4

interesting because it embodies many of his sphere that he found so civilized, an atmosphere most cherished residential landscape ideas. fostered by the same intellectual ideas he had Olmsted always held that the contemplation found compelling as a young man. It seemed of quiet pastoral scenery-a passive, non- very different from the corrupt and money- authoritarian, and beautiful presence-was grubbing New York City Olmsted was leaving therapeutic. It encouraged people to become with relief; a city which, as he saw it, was inca- civilized, to develop that "combination of quali- pable of wholehearted civic effort. ties which fit [a man] to serve others and to be The Brookline that Olmsted observed was a served by others in the most intimate, complete template for the suburbs he wished to create. and extend[ed] degree imaginable."’ Even The town had transformed itself from conserva- the most modest home landscape could induce tive agricultural village to liberal suburb with- "a quiescent and cheerfully musing state of out losing its character or mtimacy.4 For him, mind" where "the eye is not drawn to dwell it stood as proof positive that well-planned sub- upon, nor the mind to be occupied with, urban communities could accommodate change details."2 Fairsted’s modest but considered and stress, could benefit the cities of which they "rurality" (Olmsted’s word for abundant nature were a vital part. If the great nineteenth-century held serenely and productively in check by moral and social question of how to reconcile man) conveys this mid-nineteenth-century idealism and matemalism, family and commu- suburban ideal. nity, rural and urban values, could thus be By the time Olmsted moved permanently to answered in Brookline, why could it not be Brookline in 1881 (where at first the family answered in every planned community in rented a house), he was both a wide-ranging America? intellectual and a truly effective activist. His Brookline’s transformation had been speeded urban parks, the works for which he is best by the mass arrival of Boston’s rich merchants known, gave reality to what has been called a as summer residents beginning in the 1820s-an utilitarian transcendentalism. They were to odd variation on Brookline’s settlement history be restorative, both for the individual and the as a summer pasture for livestock! Over the crowd, especially through the power of "uncon- next fifty years, many of these summer resi- scious recreation. "3 He also intended them to be dences became elaborate gentlemen’s farms, democratic, bringing different classes together supported by their owners’ large city incomes. harmoniously. This concept, which resonates By comparison, life at Fairsted was modest and with Emersonian thought, was set apart by some of its immediate surroundings were redo- Olmsted as the highest value scenery could lent of an older, simpler order. At the nearby afford. His suburban planning, though intended corner of Walnut and Warren Streets, a triangu- only for an upper middle-class elite, was also lar green marked the earliest center of the town, intended to offer restorative powers but in a which once held a schoolhouse (1713), Congre- residential setting. gational meetinghouse (1715), and cemetery (1717). But the population center shifted when Finding Brookline Brookline Avenue opened in 1821, and by the Olmsted had moved to Brookline because he 1880s the Walnut and Warren neighborhood found work in the Boston area which interested was largely residential-only the green, and a him, and he had a wide circle of congenial new, fashionable Unitarian church on the site, friends and colleagues there. Chief among them remained to mark the spot’s older civic history. was the architect Henry Hobson Richardson. Olmsted bought a "farmstead" of two acres: Richardson, who lived in Brookline himself, like many Brookline "farms," it produced only urged Olmsted to settle there when he began his orchard fruit, firewood, and a little summer large-scale work on the Arnold Arboretum, the grass for cattle. Nineteenth-century atlases first portion of Boston’s park system, which he show the hundred-and-more acre properties of designed in the late 1870s. The deciding factor Boston Brahmin families cheek by jowl with for Olmsted was the rural yet progressive atmo- residences the size of Fairsted or smaller.s Unflattermg family pictures can hght on family dynamics. Here, Mary Perkins Olmsted, in checks, dommates a fuly 1885 gathermg at Fairsted Fredemck Law Olmsted, Sr, looks attentively out from behmd her. At left stands john Charles, Mary’s oldest child and Olmsted’s partner and nghthand man, caught m a blink that unmttmgly illustrates his retmmg character. Marion, the spinster daughter who never left home, is at far nght, while two umdentified women complete the group. Missing is Fredemck Law Olmsted, Jr., then " fifteen years old and known as "Rick."

Though many were tenant houses belonging father’s most trusted colleague and confidant in to the larger neighbors, such a wide range of the years just before Olmsted’s retirement in adjoining property sizes also reflected a hierar- 1895, when failing mental abilities hastened chy of income that must have seemed attrac- Olmsted’s retirement. Frederick would inherit tively democratic to Olmsted. Fairsted on his mother’s death in 1921. John Charles was already the firm’s office The Olmsted Family manager and a partner (1884) in the earliest Olmsted arrived with his wife of twenty-four Fairsted years. In photographs he is short, years, the tiny, doughty, acid-tongued, compe- delicate-featured, bespectacled, semous, and tent Mary, who would live to be ninety-one, and reticent-seeming to the point of remoteness. with three of their seven children. John Charles, Because Olmsted Sr. traveled on business so aged thirty-one, and Marion, aged twenty-two, extensively during the 1880s, it is John Charles were both Olmsted’s stepchildren; Frederick, who is credited with actually transforming the thirteen years old, was Olmsted’s only biologi- threadbare sketch of a farm into a place that cal son and the apple of his father’s eye. Marion looked like an illustration from the most influ- would live at home all her life, a victim of ential treatise on picturesque home landscape in Victorian spinsterhood and her own nervous the nineteenth century, A. J. Downing’s Theory temperament.6 Frederick would become his and Practice of Landscape Gardening.’ How- 6

The 1904 survey by White c’~J Wetherbee, Cml Engmeers, accurately indicates the fmal footprmt of both home and office, as well as the location of the different landscape features.

