hanseatic agriculture and trade with the illustration of the landscape Lower Manhattan will never be as green as it was when the Dutch Manhattan & the League to South America, tribes of Native Americans of law and politics of New Castello Plan was drawn in 1665, but it is becoming greener Forgotten Colony That Shaped the Caribbean, and North who still lived in the vicinity Netherland, so fundamental than it has been in more than a century. Under vastly different America. Russell Shorto’s col- America. “The Atlantic of Nieuw Amsterdam. He to understanding Shorto’s circumstances it is harking back to Dutch colonial times when orful narrative of those brief world” – a multiethnic and draws on descriptions of conception of its legacy in the everyone walked and businesses and residences were in close thirty-eight years of Dutch multicultural network, as contemporary explorers to United States, is only one of proximity or under the same roof. Wounded but now recovering, domination is accessible, the slave historian Ira Berlin paint rapid, convincing many he sketches. this most compelling of landscapes in this most commercial detailed, and fast-moving. has pointed out in his first pictures such as this: “Fish Shorto sets up the colony’s of cities is seeking its future within the physical and economic Almost all previous worth- chapter of Many Thousands streamed thickly around definition of itself as a strug- framework of its historical past. It is a challenging task but one while histories of the Dutch Gone: The First Two Centuries them: salmon, mullet, wraith- gle between the two men. filled with promise if it reveals Lower Manhattan’s extraordinary Colony were published of Slavery in North America – like rays,” and the land Van der Donck, the forgotten combination of natural and man-made qualities and allows long ago in multivolume for- was a “melting pot” long was rich in primordial oaks intellectual and man of the incomparable whole of it to function as a richly varied but mat (try Marianna van before Israel Zangwill wrote and “an abundance of blue action, was a lawyer who had integrated urban district in which the multi-layered past the Broadway play of that plums.” trained at the University of and contemporary architectural design, public art, memorials, name in 1908. New York City Leiden under the great streetscape, and parks are experienced in relation to one can now take its place in pop- humanist, Hugo Grotius. another. – EBR ular consciousness both as a The authoritarian Stuyvesant, very early trade hub in and a heretofore a mere cartoon cultural contributor to that

7 figure complete with a peg- entering the watery perimeter bias existed against the reader momentarily wonder if his thesis recedes in light of Here he would live out his leg, steel breastplate, and of what would become New Dutch, swelling at the he knew about the broad what this brief history (325 life and be buried, and sword, is painted with appro- York City, these two things moment when the first of reaches of English humanism pages of text with an addition- here, over the parade of priately tragic shadows. The take place: trade and vio- three Anglo-Dutch wars for and the shaping of common al fifty-eight pages of back centuries, flappers, shtetl two men tangled for years. lence.” For the most part, supremacy of the seas – in law in the seventeenth centu- matter) actually offers. Who refugees, hippies, and Was New Netherland to be a his full-bodied and colorful 1653, 1664, and 1673 – were ry or the role of religious would want to walk around punks – an aggregate of military trading post or a narrative style can bear the waged. The Dutch finally left minorities such as the Greenwich Village or the local residents running municipality – what Shorto weight of such generalizing. the Atlantic arena (keeping Quakers in extending the Lower East Side without hav- from Trotsky to Auden to labels “an eighth province in Shorto uses some horrify- Curaçao, Suriname, and concept of religious toleration ing read this passage describ- Charlie Parker to Joey the Dutch republic, a noncon- ing material to great effect. Guiana) to concentrate on in or that of the ing the landscape of Ramone – would shuffle tiguous state along the lines In Part Two, “The Clash of their Indonesian conquests. Catholics in Maryland or the Stuyvesant’s Bouwerie past his tomb. of an Alaska or Hawaii”? It Wills,” he graphically de- Shorto argues that the death- example of Rhode Island. (A Number One? In a note, Shorto neatly was on its way to that nearly scribes the initial sea battles blows were administered to look at Shorto’s bibliography Within five minutes they scores his major point one autonomous eighth-province of the First Anglo-Dutch War the very idea of any serious nevertheless is reassuring on were in open country, last time: “As a nice metaphor status when the British took in the English Channel and Dutch cultural inheritance by these points.) He does not meadows and pastureland for the way history has over in 1664. the North Sea when “ships eminent nineteenth-century discuss the lockdown on all punctuated by stands of muddled Manhattan’s Dutch The book is divided into of each fleet arrayed stem to historians who focused on freedoms for those of African forests. The road turned period, Stuyvesant’s tomb- three parts. In Part One, “A stern so that their side- New England’s patrimony: descent, the so-called “black sharply to the right . . . stone, embedded in the Certain Island Named mounted guns could form a John Winthrop’s “shining city codes” that, at the end of the then cut northward, elbow- foundation of the Church of Manathans,” Shorto offers a long deadly chain.” Following on a hill,” along with its lat- seventeenth century, followed ing through wilderness St. Mark’s-in-the-Bowery, variety of exploration narra- this encounter, they were ter-day descendant, the doc- the previous period of com- before opening . . . onto manages to get both his age tives. An “Indian told of reduced “to floating wrecks trine of Manifest Destiny. parative tolerance under an expanse of lots that and title wrong.” sighting ‘a large house of by the onslaught of flying In arguing for the recogni- Dutch rule for blacks in New were being farmed by – Mac Griswold various colors’ floating on the metal, their masts and tack- tion of a Dutch heritage, how- York. freed slaves . . . a settler water. (Dutch ships were les, according to one witness, ever, Shorto makes his claim In his last pages Shorto from the Long Island dis- indeed vividly painted with moiled with brains, hair, in a tone so partisan it occa- counters his own large claims Gardens of the Arts and trict of Greenwyck (Pine geometric motifs).” Trading pieces of skull.” sionally injures his point. His with a scaled-down version Crafts Movement: District) would relocate began: “Out came the prod- Part Three, “Inheritance,” statement that the tradition of that “the story of the original Imagination and Reality here and give his property ucts. Hemp, dried currants, covers the denouement of the Dutch tolerance, particularly Manhattan colony matters” in by Judith Tankard that name. . . . Stuyvesant (New York: Harry N. Abrams, oysters, beans. Knives, hatch- struggle between Stuyvesant religious and ethnic toleration terms of an American intel- brought