Adolph Strauch's Landscape Lawn Plan

Spring Grove: 150 Years Adolph Strauch's Spring Grove's landscape and suburban Village of Clifton and Landscape Lawn the story of its design would be the decision to create primary res- Plan very different today if a young idences, not just summer "cot- Prussian landscape gardener, tages," proprietors built grand Adolph Strauch (1822-1883), had baronial houses of diverse archi- not arrived in Cincinnati in the tectural styles which they wanted fall of 1852 by a fortuitous acci- to surround with the sort of rural dent. On his way to Niagara Falls landscape that would make the from Texas, Strauch missed a village a naturalistic showplace. train connection and suddenly Strauch worked on Bowler's found himself in Cincinnati. The seventy-three-acre "Mount young Strauch found in his Storm" and the properties of pockets the calling card of Bowler's neighboring friends: Queen City resident Robert Henry Probasco's thirty-acre Bonner Bowler whom he had guid- "Oakwood," William Clifford ed through London's Crystal Neff's twenty-five-acre "The Palace Exhibition and various Windings," and George Krug English gardens in 1851. Schoenberger's forty-seven-acre Bowler greeted the visitor "Scarlet Oaks." Strauch worked warmly and persuaded him that on each individual estate but cre- his expertise could be well applied ated a unified landscape between in Ohio. Strauch proceeded to win them. His sinuous roads wound the respect of Cincinnati's horti- through the undulating, hilltop culturists by designing the land- terrain, extending the procession- scapes of their new Clifton al onto curving estate drives. He estates. With incorporation of the created "a sequence of carefully Adolph Strauch in 1838 with an appointment guiding foreign visitors to the in the Imperial Gardens in Crystal Place Exhibition Vienna, where he developed a through the Royal Gardens friendship with Prince where he met Cincinnatian Hermann Fiirst von Piickler- Robert Bowler. Muskau, the "great European In i860, he designed the park reformer," who influ- grounds of the Longview enced Strauch in his develop- Lunatic Asylum near ment of a taste for magnificent Carthage. In 1869, he took pastoral spaces and spatial time away from Spring Grove sequences along clearly defined to lay out Highland Cemetery sightlines. He preferred the across the Ohio River in "beautiful" to the "pic- Covington, Kentucky. Strauch turesque," well-groomed also contributed to the "green- expanses of lawn carefully ing" of the burgeoning metrop- framed by masses of trees and olis with design of major new shrubs rather than overgrown, pastoral public parks in the woodsy landscape. Strauch 1870s. Strauch served as learned from Piickler that "the Superintendent of the Park indispensable foundation for Board from 1871 to 1875 and the building of a park or land- designed the 270-acre Eden scape" is to "develop a control- Park on the city's eastern ling scheme" and then to carry heights, the 170-acre Burnet it out with consistency. Woods near Clifton, and Strauch worked for the Lincoln Park. CHS Strauch was born on August summer in Ghent and in Paris 30, 1822, in Eckersdorf in the until the 1848 Revolution, Prussian province of Silesia then found employment in where his father managed a London's Royal Botanical model farm. After an educa- Gardens at Regent's Park until tion in botany, he began his 1851. There, the multilingual career in landscape gardening Strauch also busied himself Adolph Strauch's Landscape Lawn Plan designed, gradually unfolding views," the essence of the "pic- turesque," for those arriving by carriage. He maximized dramatic distant vistas over the Millcreek Valley with "its varied spectacle of village and farm, cultivated fields and distant forest-covered hill," a panorama these gentle- men had already preserved by founding Spring Grove. Rambling paths formed an internal system on and between properties, con- necting Buchanan's "Greenhills" and William Resor's "Greendale" along minor ridges and through orchards. Clifton's "rural" drives and paths contrasted markedly Strauch gave Bowler's proper- with gridded city streets. ty, Mt. Storm, a lake with Inevitably, horticulturists swans, a waterfall, orchards, took Strauch to Spring Grove and gardens, and greenhouses. Irrigation came from a reser- listened to his unexpected criti- voir camouflaged under the cism that their Cemetery resem- highest hill topped by a Temple of Love, similar to one bled "a marble yard where monu- in Marie Antoinette's romantic ments are for sale." Strauch gardens at Versailles. The hill declared, "All that glitter and around the temple, the focal point for major social occa- parade exhibited about the graves sions, was "covered with of the dead in modern cemeteries English and Norway pines, besides maple, willow, English is much to be regretted." His elm, Tartarian maple, and vari- ideal cemetery would combine eties of the linden" by 1875. "cheerfulness . luxuriance of There Susan Pendleton Bowler threw gala receptions