A. Hollow H. American elm B. East office entrance I. South C. Front door J. West slope D. Entrance arch & circular drive K. Garden; after 1926, parking lot E. Cucumber magnolia L. Office courtyard F. Rock garden M. Laundry yard G. Conservatory N. 1880s cutting garden & coldframes 7

ever, because John Charles lived at home there are few written records about the mak- ing of Fairsted’s landscape, as he and his stepfather quite naturally talked it over instead. From what Olmsted wrote about the physical and emo- tional benefits of well-designed landscapes, both public and pri- vate, and from the lists of out- door practices that nineteenth- century women’s household management and gardening books prescribe, one can begin to reconstruct how this family and their servants used their tmy green haven. We can as- sume that residential Fairsted was intended for quiet pas- times, not sports, and for the kinds of outdoor household work and garden production common at the time. We can also assume that the south and west, or residential, sides were used mostly by the women of the family, since their lives were so much more homebound than those of Olmsted or his sons and employees. Sitting for contem- plation or for reading aloud to children, walking for health, light gardening, with a male gardener to help with the heavy tasks, painting to elevate the mind, all were some of the outdoor activities recom- mended for women educator by 1885, when the Olmsted stood m the Catherine Beecher and By sixty-year-old wintery garden landscape of Fairsted, he had completed projects such as Central Park writer Jane Loudon. (The works and Riverside m that became national models. In his remammg of both women were widely cir- years m Brooklme his office would carry out hundreds of pro7ects, amongg culated, both in serial and in which the most mfluentlal were the Boston park system (begun 1878J, book form.)H Stanford Umversity campus (1886-1891), and the World’s Columbian Where would such activities Exhibition (1888-1893). His nephew, stepson, and partner, , have taken Although no place? photographed him m the Hollow, Fairsted’s sunken garden, agamst a actual there description exists, rugged outcrop of Brooklme’s charactemstic sedimentary rock, Roxbury are some clues in planting as puddingstone. The ledge defmes the shape of the httle garden as well well as design. A friendly, flow- as the local context 8

John Charles’ 1900 wmter mew from the second story of the house surveys Famsted’s entrance gate and drive turnaround. Wild-lookmg plantmgs, which screen out Warren Street and yet harmomze with the natural growth on the rocky mdge beyond, carry out Olmsted’s residential ideal- to offer both domestic pnvacy and umty with the larger landscape and the commumty.

ery little area lay just around the corner to the and parallel to it), and the vegetable garden. (The west of the conservatory on the south front. It locations of both the flower garden and the veg- was tucked into the sunny angle between the etable garden were changed at least once; they laundry yard lattice fence and the path that led eventually were merged together in the enclo- to the production area of Fairsted: the original sure which in 1926 became the firm’s parking flower garden and cold frames (west of the barn lot.) This little area, close to but not part of the 9