his family down a 2004) ets, and beads.” During sub- and Van der Donck and sets as it existed in seventeenth- lectual, political, and social lane and into the patch of sequent exploration of “an up the scene of a peaceful century Amsterdam, was legacy. “Its impact is so dif- island he was in the The last twentysome years intricate mesh of islands, English takeover that includes instrumental in shaping not fuse that it would be perilous process of taming as his have seen a widespread bays, and rivers, making the Stuyvesant’s surrender and just New Netherland colonial to declare and define it too own. In its marshy sereni- revival of interest in the Arts rounds of Brooklyn, Staten the handover of the Dutch policy in the form of the concretely,” he writes, “so ty snipes and widgeons and Crafts Movement both in Island, and coastal New state papers. This is Shorto’s English charter of 1686 but a here is a modest attempt: It alighting on swampy Great Britain and the United Jersey,” two violent encoun- moment to deal with what he national American sensibility helped set the whole thing ponds, stiff winds coming States with an increasing ters took place between the considers to be the Dutch regarding immigration and in motion.” One might argue off the river bending the number of books devoted to Dutch and the Indians. legacy and how it has been religious toleration seems that this acknowledgment – grasses, cows hunkering examining its various facets. Shorto often jumps to the treated historically. In almost overstated. It is a thesis that there were many tradi- under bruised skies – it In Gardens of the Arts and present at moments such as every chapter, he already has Shorto offers so persistently tions and events in American may have reminded him Crafts Movement: Imagination this, as when he writes, “It’s claimed that this history has that he sometimes made this history that “helped set the of home. . . . Here he built and Reality, Judith Tankard ironic that immediately upon been ignored or misrepre- whole thing in motion” – is a manor and a chapel. makes a substantial contribu- sented, as indeed it appears somewhat overdue and at tion to this critical literature. to have been. He describes variance with previous state- She briefly but clearly estab- how, almost from the begin- ments in the book. However, lishes the movement in its nings of the New Netherland questioning the strength of Colony, an English cultural

8 intellectual and social context responses like Norman respect for artistic achieve- ty, utility, and artistic integra- Nonetheless, as one stud- to create magnificent gar- before focusing on its gar- Shaw’s houses and Charles ment in any material, which tion of house, garden, and ies the collection of architects’ dens. Theirs, with many of dens and their creators, with Eastlake’s 1868 Hints on aimed to erase hierarchic dis- interior. Such a program renderings in that chapter them recently restored, are British projects during the Household Taste as Aesthetic tinctions between the fine placed no bar to individuality and the one on architectural the best known and most crest years forming the core or House Beautiful or Queen and decorative arts. on the part of designers, but gardening, one realizes that studied of the Arts and Crafts of the book. While she gives Anne, limiting Arts and While acknowledging the it also created a movement however successful their gardens. due appreciation to major Crafts as such to the period labeling fragmentation of the full of complex and some- structure and relation to the The Arts and Crafts figures including William between 1888 and 1914. early years, Tankard makes times contradictory currents. house as outdoor rooms, Movement championed coun- Morris, C. A. F. Voysey, These may have been the clear that ideas and ideals Tankard’s first chapter, architects’ gardens were often try living, but Tankard makes Edwin Lutyens, and Gertrude glory years, but such limits flow seamlessly from Ruskin “Gardens Old and New,” pretty thin stuff. It is very the very important point that Jekyll, her attention to the disregard the fact that through the last half of the offers a prime example. We easy to see why Robinson the great majority of its hous- work of many less well- Morris’s very influential Red nineteenth century and think of Reginald Blomfield, excoriated them for their sim- es and gardens were domestic known designers provides a House, designed by Philip beyond. From the beginning author of The Formal Garden plistic plantings and lack of in scale: “Small country valuable enrichment to our Webb, was built in 1859. the proponents of Arts and in England (1902), and horticultural knowledge. His houses within easy reach of understanding of the period. World War I did not put an Crafts considered it as much William Robinson, author of call for the use of native London for weekend retreats Plans; period drawings, paint- end to the movement – major a moral and social program The Wild Garden (1870) and plants and hardy perennials, for the upper middle class ings, and photographs; and figures such as Lutyens, as an aesthetic one. Perhaps The English Flower Garden a slap at greenhouse-depen- would be the realm of a new Tankard’s own excellent color Jekyll, Thomas Mawson, the current interest in the (1883), as the polar opposites dent, bedding-out plantings, generation of architects.” photographs of surviving or, Clough Williams-Ellis, and movement can be read as a that their vigorous and vitu- would lead to the herbaceous True, most of these were more frequently, restored Robert Lorimer went on cre- search for a solution to perative verbal battles over border, a still popular legacy larger than most of today’s gardens illuminate her very ating gardens all through the today’s perceived iniquities garden design suggest. of the Arts and Crafts garden. suburban, or even exurban, readable text. twenties – and what about just as the original was to Tankard places both firmly – In a later chapter examining properties but nowhere near Few “movements” in the Charles Rennie Mackintosh those of the mid-nineteenth and convincingly – in the Robinson’s home grounds the size of the great country world of design can be clearly and Frank Lloyd Wright? century. For Ruskin, Morris, Arts and Crafts lineage. and those of Jekyll, the era’s estates that architects and bracketed by dates, but the Both architects subscribed to and others, triumphant Blomfield, a member of master gardeners, Tankard garden makers had been Arts and Crafts Arts and industrialism dehumanized the Art Workers’ Guild, and notes that Robinson quietly called upon to create in Movement is Crafts ideals, workers, destroyed regional fellow architects H. Inigo adopted some of the archi- previous eras. Sometimes one of the slip- but their character and traditional Trigg and John Sedding called tects’ ideas for the gardens the architects were commis- periest. Almost work led crafts with the mass produc- for clearly structured archi- around his own Gravetye sioned to restore and create all art histori- right into tion of meretricious quality, tect-designed gardens: Manor. But unlike most archi- gardens for Elizabethan, ans recognize twentieth- and poured dark disease- certainly one way to unify tects, he also considered the Jacobean, or Regency