for the growth, shade, solitude, and likes of Emporer Dom Pedro of repose in such a manner as to imi- Brazil and the Prince of Wales who called Clifton and Mt. tate rural nature." Too much art Storm the "Eden of Cincinnati and artifice would result in Aristocracy." CHS "ennui and disgust." The precari- ous balance between nature and artifice had tipped away from the pastoral. Strauch scolded that "Gaudiness is often mistaken for splendor and capricious strangeness for improvement. When once the dazzling glare of this feeling possesses the fancy, every soft and delicate impression loses its effect." He declared it "a pity [that] the beautiful reposing place of the dead was not . developed on a scientific plan." Spring Grove: 150 Years To break up the linear appearance of property lines among the Clifton estates, Strauch eliminated fences and created lawns called "greenswards." Carefully planted bosks of trees framed palatial houses, foun- tains, statuary, and distant vistas, giving the new suburb the appearance of a single property. CHS Strauch convinced Directors that Spring Grove's landscape needed reform. "Good taste" sug- gested "that a rural cemetery should partake more of the char- acter of a cheerful park or garden than of a common graveyard, where everything has a gloomy and dismal appearance/' or where "gaudiness" or "capricious strangeness" entered with each passing vogue. Spring Grove could serve as "the most interesting of all places for contemplative recre- ation" if only he were permitted to make everything in it "tasteful, classical, and poetical." Strauch Appointed On October 9, 1854, Strauch became the Cemetery's Landscape Gardener with full authority to implement his "landscape lawn plan" to produce "the pictorial Geo. K. Shoenberger Henry Probasco union of architecture, sculpture, and landscape gardening," blend- The wealthy country gentle- ing the "well-regulated precision men of Clifton built grand baronial houses of diverse of human design with apparently architectural styles which they wild irregularities of divine wanted to surround with the sort of landscape that would creation." For his first three make the village a showplace. years Strauch served under CHS Superintendent Dennis Delaney. Adolph Strauch's Landscape Lawn Plan 33 With the hiring of Strauch, the more — a talented, cosmopolitan Tensions arose which related Board temporarily suspended the individual they hoped to retain in to the lack of discipline among work and salary of surveyor and their midst. Strauch was not just Cemetery workers and to their engineer Henry Earnshaw. another employee or local bud- informal work habits. The Sons of Strauch received a salary of $700 ding talent to be used and discard- Temperance of neighboring a year, compared to Earnshaw's ed, and he knew it. He could do Cumminsville had complained in former $900. A new, unprecedent- without them, he implied, threat- 1849 to the Board of the blatant ed regime had begun. ening to move on. Could they do "use of ardent spirits" on Within a year personality without him? As any elite, they Cemetery grounds by laborers, conflicts over work to be done respected his authoritarianism, permitted and even shared by and authority over it emerged. colored as much by his Prussian Superintendent Delaney. Not only One Cemetery worker, E. manners as much as his intellect, could Strauch provide valuable O'Conner, protested improprieties experience, and design expertise. design expertise, he would also and difficulty between himself and the Landscape Gardener. Strauch insisted that the dispute was "not pleasant to him, and not what he expected" when he took the job. He declared, "mowing grass, cleaning avenues and walks require no great skill; any farmer can do this." He thought his employment "would be to design and lav out the avenues and walks, plant and arrange those parts of the grounds not already surveyed and recorded." When completed, he presumed "his duties on the place would cease and he be at liberty to engage else- where," work "he had hoped to accomplish in three years," never intending to remain permanently at Spring Grove. Strauch asked to Strauch stated that the be relieved from routine, supervi- Cemetery resembled "a marble sory duties "and permitted to go yard where monuments are for on with the work of designing, sale." He convinced the Directors that Spring Grove's laving out and planting." landscape needed reform and Insistence that this statement be "scientific management." CHS recorded in the Board's minutes, complete with underlined empha- sis, indicates Strauch's strong personality. Certainly, Strauch had not planned to visit Cincinnati, let alone to stay on to design Clifton estates or to begin a second phase of Cemetery design. He was entirely confident of having won the complete respect of the local elite as their social equal, if not 34 Spring Grove: 150 Years make employees get down to Strauch Takes Charge but even that seemingly egalitari- work.

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