service end of the house, was planted with a long drafting table. Later office enlargements shrubs such as deutzia, weigela, rose of sharon, slowly extended the north end of the house even lilac-all familiar creatures of the New England farther toward Dudley Street, in workmanlike dooryard garden, the traditional domain of angular mcrements that fit in nicely with an old women. These plants, with the exception of barn that had been joined to the rear of the lilac, are not seen elsewhere at Fairsted in the house sometime in the eighties. By 1904 the early years. final footprint was complete. This end of the lawn, bright, protected from For more than fifteen years (until Harvard the wind by the bulk of the house and from founded the first formal training program in intrusion by its distance from the street, would 1900), the home office at Fairsted was effec- have had a particularly domestic and private tively the only school of landscape design in atmosphere. It combined the old-fashioned America, providing practical experience in floweriness so often associated with women design and execution, urban planning, and hor- with proximity to the household end of the ticulture. Every landscape vignette at Fairsted building. The conservatory, which is located can be seen as a miniature version of some towards the west end of the house and whose larger idea of Olmsted’s: for instance, the rock large glass panes command a view of almost the garden is reminiscent of Central Park’s Ramble. entire south landscape, would have been the It would be difficult to trace exactly how these closest position for overseeing the kitchen areas surroundings influenced the work of firm mem- and the working gardens to the west-the bers, but all of them doubtless absorbed some- household "engine," and traditionally the thing of Fairsted’s essence, whether they stayed "business side" of the house for women. Simi- with the firm or set up independent practice. larly, the presence of a door to the drafting Echoes of Fairsted’s quiet, shaggy, green imagery rooms and the use of the house front door to resonate in many of their works. Warren k t. enter the partners’ office might be said to mark Manning’s quarry garden at Stan Hywet, in the east entrance front as the "men’s side."" Akron, Ohio, and Percival Gallagher’s ravine Together with the continuous stretch of lawn garden at what is now the Indianapolis Museum which curled around the south front and gave of Fine Art both seem like variations on the onto the entrance drive circle, the rock garden Hollow, the signature sunken wild garden at was the landscape attraction that linked the the Fairsted front entrance turnaround. Besides south and east exposures. Where the lawn is enjoying the best design apprenticeship, young expansive, a place to walk companionably or to staff members also found themselves in one of pull out chairs to sit in the fresh air, the rock the horticultural and botanical centers of the garden seems intended for more solitary pur- nation. Less than five minutes’ walk up Warren poses. Its paths are narrow for two abreast and Street lay Holm Lea, Charles Sprague Sargent’s were originally screened from the lawn by estate filled with botanical introductions from plantings, many of them evergreen. One can afar. The Arnold Arboretum, directed by imagine this was a place for private, contempla- Sargent, was located in neighboring Jamaica tive strolls, both for the family and members of Plain, and not much farther away were the the office staff. Here the eye could rest absent- Cambridge Botanic Garden of Harvard Univer- mindedly on an embroidery of groundcovers, sity, Mount Auburn Cemetery, and the Boston and on the details of lichen- and moss-covered Public Garden, all rich with horticultural col- rock, patterns as abstract as thought itself. lections. Reports of what was in bloom on a single day at any one of these places sometimes The Office ran to fifty plants.9 Olmsted’s first office improvement to the exist- Olmsted’s Ideals Embodied at Fairsted ing structures was very simple: in 1884, at the same time that other changes were made to his Olmsted’s career was fueled by an optimism new dwelling, he added about ten feet to the about human progress, but a guarded optimism. north parlor of the farmhouse to accommodate He looked to what were then progressive ideas: 10

fresh air, sanitation, new transportation meth- the teens and twenties by the firm, as well as ods, and contact with what he called "Nature,"" by other contemporary practitioners, such as to preserve or restore the values of an older, van- Charles Platt, Albert Davis Taylor, or Ellen ishing society in a larger, more urban, more Shipman. In those fifty years, the American eco- complex world. He looked back in time to the nomic climate changed enormously, and with it small town, in memory a golden Hartford, Con- the taste of the firm’s residential clientele, who necticut, where he had grown up in the first half were the rich and influential, many of them of the nineteenth century, in what was then the newly rich. They traveled frequently to Europe, new republic, before the Civil War and the tur- and they read magazines such as House ~J Gar- moil that accompanied industrialization. The den (first published in 1901) and House Beauti- "communitiveness," as he called it, of that ful (1896), whose only subject was the life they tight-webbed life of shared values and efforts, could enjoy with their wealth. Photographs in which at the same time respected the indi- these mass magazines promoted the use of his- vidual, was his ideal. 10 For him, social engmeer- torical architectural detail and gave to designed ing to create on a larger scale that healthy, space a visual meaning that had never before thoughtful, neighborly state of mind began with been available to laymen unable to read a plan. the wise design of public space, which in turn A new professional class, landscape architects, was rooted in the design of the home and its sur- stood ready to create such space. From the late roundings. Air, light, orderliness, beauty, and 1890s up to the 1929 crash, lavish architectonic easy access to the outdoors were all part of his formality seemed imperative and there was program for domestic life. money, talent, and labor available to achieve it. Olmsted’s often-repeated desire to blend resi- Even in Brookline, where the hilly topography dential design into the larger surrounding while of ledges and bogs is better suited to naturalis- still preserving privacy emerges at Fairsted. It tic treatments like that at Fairsted, great formal was to be a part of the town in its apparent open- gardens were carved out, such as Charles Platt’s ness, but also a family retreat. Two design designs for Mr. and Mrs. Charles F. Sprague’s elements ensured that this double purpose was Faulkner Farm (1897) and Mr. and Mrs. Larz 1 served. The choice of a spruce pole fence to Anderson’s Weld (1901)." encircle the property was one such element. Fairsted had almost none of the garden fea- Sinuous, malleable, cut to fit over every root tures that from the turn of the century onward and rock it traversed, and made of the rustic, became standard in the designs of the Olmsted natural materials Olmsted preferred, the fence firm for this new clientele, on small properties is airy, a screen rather than a wall, because the as well as large. At Fairsted there was neither poles don’t fit together tightly. The front rose garden nor herb garden; neither Japanese entrance creates the impression of openness garden, nor . No extensive support- while actually preventing the passerby from see- mg facilities existed, such as a or a ing in. The arching driveway gate piled with hot bed. There was a vegetable garden, a cut vines is welcoming, but the little turnaround flower garden, and at various times in different mound directly within, topped with a tree locations cuttings were grown on, plants heeled whose root crevices still sprout jack-in-the- in, and bulbs and annuals tested. But a visitor pulpits in spring, hides the front door almost did not find a walled court, a collection of box- until the visitor arrives. woods, an allee, or a formal vista. Garden seats, Chinese ornaments, stone or turf terraces with Interpreting Design flights of steps and balustrades, mossy statues, The design of residential landscape changed dra- clipped -none. There was no summer matically between the time that Olmsted cre- house or or shingled child’s playhouse, ated the Fairsted landscape-the 1880s-and the no sundial, nor any trace of historically accu- period to which it is now being restored-the rate-or even inaccurate-"period style"-no late 1920s. The shift can be measured by com- Colonial Revival, French, or English architec- paring Fairsted with the landscapes made during tural details. There was no tall stone wall, no 111