manor John Ruskin’s century bearing blankets of smoke house and garden. They land beyond the terraces and houses; but in their own exhortations modernism. over cities. On an aesthetic chose Elizabethan and garden walls, and his practice designs they rejected histori- in the 1849 Tankard’s level, they deplored the Jacobean gardens as models of naturalizing bulbs and wild cism and sought simply to Seven Lamps of succinct ostentatious exoticism, dark and displayed a passion for flowers in woodlands and capture the spirit of the past, Architecture definition in colors, heavy furnishings, and topiary extending from meadows has become a com- using local materials but cre- and in the the preface excessive, that is to say vulgar, hedges and simple geometric mon feature in landscape ating plans to suit the way 1851-53 Stones clears the ornamentation of High shapes used as vertical mark- design. The partnership their contemporaries lived. of Venice as its ground: “the Victorian taste in houses and ers to the kind of whimsical between Lutyens and Jekyll Inspired by Morris’s multi- theoretical underpinning, a movement was a philosophi- gardens alike. birds and animals found in would demonstrate that archi- faceted craft production and foundation more completely cal approach to design rather The Arts and Crafts vernacular gardens. Given the tecture and horticulture could his exaltation of working with developed by Morris. than an identifiable style.” Movement called for simplici- Arts and Crafts goal of inte- join hands – if those hands one’s hands, many of these However, many label early Central to the Arts and Crafts grating house and garden, it belonged to gifted designers – architects took up one form approach was a belief in the is not surprising that most of or another of handcraft – dignity and fulfillment of its gardens were designed by often furniture making or handwork, a reliance for architects. metalwork – or chose the inspiration on nature and interior furnishings if they regional traditions, and a

9 did not produce them. of Garden-Making. It went fourth garden, Robert Dash’s always outsiders, intellectual- er) to a less complacent con- of New York. As someone Tankard does not write much through five editions by 1926. Madoo on Long Island, ly curious sophisticates with a viction of having fixed in whose lifelong love affair with about this branch of the Arts His exceptional knowledge of is briefly described but not wandering bent who bring a words a particular local iden- the movies has yielded a body and Crafts design trinity of practical horticulture and illustrated. sharp eye, ear, and journalis- tity. He is not a motorcycle of reviews and essays on the house, garden, and interior, excellent design skills earned Tankard’s endnotes and tic voice to their travels. man streaking across Middle subject of film, he sees street but the pages of patterns by him one of the largest nation- bibliography are helpful Photographers hit the road America, interviewing cattle life cinematically and remem- Morris, Voysey, and Candace al and international landscape guides to learning more for the same purpose, some- ranchers, barflies, trailer-park bers the streets of the city (or Wheeler that serve as chapter design practices of his gener- about the people and places times producing indelibly residents, marine reservists, the Hollywood set designs of headings provide a constant ation, and he was invited to that she mentions. There is memorable, culture-defining and gas station attendants. them) in all their moody film- visual reminder of the domi- speak at Harvard, Cornell, an additional bonus: a list, images. Still, there are pitfalls He is, first and foremost, a noir glory and Woody Allen nant role that nature’s forms and Yale. including contact informa- here. Within the seemingly son of the city (New York City, satirical charm. play in Arts and Crafts interi- Its very complexity pre- tion, of houses and gardens dispassionate writer’s pen or of course), an inveterate As Lopate points out, most ors and decorative arts. cludes, as she acknowledges, that can be visited in both photographer’s purportedly urban walker, a latter-day of our solitary walks take Tankard recognizes the more than the quick sketch Great Britain and the United truthful lens lurk precon- flâneur, and a master of the place not only on the pave- importance of magazines – that Tankard gives of the States. Gardens of the Arts ceived political positions and personal essay, especially the ment but also in our heads as The Studio, The Garden, and American Arts and Crafts and Crafts Movement is an an inevitable, if unconscious, peripatetic personal essay. our thoughts shuttle back and Country Life, for example – Movement. It would take a invaluable resource on many sense of superiority, which Lopate has two other taut forth between self-absorption and books in spreading the whole new book to examine levels. – Denise Otis even the most sympathetic strings in his literary bow. He and observation. It is good, movement’s goals and cre- in detail the various forms it artists and writers have is an anthologist and an therefore, to find ourselves in ations. Jekyll’s books, particu- took in different decades and Waterfront: A Journey toward their subjects simply aficionado of film. His first the company of such a well- larly those dealing with her in different parts of this coun- Around Manhattan because they are in control of anthology, The Art of the furnished head as his and to planting style and use of try. The gardens she chooses by Phillip Lopate the presentation of their Personal Essay, reflects his know that all the seeing and color, have had a broad and to illustrate, with the excep- (New York: Crown Publishers, material. familiarity with the literary learning and remembering enduring influence. Much tion of Charles Greene’s 2004) In Waterfront: A Journey form he has appropriated for that are stored up in him will current British garden design Green Gables in Woodside, Around Manhattan, Phillip his own, and the second, come to us as the same is still rooted in her ideas, California, are ones rather There is a Lopate has Writing New York, made kind of interior monologue and they have seen a revival reminiscent of British prac- genre of writ- chosen a more handy for immediate recall a we would like to have with in this country. Tankard tice, but she still names most ing that can be restricted com- rich body of New York water- ourselves – pondering points out, however, that of the important figures in called “On the pass and an front literature. Linking word some flash of beauty or sensitivity to color was a American Arts and Crafts. Road” litera- approach that and place, he can summon at decrepitude, some piece of hallmark of the Arts and As a demonstration of the ture. It often is both more will lines of Walt Whitman history or personal memory, Crafts approach and that in relevance of Arts and Crafts attempts tentative and and Hart Crane, make refer- some missed opportunity or the period there were other principles to small contempo- to portray the deeply explor- ence to the lurid and tantaliz- qualified urban planning garden makers renowned for rary gardens, Tankard ends enigmatic atory than that ing plethora of nineteenth- success – if we only had so their skill in planting design, the text with an epilogue fea- ordinary of of the “On the century “Lights and Shadows” much lightly worn historical among them Alfred Parsons, turing four gardens. Bryan’s Elsewhere in Road” authors books that sensationalized research, behind-the-scenes Ellen Willmott, and Norah Ground, since 1993 an ongo- a series of who turn the New York’s high- and lowlife, interviews, quick recall of Lindsay. Less known today ing creation by editor/pub- trenchant, if fodder of a or heighten our social aware- great old movies, and pas- but as influential as Jekyll’s lisher David Wheeler and art necessarily single journey ness of the past with inci- sages from hundreds of books in the first decades of director Simon Dorrell of the superficial, into a book of dents drawn from Jacob Riis’s books about New York in our the twentieth century was British magazine Hortus; observations. vivid quick- How the Other Half Lives or heads. Moreover, it is good to Mawson’s The Art and Craft York Gate; and Tony Ridler’s Writers of this kind of osten- take vignettes and one-stop Herbert Asbury’s The Gangs be reminded that we all see garden, all in Britain, are sible nonfiction are almost anecdotes. Lopate can enter- the world idiosyncratically shown in beautiful drawings tain us with these, too, but and to realize that, if we live by Dorrell, who also did many his writer’s sensibility leads long enough in as restless a of the plans in the book. The him into meditative byways that carry him (and the read-

10

city as New York, the scenery What is the changing mean- remarks, “The walker-writer decrepit: the “rotting timbers, commercially driven historic Park. Yet it was killed after a of our past and present walks ing of public space? How to cannot help seeing, superim- tall grasses, jagged rocks, and preserves, as is the case at the protracted fight that pitted in the same neighborhoods resolve the antiurban bias in posed over the present edifice wharfside warehouses which South Street Seaport. But community activists and plan- will become increasingly our national character with its former incarnation, and constituted the 1970s-1980s none of us knows how to ners against one another. disassociated through change. the need to sustain a vital city he/she sings the necropo- New York waterfront, after it summon back an economical- Lopate helps us see in Nowhere is urban flux environment? Or reconcile lis.…” had been given up as a port ly defunct past without hindsight how Westway fell more evident than on Man- New York’s past as a port/ In Waterfront we follow but before it had begun to be having it seem like a staged victim to historical timing. By hattan’s twenty-first-century manufacturing center with Lopate first up Manhattan’s ’rehabilitated.’” Even before revival. At best, one can join the late 1960s, when federal waterfront. Not only in New the new model of a postin- Hudson River shoreline from then, the waterfront had Lopate in applauding the kind funding was available and York but in many formerly dustrial city given over to the Battery to Washington become a kind of abstraction of vigilante urbanism by com- this project was on the draw- important port and manufac- information processing and Heights and Inwood and then devoid of almost all of its old munities that give up on gov- ing boards, proposals for the turing cities, industrial consumerism?” from the Battery to High- marine traffic and commerce ernment and improve derelict kind of highway mega-pro- lands adjacent to shorelines While these pressing along the East and sealed off from physical public spaces on their own. jects advocated by mid-twenti- and river docks have become issues engage Lopate’s atten- River as he traces the present contact by highways. At best Shoreline meditation eth-century planners, “brownfields,” so-called tion as they must ours, shoreline and its bordering (and indeed a blessing), it gives rise to here and there particularly the misguided because sites vacated by ship- Waterfront is anything but a neighborhoods, reading them could be viewed from a high an excursus, or digression. proposal of Robert Moses to ping and industry now pre- prescriptive book offering as layered accumulations of promenade such as the one These chapters constitute build the Lower Manhattan sent an opportunity to create theories and best practices older narratives. Though its that decks over the FDR Drive thematic essays of a historical Expressway, had begun to recreational “greenfields.” of a new urbanism. Like cacophonous vibrancy is as it passes beneath the or biographical nature, thus generate vociferous antipathy And nowhere is the opportu- Baudelaire or Walter Ben- stilled, his Manhattan water- grounds of Gracie Mansion differing from the more pure- for the reasons that were nity to renew the urban edge jamin, Lopate’s real métier front is yet haunted by color- and Carl Shurz Park. Only in ly descriptive ones elsewhere. soon to turn their most more potently dramatic or is walking to write, a desire ful, if continually fading, a few marginal places can you For this reader, the most thoughtfully original and more fraught with political to sample the pleasures and ghosts. He calls attention to thread your way through telling of these excursuses is influential critic, Jane Jacobs, and bureaucratic obstacles perils of modernity with a the comparative vacancy of riprap, rusty fences, and high the story of the bitterly fought into a revered sage of new than in New York. In his sensibility attuned to history, the once-busy harbor as aban- weeds alongside the water’s and defeated plan to replace urbanism. Recounting the self-assigned task of exploring to experiencing what he calls doned piers rot or, as he edge, as is the case in East Manhattan’s West Side ensuing hearings and law- on foot as much of the the enigmatic fusion of pres- explains in one fascinating Harlem. Highway with Westway, a suits, Lopate concludes that Manhattan waterfront as ence and absence. He is, in chapter, are eaten away by However, it is not precisely submerged shoreline trans- Westway would not have rent possible (the entire 578-mile other words, a connoisseur of shipworms. Always, we see this “ragged, unkempt, undis- portation corridor in the an important part of the New York City waterfront how the transformation of tantalizing opportunity for covered, and unidentified ter- Hudson River that would urban fabric as the Lower was understandably beyond cities by industrial, and now waterfront “reclamation” ritory” that, sore of foot and have been decked over with Manhattan Expressway would the scope of his book and postindustrial, forces is being tortuously realized or leg, Lopate means as an anti- several hundred acres of park- have done and that the pro- the endurance of his body), played out in the lives and just out of reach of political dote to the manicured edge land. Lopate explains how posed ninety-acre public park Lopate tells us that “All along, visages and words of casually will and economic necessity represented by the Battery this proposal for a boldly was, as its planners claimed, I kept coming up against cer- encountered strangers. At the as we follow Lopate’s physical Park Promenade. What frus- imaginative, federally funded the essential feature of the tain underlying