wrought-iron entrance gate with urn-topped posts, no landscape program that progressed from symmetry near the house to pas- toral informality at the edges of the property. 12 The difference between Olmsted Sr.’s work and the later work of the firm is not )ust a change in taste; it reflects differing ideas as to how best to achieve social and political ends through . Olmsted Sr., whose landscape philosophy was progres- sive and socialist, had always been reluctant to undertake private residential work for the very rich.

Above, Mrs. Henry V Greenough’s formal garden, an Ellen Shipman pro7ect of 1926, exemplifies the trend towards compartmented design on smaller properties m Brooklme and other suburbs. Bmck walls, a controllmg axis that ties the garden to the house, sculptural ornament, and mchly planted perenmal beds are typical of Shipman’s work. Such features can also be found m many pnvate gardens laid out nationwide by m that same decade. Below, the landscape plan, unhke Fairsted’s, would not be a surprise today. The walled garden has a well-equipped vegetable-and- cuttmg garden tucked compactly behind it; steps lead down to a pool whose oval shape is echoed by the lawn. A wmdmg path mvislble from lawn or house circles the tree-screened property. Two pocket gardens fill the lot corners. a bank of naturahstic plantmgs and a mld pond It’s a bnlhant solution for the owner of a small suburban property who wants it all pnvacy, formal and natural beauty, changes m level, the use of water, and home produce Compactness, symmetry, formahty, and an absence of connection with the landscape beyond are what chiefly differentiate it from a home landscape of Falrsted’s date.l3 12

He did so ambivalently, and generally only tonic projects. When the Beaux-Arts concept of when some aspect of it served a purpose beyond extending the axes and lines of the house out- the client’s personal satisfaction. For instance, doors took hold shortly after the turn of the cen- he embarked on George Vanderbilt’s Biltmore, tury, compartment, or "room," gardening was in North Carolina, because he felt an arboretum the consequence. Each indoor room has its out- and privately managed forest would exemplify door counterpart. This sequenced architectural national goals for conservation and arbor- feeling (one that still usefully rules in the small iculture. While the Olmsted brothers certainly spaces of today) is very different from that of did not neglect the public sphere, they clearly Fairsted’s integrated, organic design. felt no such ambivalence about expensive pri- the vate display designed for its own sake, if one is Interpreting Plantings to judge from the large body of elaborate estate Fairsted’s original plantings, so different from work they executed. those found in large estate gardens of the early At Fairsted, among the most striking original twentieth century, shaped the design as much as features (all of which still survive) are a great did the requirements of use, or any idea of ideal elm standing m an irregular pool of lawn, and landscape form. By the twenties, hybridizers the "," a view over the were producing compact forms of shrubs and meadow and groves of the adjoining property. dwarf or fastigiate forms of trees to suit smaller But most significant of the original survivors properties. By contrast, Fairsted’s shrub is "the Hollow," a rugged little garden that plantings were species, or older cultivars, with lies next to and below the house entrance, a wide-sprawling branches. Just a look at deep dimple in an outcropping of Roxbury Fairsted’s roses is telling. There is not a tea rose puddingstone. Any "improver" except Frederick to be found. Instead there are big hardy shrub Law Olmsted would have filled it in when grad- roses: American native Rosa luclda (now R. mg the grounds. He kept it-the kind of geologi- mrginiana) with its clear yellow fall foliage; cal reminder of place that appears everywhere in beautiful but dangerously invasive Rosa multi- his work. flora, with its staggering fragrance and huge If the Hollow stands as an emblem of bouquets of translucent single white flowers; Olmsted’s respect for wild nature, then the con- Rosa spinosissima, the old "Scotch Briar," with tinuity of the 1.74-acre landscape, which flows its creamy flowers and ferny foliage. Native without breaks like a Japanese screen painting, American shrubs-such as staghorn sumac illustrates how he viewed the relationship be- (Rhus typhina), inkberry (Ilex glabra), and tween interior and exterior-or between man summersweet (Clethra almfoliaJ-show up on and his manmade surrounding. The sense of the plan of 1904. Both these plants and the unbroken flow persists even as one walks species roses were used by Olmsted in the slowly through the former living quarters of the Boston parks, perhaps indicating their presence house, where the rock garden, lawn, borrowed at Fairsted in the 1880s as well. Generally, pasture view, and shrub bank melt into one the landscape depended on contrasting plant another through the old wavy window panes. It forms and foliage textures for its effect, rather is Olmsted’s ideal landscape, tamed and in than on blossom. miniature: a continuous whole, an ideal he In its use of large species forms and American expressed again and again in writing about both natives for even the smallest suburban land- natural and designed landscape. Describing scape, Olmsted’s original planting aesthetic was Yosemite in 1864 he said "... not in one feature indeed different from that of the 1920s. It had or another, not in one part or one scene or been equally distinct from that of his contempo- another, not any landscape that can be framed raries. His taste as a young man had been by itself, but all around and wherever the visitor formed at the same time that a taste for the pic- goes, constitutes the Yo Semite the greatest turesque in a domestic settmg finally became glory of nature."" popular in America, fifty years or so after its The landscape at Fairsted is indeed "all vogue in England. But Olmsted’s version of the around," unlike the firm’s later, more architec- picturesque at Fairsted was even wilder, less 13