questions: same time, he sees the water- and intellectual perambula- trates him are the too-timid, public-works project would plan. However, in the early What is our capacity for city- front as an anthology of past tions. official planning visions and have reconnected the city’s 1970s, as lawsuits to block making at this historical junc- lives and a palimpsest of past Because Waterfront is per- bland consumer-oriented street grid with its waterfront, Westway were wending their ture? How did we formerly places. It is a landscape that sonal in its perspective, one public space improvements making the Hudson between way through the courts, any build cities with such casual he has tried to read like a text, has to recognize Lopate’s prevalent nowadays. He longs 79th Street and the Battery Robert Moses-style top-down conviction, and can we still conjuring back the stevedores penchant for the vulgar, for an older, crustier reality as accessible as it is above urban planning project had come up with bold, integrated and the sailors, the gamins seedy, and picturesquely that somehow acknowledges 79th Street in the neighbor- become de facto suspect, and visions and ambitious works? and the grit, the factories and the vanished dockworkers hoods adjacent to Riverside newly established community the foghorns. Often pulling and harbor traffic – but with- planning boards were finding himself up short of senti- out turning pockets of the their principal political power ment, Lopate nevertheless waterfront into self-themed, to be opposition to large- slips into elegy, for, as he

11 scale, government-sponsored who still maintain the idealis- front, narrated as the story ther Jane Brown’s The jects, and weave the tale. even town planning. She urban renewal. For more than tic perspective and dreams of one man’s love affair with Modern Garden or Janet Constraints are not necessari- takes her definition from the a decade, opponents fought of social betterment through the greatest city on earth and Waymark’s Modern Garden ly a bad thing: they may 1981 International Council on the project, at last winning on good urban design that the incomparable estuarine Design: Innovation Since 1900 coerce a writer to be succinct Monuments and Sites environmental grounds based characterized the reform harbor that set its dynamic is that book. Admittedly, the and focus on ideas rather (ICOMOS) Florence Charter: on the importance of the movement and urban plan- development in motion, is task before a potential author than minutiæ. Let’s add one “an architectural and horti- Hudson estuary as a breeding ning philosophy in the first fascinating and timely as today is far more difficult more ingredient to the mix: cultural composition of habitat for striped bass. Now, two-thirds of the twentieth the city experiences profound than it would have been in the images. For the most part, interest to the public from thirty years later, instead of century. Thus, in the same change and its old waterfront the past. At one time a history the photographs in both the historical or artistic the large park that would evenhanded way that he landscape of commerce gives of landscape meant a chroni- books are of high quality and point of view” . . . which have united the riverfront was able to rethink Westway, way to a twenty-first-century cle and explanation of stylistic are very well reproduced. later makes it clear that with its adjacent inland Lopate provides a thoughtful landscape emphasizing development. Today, one While the Waymark book is the term “garden” could neighborhoods, 9A – a analysis of the city’s housing sports and recreation. – EBR needs to address a far broader short on plans, the Brown equally well apply to land rebuilt West Side Highway projects, penitential in design range of considerations: volume is quite the contrary. scape parkland, cemeter in the guise of a wide boule- and often castigated as ghet- examining social issues, the In fact, for some, garden The Modern Garden ies, allotments, and culti- vard – continues to separate tos for the poor. The belief geopolitical situation, envi- plans constitute the principal by Jane Brown vated and managed green them from the bikeway and that government has an (London: Thames & Hudson, ronmental factors, and the means of representing the areas in an urban context. recreational pier projects that obligation to see that all 2000) like – some of which arguably work, which also can be a are gradually aggregating as members of society should be deny the very idea of evolu- shortcoming. The question Modern Garden Design: If that is so, why not state funding becomes avail- decently housed produced, in tion, stylistic or other, at all. then is how the images are Innovation Since 1900 announce landscape rather able for a much narrower his view, some very success- That all makes the task used: Are they integrated by Janet Waymark than the garden as the subject Hudson River Park. Such is ful, as well as some direly (London: Thames & Hudson, more difficult but not impos- with the text or played against of the book? Brown wants to Lopate’s revisionist take on flawed, public housing experi- 2000) sible. On the one hand, both it? avoid this less constrained the project that he, like many ments, and he laments our these books qualify as “sur- To start: the words “garden” view: “There is a definite line other New Yorkers, opposed stinginess in providing tax While there veys” and and “modern.” To Jane Brown to be drawn between the at the time. funds for this purpose today. are literally therefore are the garden is a specific area meaning of the word garden, This affinity for planning Since many of the projects thousands of limited by the and an artifact with a specific and that other word, land- analysis, combined with a are sited on or near the books on the publisher to a definition: scape, with which it is so sensory appreciation of waterfront because, when history of certain num- The word Garden in persistently confused.” So at Manhattan’s old waterfront built, this land was not the modern art ber of words my title is also carefully their very roots the two books landscape – a description of prime real estate it is now, and hundreds and a certain emphatic: it implies are problematic for those what was, is, might have Lopate takes us on an excur- if not thou- number of the use and enjoyment of seeking a concise position, been, and is coming into sive journey through a previ- sands on images. On a private space, within a good stance, and a precise being in this most incessantly ously untold piece of New modern archi- the other similar parameters to definition of modern and self-transforming of cities – York City urban history as we tecture, a good hand, both those we apply to our pri- garden and modern garden. makes Lopate’s book more follow in his footsteps along history of authors – and vate lives, allowing room “Modern,” by contrast, original, balanced, and the East River from the modern land- the publisher for friends and close and is even more slippery, not nuanced than others on Bowery to Harlem in a chap- scape architec- of both known local communities. necessarily as an abstract con- the subject. That he himself ter called simply “The ture remains to be written – books – are British, no doubt cept but as the qualifier added considered becoming a city Projects.” and even a good history of the injecting a bias toward the Janet Waymark, in con- to the term garden. For Way- planner at one point makes It is hard to say which of modern garden alone would home team. But limitations trast, seems to equate garden mark: “The term ’Modern’ is him sympathetic to certain the personal essays that con- be most welcome. Sadly, nei- are the realities of any writing with landscape and casts her used here inclusively, and members of New York City’s stitute Waterfront is best. project, and it is the author’s net farther afield, encompass- refers to the present and vast civil service bureaucracy The entire circuit that this role to determine the stance ing public landscapes and the recent past.” For Brown, walker in the city makes from which he or she will modern is used more or around Manhattan’s water- view the subject, choose the less as it is found in the dramatis personae and pro-