In summer, perhaps as early as the twenties and certamly by 1935, the date of this photograph, a chair and table had appeared m the shade of the Hollow. The narrow foreground path circles a central bed and the ledge of Roxbury puddingstone looms beyond. The reconstruction of the wooden entrance arch can be seen at the upper left.t. manicured than the American norm of its time. letter to Ignaz Pilat, the Austrian horticulturist Vines grew everywhere. Photographs taken at of Central Park. Writing from Panama, Olmsted the turn of the century show house walls and describes the "jungled variety and density and fences dripping with climbers, many of them intricate abundance" of the isthmus, saying it fast growers to thirty feet or so: Dutchman’s "excited a wholly different emotion from that pipe (Aristolochia macrophylla, formerly A. produced by any of our temperate-zone scenery

durior), Japanese winter-creeper (Euonymus ... excited it instantly, instinctively and fortunei var. radicans), bower actinidia directly. If my retrospective analysis of this (Actinidia arguta), the American shrubby emotion is correct, it rests upon a sense of bittersweet (Celastrus scandens), Virginia the superabundant creative power, infinite creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia), and Bos- resource, and liberality of Nature-the childish ton ivy (P. tricuspidata, formerly Ampelopsis playfulness and profuse careless utterance of tricuspidata), wisteria (probably Wisteria Nature."’S How to duplicate this in the Ramble sinensis), and English ivy (Hedera helix). in Central Park, Olmsted asks himself. He cites What such a display of almost tropical inten- the Virginia creeper, so much in evidence at sity meant to Olmsted is expressed m an 1863 Fairsted, as perhaps the best temperate-zone

Overleaf: Plan #33, the 1920s reworkmg of the Hollow, refreshed the green framework and groundcovers and saw the judicious removal of shrubs that had outgrown their original locations. The small garden was groomed as a display garden and, besides the plants hsted here, quantities of other corms and bulbs were added for a contmuous succession of bloom from early April through August. 14

OLMSTED BROTHERS (F. L. Olmsted Estate) Brookline, Massachusetts

~ PLANTING FOR "HOLLOW" TO ACCOMPANY PLAN NO. 33 File No. 673

Olmsted Brothers Brookline, Mass. Landscape Architects October 5th, 1923.

1. Cotoneaster horizontalis, 14 plants 2. Juniperus communis, 6 plants " 3. Hosta sieboldiana, 2’ apart, 30 plants

4. Taxus cuspidata, 10 plants . 5. Taxus cuspidata capitata, 7 plants Taxus 4’ 36 6. repandens, apart, plants ______7. Pachysandra terminalis, 9" apart, 1859 plants 8. Taxus repandens, small size, 25 plants 9. Epimedium macranthum, 9" apart, 756 plants (or other kinds) 10. Juniperus japonica, 11 plants (riot ~~)) 11. Juniperus chinensis pfitzeriana. 5 plants 12. Taxus 9 plants 13. Phlox cuspidatasubulata n a 9" apart, 105 plants 14. Phlox subulata Vivid, 9" apart, 125 plants 15. Phlox subulata G. F. Wilson, 9" apart, 70 plants 16. Saxifraga cordifolia, large-leaved variety, 30 plants 17. Dryopteris marginalis, 1’ apart, 50 plants 18. Dennstedtia punctilobula, 1’ apart, 125 plants 19. Salix tristis, 1 1/2’ apart, 170 plants 20. Diervilla trifida. 2’ apart. 45 plants 21. Euonymus radicans acutus, 1 1/2’ apart. 75 plants 22. Iris Prince Victor, 1 1/2’ apart, 5 plants 23. Iris Ingeborg, 1 1/2’ apart, 10 plants 24. Taxus canadensis. 3’ apart, 50 plants 25. Hosta lancifolia, 1 1/2’ apart. 80 plants

The hst also mcluded another 38 vaneties of ms, a total of 639 corms. For mstant ef fect, they were closely planted~ for example, Iris cristata on 9-mch centers

A. Add a few rocks. B. The existing gap to be filled in with shrubs from place, preferably rhodotypos. C. All of the rhododendrons to be taken out of here and used somewhere along southerly boundary of grounds. (Next Mrs. Gardner’s) D. Practically all of the existing shrubs on this slope to be eliminated, and perhaps used elsewhere on the grounds. The box, a crataegus, probably a pyrus are to be left; decisions will have to be made at the time of carrying out the work. E. The vines growing up from the base of this rock probably to be eliminated. This is to be considered on the ground again. F. It is worth considering rebuilding these steps. G. It is worth considering rebuilding this walk and the platform with more artistic looking material. H. Leave Crataegus pyracantha. 15

LILIES Planted Fall 1924

Superbum - bright reddish orange, spotted. Canadense - funnel shaped flowers: varying from yellow to orange; spotted inside. Croceum - Bright orange flowers. Henryi - flowers a rich deep orange-yellow. Fine foliage. Regale - flowers, white, shaded pink; canary-yellow center. Speciosum album - large pure white fragrant flowers. Speciosum melpomene pink spotted flowers; last 3 weeks or longer. Testaceum - dull apricot, orange anthers. Pardalinum Californicum - deep orange, maroon spotted; tips of petals, intense scarlet. Parryi - flowers of soft yellow ; conspicuous brown anthers. Batemanni - clear glowing apricot flowers-Brown Browni - large trumpet: inside, pure white; outside shaded chocolate brown. Monadelphum Szovitzianum - pale citron-yellow to deep yellow.

Circles mdicate only approximate locations, not areas occupied, and the numbers m cmcles indicate the number of bulbs planted A group of tall, pure white Lilium speciosum ‘Album’(see arrow) greets the visitor descendmg the steps and is then silhouetted agamst the Hollow’s steep south wall of greenery and stone when seen from the far end of the central path. 16

substitute. Years later, visiting England in desire to have a showplace for clients, and its 1892, he wrote to John Charles that the best need to experiment with plants that could pro- ornamental grounds he saw were those in duce an unbroken sequence of bulb and peren- which the vines and creepers were outwitting nial bloom in clients’ gardens-a new concept the gardener. of planting that became the rule at the turn of Fortunately, in refurbishing this landscape the century. after the turn of the century, the firm largely By 1930 the Hollow was still the "mass of followed Olmsted’s example by using common shrubs and flowers" reached by "rough rock hardy plants like Virginia creeper or English ivy, steps" that the budding landscape gardener all in great quantity. They grew well, quickly Beatrix Jones (Farrand) described in 1894. But providing nature’s "childish playfulness and there had been changes m garden architecture, profuse careless utterance." Quantities some- use, and planting. The alteration of the steps times ran very large indeed: a memo of August is a metaphor for the changes in general: at 6, 1924, specifies ninety (!) sheep laurel (Kalmla Koehler’s suggestion, they were rebuilt in 1924 IatifoliaJ, one to one-and-one-half-foot-tall, for for an easier descent so that, although their "planting about path in southeast corner of location and rustic nature were retained, their lawn." One wonders what thinning procedures roughhewn appearance was reduced by regular- were used; perhaps the nineteenth-century izing the height and variety of the risers. The practice, "Plant thick and thin quick," which increased ease of access, and the use of a table Olmsted Sr. used in his parks, was used here and chairs for staff members at lunchtime, as well. Similarly, for ferns m the same corner, domesticated the Hollow in a way not envi- the hardiest, easiest-to-grow ferns are specified, sioned before: it became a garden room instead such as hay-scented fern (Dennstaedtia punc- of a remnant of nature that one glanced into or tilobula, formerly Dicksonia punctilobula), walked through for spiritual refreshment. By which is exceptionally drought-resistant. 1930 as many as forty-one different iris culti- vars, twenty-three kinds of tulips (species, after Olmsted Sr. Planting Changes single early, cottage, and Darwin types are all The only areas where planting schemes did represented), and thirteen lilies had been indi- change in the forty years between the 1880s and cated for the Hollow. No planting list exists the 1920s were m the Hollow and the rear court- from the 1880s, but it seems doubtful that yard. Both of these areas, which are on the office Olmsted Sr. would have mcluded so many cul- side of the grounds, were planted more elabo- tivated varieties of bulbs in this wild-looking rately. The additions were predominantly place, given his expressed preference for keeping notable for the bloom and seasonal appeal pro- flowers in the garden and out of the landscape. vided by bulbs and annuals, rather than for their Given his taste for subtle, overall effects would year-round form. he have planted pure white, one-and-a-half- The man with the most direct responsibility meter-tall Lillum speciosum ’Album’ in the for the horticultural development of the center of this diminutive wild garden as was grounds from 1910 through 1930 was Hans J. done m 1924? Would he have proposed, as Koehler, who worked for the firm for forty years. Koehler did in a 1911 memorandum to F. L. Not a landscape architect, Koehler was a horti- Olmsted, Jr., that "the coarse blackberry vines cultural specialist who made most of the plans and some other coarse things on slope to the and plant lists for the Hollow and the rear court- west of the rhododendron group under the yard. (Another longterm presence was Green- Cornus florida are to be eliminated"? Cut back, wood Kitt, the gardener, who worked on the perhaps; eliminated, no. Olmsted Sr. himself had place from about 1897 through 1922 and prob- written to John Charles m 1884 while the origi- ably helped shape its horticultural character.)( nal landscape was being created, that he didn’t Koehler’s great familiarity with garden plants "object to the cutting away of certain bramble introduced wider horticultural variety at patches if brambles are to take their place...."" Fairsted during the years of his employment. The reorganization of the employees’ rear This change was also impelled by the firm’s courtyard was even more radical in planting 177