12 dictionary: “of the recent past, The author begins by clearly that probably no one decidedly not an autobiogra- very broad constellation and British writers) rather than on and most emphatically, ’not nominating her “oracles” of until Ian McHarg in the phy. In addition, descriptions presents a credible, if limited, ideas and the integration of antiquated.’” As her examples the modern landscape. These 1960s has argued more per- of people – interjected per- view of the present and places and people. It seems and case studies demonstrate, include, somewhat strangely, suasively against gardens and haps for color or to enliven the future. Because Waymark that behind all of these however, the modern path is the Finnish architect Eliel landscapes concerned with the writing – appear drawn sees the garden and the should be the question: How hardly linear; in fact, it is less Saarinen, Erich Mendelsohn, form. Early singular works from out of the blue, causing landscape as somewhat does this person or this land- a path than a scattered field of J. J. P. Oud, Le Corbusier, such as the Villa Meyer and informed readers to question synonymous, however, her scape contribute significantly bits and pieces linked weakly and Paul Klee. This is an the Beistegui roof terrace whether they are reading narrative wanders from time to the development, matura- by chronology. The issue odd, almost bizarre, set of aside, the architect’s idea of a factual study or fictional to time and one questions tion, or history of the modern becomes further complicated protagonists for the modern generic greenery rather than treatment. the balance of discussion on garden? A history is more as she includes in her view a landscape whose selection we configured spaces under- Brown’s lack of research – her various subjects. Claude than a list of people and notion of manner – or style, might welcome as a very mined the importance of or perhaps, more kindly Monet and Lord Astor places and less than fictional if you will – the form and fresh take. But quite typically designing any landscape at phrased, lack of evidence of receive extended discussions flights of fancy – a good spaces and materials of which for this book, the case is all, much less a garden. research – is troubling. The while J. C. N. history dis- the garden is made and the never made. Like a military Paul Klee? Well, we know he bibliography lists only books Forestier – cusses interac- way in which they came to be. ambush, the author throws provided inspiration for and neither articles or prima- who is arguably tions and the out some statement and then Geoffrey Jellicoe, but has any ry documents. One wonders far more drama rather Brown’s The Modern leaves quietly with neither other influence on landscape also how many of the land- significant – than just intro- Garden is very curiously qualification nor develop- been documented? Here scapes described in her book receives only a ducing the structured, with a collage of ment. While Saarinen the again is the basic shortcom- the author actually has visit- passing men- players. One the author’s own writing, elder was a very fine architect ing of The Modern Garden: ed. While the descriptions of tion. Given that would hope inserted project descriptions, and site planner, his land- pronouncements without the projects based on photos the length of that a thesis and many quotations scapes were only profession- substantiation leave the read- and drawings are usually to the book proba- undergirds all from books; its central idea ally competent and firmly in er at best tantalized but ulti- the point, the readings and bly was set by the facts and remains elusive to the end. the model of the north mately unfulfilled. deductions are at times far the publisher, discussions. She centers modern garden European/Germanic formal Normally, to be polite, a from the mark. Admittedly, the chapter on The reader activity from the 1930s to the (or architectonic, as it was reviewer foregoes mention of the historian is constrained the garden sub- needs to know 1950s and quite inexplicably termed) garden. He was sen- errors in a text, but these are by the extant materials, urb feels out of about the con- claims: “Within a decade sitive to the site but he was so plentiful that the potential whether textual, graphic, or place – espe- sequences as it was dead, mainly through no innovator in landscape reader warrants a warning. vegetal, and landscapes are cially since none of the gar- well as the stimuli. Instead, at misunderstanding, and design. So why is he elevated For example, the images of notoriously ephemeral, but … dens in the garden suburbs the end of these books, one a smothering in historic to “oracle” status? We are the Mexican Luis Barragán’s merits any treatment. The recalls the entries rather than revivals and rampantly eclec- left wondering. work near the end of the book Waymark’s Modern Garden garden suburb has received a comprehensive narrative. tic postmodernism.” I would Nor is the inclusion of combine three projects as if Design: Innovation Since 1900 extensive discussion in books While we are always told beg to differ, but that’s Erich Mendelsohn more con- one: the horse stables and is a more respectable study. It on urban and suburban plan- what, we are rarely told why. another story. The book com- vincing. His own 1928 ’am house at San Cristóbal with follows a generally chronolog- ning, and little here adds prises numerous subsections Ruperhorn garden that the horse-drinking trough at ical order, which makes its to the basic story at the level In general, it is far more and ultimately reads more Brown refers to on several Las Arboledas and the Lovers story easier to follow. It is of garden. difficult to fashion a history as a series of vignettes rather occasions appears to be rather Fountain at Los Cubes; and it more inclusive than Brown’s Like Brown, Waymark of the future than one of the than a history as the reader standard and almost mun- is not Dolliver “Tommy” book, and this is one of its focuses on description and past, and the final sections of struggles for any sense of dane when viewed in both Church but Thomas Dolliver strengths. Waymark discusses biography (these, and geneal- both books are quite uncon- coherence. plan and photo. Either the Church; and his 1955 book the American modernists and ogy, appear to be favorites of vincing. I would not look to author sees qualities in it that Gardens Are for People is the Brazilian Roberto Burle the American firm Oehme she does not elucidate or my Marx, the British Thomas and van Sweden for future eyes are failing me (which, of Mawson, and even the influ- directions in garden design course, may be the case). As ential German nurseryman although they are masters at for Le Corbusier: Dorothée Karl Foerster. She maps out a Imbert has shown rather