changes and design intent. Koehler did the final 1925 plan, but undoubtedly it was approved by , Jr., then the firm’s deciding voice on Fairsted matters. The yard was transformed from an unceremoni- ous back areaway into a pleasant, modest entrance garden. Vines grew on the high walls of the new brick plan vault, and flowers bloomed in beds lining the sides of the courtyard and in a single bed set in a stone dust cement aggre- gate floor (presumably poured for practicality, before a garden was envisioned). Within the context of the firm’s work, the new court- yard design and plantings were neither origmal nor beautiful. Nonetheless, they are interestmg historically because they mirror changed attitudes towards the workplace and the profession of landscape architecture. Further, they demonstrate the emergence of certain design conventions, such as symmetry, not seen before at Fairsted. These improvements to the courtyard certainly indicate a change in the status of the firm’s employees. Their growing num- bers and the recognition of land- scape architecture as a respected profession endowed clerks and other support staff (both men and women by the 1920s) with enough importance to assure them of more than a naked "back door."/I Then too, the 1926 automobile parking lot on the site of the former vegetable garden brought What m the earhest years of the firm was an unceremomous back more people through this rear door used by the staff had becomea cheerful though modest office entrance. garden by the late 1920s. The pyramidal yews at either side of the By comparison with the Hol- path mark not only an entrance but also the use of symmetry not seen before at Fairsted low, such a landscape comes across as less sophisticated, less considered and older "front entrance garden" to the same office permanent in its plantings; it had less to do with space, the courtyard did not have a stone path the natural site and more to do with human use. and steps, nor a refined array of shrubs for year- Unlike the Hollow, which was essentially the round structure, nor a choice selection of small 188

ily for most of the 1920s. Thus the early twenties became a turning point when the focus of Fairsted tipped away from the home and towards the needs of the firm. The emphasis turned now to the design elements that could illustrate possibili- ties for visiting clients. In the previous forty years, between 1883 and the early twenties, the Olmsted family’s need for a soothing and private landscape had been equally important; it had served as a multiple-use, domestic fabric whose spatial patterns shaped and were shaped by daily life. The Restoration The present restoration will return the design to its compo- sition in the late 1920s. Those were the years when the firm’s business was at its height but before the mechanical lawn- mower had erased many of the subtle curves where green- Staff horticulturist Hans J. Koehler’s plantmg study for the rear office sward meets shrub border. Nor courtyard makes the best of an unpromismg space mnth an abundance had the of of perennial border plants that are a hallmark of the firm’s later style: growth seedling ms, peonies, and a rambler rose, along with annuals such as sweet invaders and the death of many alyssum and tuberous begonias. In wmter, yews and pachysandra make mature trees changed the a sketchy evergreen framework. composition of the family side. In choosing the landscape of bulbs and lilies. Instead, many of the courtyard this period, the restoration intends to reestab- plants were annual flowers, which provided lish the delicate balance that still existed in the the immediate appeal of summer color and 1920s between the old residential landscape fragrance for people hurrying in to work. Sym- and that of the office, at the same time that it metry (more or less), tight pyramidal yews, the brings back the lush, profligate look so emblem- popular pink rose ’Dorothy Perkins’ (introduced atic of Olmsted’s original design and landscape in 1902), and an edging of sweet alyssum philosophy. marked it as a modest early twentieth-century suburban "cottage" garden whose planting Endnotes This article is from a written as aesthetic was very different from that of an adapted longer essay part a the earlier Fairsted. of cultural landscape report prepared by Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation for the Frederick Law John Charles Olmsted died in 1920, and the Olmsted National Historic Site of the National Park death of his mother followed in 1921. The house Service. It will be published m its entirety m 1997. was rented in that same year, and Frederick I Frederick Law Olmsted (hereafter FLO) gives his Olmsted, Jr., moved to with his fam- defimtion of civilization most completely m "Notes 19

The Dudley Street entrance area reflects Fairsted’s changmg usage: first a vegetable garden for a family, then bnefly considered as an expenmental annual plot for the fmm, it finally became m 1926 a parkmg lot for the expanded staff. The spruce pole fence, equally flexible in its own way, has been cut to fit the root flare of an Acer pseudoplatanus, at left.