13 using perennials, which, of plazas and his urban schemes laid out some ten qualifica- likewise difficult to answer. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring regional planner, and social course, fits very neatly in a – not to mention his tions for making a modern As noted at the start of this (1962) had mobilized the inventor, as well as a writer, British view of the course of psychosociological work with landscape, a list that I am review, we demand – or movement, he noted, and neighbor, and friend. the garden – as does the work individual and community sure could be improved upon. should demand – more of before her there had been In this special issue of the eminent Dutch plants- participation – were probably But in that discussion authors today; we demand George Perkins Marsh, John Lewis Mumford, MacKaye’s man Piet Oudolf. the most important contribu- I attempted to provide a more about the many dimen- Muir, Frederick Law Olmsted, fellow founder of the Region- Stating the criteria for tions to American landscape cohesive presentation of the sions by which the landscape Charles Eliot, Gifford al Planning Association of selection would have architecture after the genera- subject so that the reader can be made, lived, and Pinchot, Fairfield Osborne, America (RPAA) in 1923, strengthened each author’s tion of Garrett Eckbo. An might evaluate this thought evaluated. There is a growing Benton MacKaye, and Paul remembered his friend’s respective stance: What account of Richard Neutra’s structure in part and as a number of anthologies in Sears. Benton MacKaye, aged unique personality and pro- makes a particular designer attitude toward garden whole. I wish that each of all fields these days as our ninety-one that spring, was phetic ideas, such as townless or landscape a key player in making also would have been the authors would have requirements grow and the not on the frontlines with highways and highwayless the history of the modern gar- welcome since he often proposed her own structure time for research and writing McHarg, the outspoken land- towns. Those ideas were den? Were the selections took charge for designing the for understanding the mod- is compressed. This is why so scape architect, biologists grounded in a real place – of projects based on available settings of his houses. ern garden rather than, with much writing today appears Barry Commoner and Paul MacKaye’s boyhood haunts photographs or were they Walker, who drew on the a few exceptions, just reintro- to be the product of team- Ehrlich, and others who in and around Shirley Center, constrained by reasonable plastic arts in other ways, ducing known personae work. It may be too much to traveled across the nation to , to which he travel distances? The inclu- reintroduced a vitality to the and places. require this sort of compre- address cheering crowds. But would return from sojourns sion and exclusion of certain garden and the corporate In a recent review hensive vision from any McHarg remembered in , New York, Wash- personages are troubling, but landscape that had suffered concerning a symposium single author. Also unfair, MacKaye, placing him in ington, or Knoxville. And to be fair, that is the call of anorexia in the ecological age. on modernism in landscape, perhaps, but let’s demand it good company. MacKaye had insisted on a the author. We can only think More positively, both I asked the following ques- anyway in the hope that some After MacKaye’s death in firm grounding at RPAA of our own nominees, our books do include detailed tions: “Could modernism be one or some group will some 1975, recollections of his life gatherings. “He never allowed own discourse, and wonder mention of plant materials, as any project from the twenti- day rise to the occasion. and work appeared in the us to think of technological why the garden of Walter Brown puts it: “dressing the eth century or only those that – Marc Treib January/March 1976 issue of advances or urban forms Gropius’s house in Lincoln, modern garden.” Rarely do shared some sort of formal Living Wilderness, the journal without reference to the geo- Massachusetts (a thoroughly would-be historians of the resemblances, for example, Benton MacKaye: of The Wilderness Society, of logical and biological founda- ordinary landscape utilizing modern landscape examine with architectural modernism Conservationist, Planner, which Mackaye was a founder tions upon which our entire elements already common to the planting of the landscapes or modern painting and and Creator of the and former president. In civilization rests,“ Mumford 1930s England), is included they discuss to this level of sculpture? Need they employ fact, most of the issue was a recalled. Others recalled when more significant detail. Both Brown and the spare clarity of modernist by Larry Anderson tribute to MacKaye, the man MacKaye’s stories of forestry works – like Dan Kiley’s Waymark are to be congratu- architecture or the shapes of (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins who had conceived and work with Gifford Pinchot, larger projects – are not. lated on providing their surrealist painting? Should University Press, 2002) led the efforts to create the his years at the Tennessee How can any history of the expertise in this area. Never- modernism be better defined 2,160-mile Appalachian Valley Authority, his zest for modern garden or landscape theless, neither author really by social agenda rather than In his autobiog- Trail. By many hiking, haying, good talk – architecture avoid discussing takes on the subject of space, by shape? What was the role raphy, A Quest accounts, he and solitude. But the plan- Lawrence Halprin and Peter a more central concern for of spatial production and use for Life (1996), was a Yankee ning consultant Frederick Walker? Halprin in some most modern landscape in formulating modernist Ian McHarg visionary, Gutheim suspected that, ways saved landscape design architects, certainly to the ideas? And in addition, how recalled the a wilderness behind MacKaye’s craggy, in the United States by bring- American contingent. was all this received from the “great and philosopher, Thoreauvian persona lay ing it firmly into the city What then made the various populations con- unexpected a geotechnician, something as yet unknown. and, as such, into the political modern garden modern? cerned?” These are difficult efflorescence in a forester, a Now we have Larry realm. His fountains and Brown hints at the qualities questions to ask, and they are environmental Anderson’s excellent biogra- of modern landscape while sensibility” that phy, the result of many years Waymark assumes it to be he sensed on the of research, travel, writing implicit in the works under first Earth Day discussion. Some years ago I in April 1970.

14 and, I imagine, re-writing. through the works of Lewis others. On the job with the lifelong desire to emulate his cinema and is, in time, Appalachian Mountain Club; The prose is spare, understat- Mumford. A few more per- Forest Service and later, in father on his own terms. As committed to a series of Walter Lippmann, Lincoln ed. Anderson, the author of sonal glimpses in the intro- the Labor Department, in a theater, Benton would institutions. MacKaye acts Steffens, John Reed, and oth- many articles on planning, duction – the author’s among the loggers, farmers, visualize and then dramatize responsibly, nobly, turning ers who met at the Harvard conservation, and the envi- backpacking in northern New and mill workers he came to his planning ideas with draw- inward. But he also turns Socialist Club; , ronment, is also cofounder England, reading Thoreau’s know, MacKaye recognized ings, maps, metaphors, outward, to blaze trails and Henry Wright, Mumford, and past president of the Walden and ’s more desires and needs – for sometimes with dry humor. plan greenways like the “Bay and others of the RPAA; and Harvard Common Press. Sand County Almanac – sug- fairness, a living wage, a Telling MacKaye’s life Circuit” around Boston. He the foresters, naturalists, Like Mumford, who edited gest what the entire biogra- place to call home, communi- story in a continuous narra- defends wild lands against and other professionals who MacKaye’s study in regional phy bears out: Anderson ty. And so, rather than take tive, Anderson takes care to encroachment by metropoli- formed The Wilderness planning, The New Explor- found in Benton MacKaye a sides in the battles between explain the historical and tan growth, or sprawl. The Society, including Aldo ation (1928), Anderson has kindred spirit. In time, while utilitarians and preservation- intellectual contexts and to quest is endless – to broaden Leopold, Robert Marshall, worked his way through a appreciating more analytical ists, he began to reframe the convey the essence of “our mental and spiritual , and great mass of MacKaye’s works by Paul T. Bryant, issues of conservation. By MacKaye’s major writings. horizon.” . writings and found gems – Robert Gottlieb, Paul S. 1919, he was pressing for Some experiences clearly One of the pleasures of What linked these circles bits of wisdom, flashes of Sutter, Robert McCullough, something akin to what we inspired MacKaye. Hearing reading this biography is to of friends and colleagues was insight – that he quotes now and other scholars of now call “environmental speak in recognize the multiple con- an ability to imagine alterna- and again in this book. MacKaye and wilderness justice.” Washington about his 1869 nections – a non-electronic tives to current patterns of Unlike Mumford, however, issues, Anderson set out to Born in 1879 in Stamford, exploration of the Colorado web – through which people life and work in a nation that Anderson never met MacKaye examine how this visionary Connecticut, MacKaye lived River and the Grand Canyon, communicated and accom- was chronically troubled by or listened to his reputedly man, MacKaye, lived his life. in several cities and villages for instance, stimulated plished a great deal. Through war, depression, poverty, spirited, salty conversation. The result is marvelous: a as a child. Steele MacKaye, young MacKaye’s expeditions his father’s and grandfather’s nuclear weapons capabilities, As Mumford confessed to a scholarly biography that his father, was an actor, around Shirley Center. Two friends, MacKaye was and other issues. To dream of friend, “If [MacKaye] could seems to live and breathe in playwright, producer, and geology professors at Harvard connected back in time to garden cities and truly urbane only write the way he talks, the open air. entrepreneur whose liveli- also left penetrating impres- Ralph Waldo Emerson and cities, an Appalachian net- he would surpass Mark A man of few material hood was often precarious. sions – Nathaniel S. Shaler, a William James. Benton’s work of trails and greenways Twain.” needs, content with Spartan The members of Benton’s captivating lecturer with a introduction to the wilderness flanked by recreational com- Anderson’s entrée to quarters, MacKaye had a immediate family (four older reverence for all life on earth; was a hiking trip in New munities and farm camps, a MacKaye was through other passion for exploration, on brothers, a younger sister, and William M. Davis, a theo- Hampshire’s White ridgeline trail along the channels. He was brought up the ground and in the imagi- and parents) were creative, rist attentive to “the earth as a Mountains with his college Continental Divide, a national within a few miles of nation. He tossed out ideas resourceful, and generally habitable globe.” friend James Sturgis Pray, network of wildland “belts” MacKaye’s boyhood home and proposals freely – not supportive. Cultural institu- Men are the major players later a professor of landscape created gradually by local and knew the same gentle, with the brilliance of a Mark tions in New York and in this story. The few women architecture at Harvard and a groups, and a global effort to glacier-rounded landforms Twain or an Ian McHarg, but Washington, D.C., stimulated are often troubled, ill, or close colleague in planning preserve wilderness – all may that young Benton studied with colorful metaphors, a the boy’s curiosity, and so did underemployed: In the era of the Appalachian Trail. And have seemed preposterous at like a map from the summit few scientific concepts, and opportunities to roam the muckraking journalism, a that entire project depended times. But as Mumford wrote of Hunting Hill. In the late plain words. He was an countryside of New England. talented young woman’s on a vast network of friends, to MacKaye in the mid-1960s, 1960s and early 1970s, important figure in American The untimely death of his career and her engagement to colleagues, and hiking club “Go on dreaming, dear Ben. Anderson studied at Mac- environmental history, father – Benton was fourteen MacKaye are abruptly ended. members from to There is plenty of time, and Kaye’s alma mater, Harvard, despite his modest number at the time – was a terrible MacKaye’s wife, a suffragist Georgia. MacKaye’s circles you have had far better luck where he took J. B. Jackson’s of “solid” independent blow, but out of it came a and peace activist, suffers of friends included Allen in your dreams than the course on the man-made achievements. As a catalyst from an obscure, chronic Chamberlain and Pray of the rest of us have had, For most American landscape and read and collaborator, he had no depression and eventually of mine have been turning need of the limelight but a takes her own life. MacKaye’s into nightmares, or have been great desire for balance, sister, a designer of pageants, lost like water in the sand.” equilibrium, some measure finds no work in the era of –Melanie Simo of peace for himself and

15 18 W Garden History and Landscape Studies for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture The Bard Graduate C est 86th Street, N

Volume 11, Number 11 Spring/Summer 2005

enter Editor: ew Y Elizabeth Barlow Rogers ork, NY 10024 Assistant Editor: Margaret Sullivan Copy Editor: Margot Dembo Design: Skeggs Design Contributors: Mac Keith Griswold Denise Otis Melanie Simo Marc Treib

For more information about Garden History and Landscape Studies at the Bard Graduate Center, please call 212-501-3064 or visit www.bgc.bard.edu and www.elizabethbarlowrogers.com