on the Pioneer Condition, Section 2, Defining urban Town 1705-1850, ed. David Hackett Fischer Civilization," in Ranney, 659. (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University, 1986), 264. Z FLO expressed his ideal of the domestic landscape in 5 Atlas of the Town of Brooklme (Philadelphia: G. M. "Plan for a Small Homestead," Garden and Forest Hopkms, 1884), plate 15, and Town of Brookline (May 2, 1888) I: 1111 Special Committee, Report of Committee on 3 the Town FLO, "Trees m Streets and m Parks, The Samtanan Mumcipal Policy of of Brooklme, (September 1882) X/114~: 517. Massachusetts (Brookline, MA: Rmerdale Press, 1925),3-13 ’ Alisa Behnkoff Katz, "From Puritan Village to Yankee 6 Township: A Social History of Politics m Brookline, For a discussion of women’s psychological illness m 1705-1875" m Brookhne, the Soclal History of a Sub- the 19th century, see Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre 20

English, For Her Own Good 150 Years of the Experts’ Ranney, Victoria Post, Gerard J. Rauluk, and Carolyn Advice to Women (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books/ F. Hoffman 1990. The Papers of Fredenck Doubleday, 1978), 102-140. Law Olmsted. Vol. V, The Cahforma 7 Frontier, 1863-1865. Baltimore: Dowmng’s book, which first appeared in 1841, was Johns Hopkms Press. reissued in eight editions throughout the century. University Wood. A s Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Roper, Laura 1973. FLO, Biography of Fredemck Olmsted Baltimore: American Woman’s Home (NY: J. B. Ford, 1869; Law Johns Hopkms Hartford, CT: Stowe-Day Foundation, 1975/, 117, University Press. 294-296, 379-402; also see Jane Loudon, Gardemng Tishler, William H., ed. 1989. Amencan Landscape for Ladies (1840), The Ladies’ Compamon to the Architecture Designers and Places Flower-Garden (1841~, The Ladies’ Flower-Garden Washmgton, DC: Preservation Press. Amateur Gardener’s (1839-48), Companzon (1847), Zaitzevsky, Cynthia. In press. Cultural Landscape The Lady’s Country Compamon / 1850( Report for the Fredenck Law Olmsted 9 Hans J. Koehler, Bloommg Date Notebook, March 6, National Historic Site, "Famsted " Vol. I: Site 1910, to November 16, 1910, Frederick Law Olmsted History, with an afterword by Mac Gnswold National Historic Site Plant File. Brookline, MA: National Park Service, 1o Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site. For "communitiveness," see "Notes on the Pioneer Condition, Section 2, Defining Civilization," in . 1982. Frederick Law Olmsted and the Boston Ranney,659 Park System. Cambridge, MA: Harvard 11 Press. Keith N. Morgan, Charles Platt. The Artist as University Architect (NY: Architectural History Foundation, 1985), 48-53, 56-58. Acknowledgments For all the assistance offered in so with this 12 Mac Gnswold and Eleanor Weller, The Golden Age of many ways I would like to thank Robert Cook and Amencan Gardens Proud Owners, Pmvate Estates, article, Phylhs Andersen of the Arnold Lauren Meier and 1890-1940 (NY Harry N. Abrams, 1991~ 13-15, Arboretum, 45-48. Joyce Connolly of the National Park Service, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic 13 Site, Cynthia Ellen Shipman, "Variety of Form and Abundance of Zaitzevsky, Karen Madsen, Robm Karson, Arleyn Levee, Bloom Within a Small Area, The Garden of Mrs Keith Morgan, Victoria Ranney, Judith Tankard, and the Henry V. Greenough, Brookline, Massachusetts," staffs of the Brookline Public Library and the Brookline House Beautiful (March, 1931(, 259-262. Preservation Commission. ~4 FLO, "The Yosemite Valley and the Manposa Big Trees: A Prehmmary Report (18G5~," m Ranney, 500. 15 FLO to Ignaz A. Pilat, September 26, 1863, m Ranney, Mac Gnswold’s most recent book is The Golden 85. Age of Amencan Gardens ( 1991 an illustrated history of turn- Select Bibliography of-the-century plutocratic gardemng m the U.S., written with Eleanor Weller She is also the author of "A History Charles and Paul Rocheleau. 1995. Bevendge, E., of Gardemng in the Umted States," in The New Royal Frederick Law Olmsted Designing the Horticultural Society Dictionary of Gardemng (1992/, Amencan Landscape NY: Rizzoh Inter- edited by Sir Aldous Huxley. Her articles and book national. reviews have appeared m The New York Times, Vogue, Kalfus, Melvin. 1990. Fredemck Law Olmsted The House & Garden, Hortus, The Magazme Antiques, Passion of a Pubhc Artist. NY: New York Landscape Architecture Magazme, Gardens Illustrated, Umversity Press. and , where she is a contributing editor.