Fall 2013: Landscapes of Stone

A Publication of the

Foundation

for Landscape Studies

A Journal of Place Volume ıx | Number ı | Fall 2013

Essays: Native Ground, Architectural Substance: Landscapes of Stone 3 Laurie Olin: From Suzhou to Malibu: The Power of Stone in Landscape Design Elizabeth Barlow Rogers: Bedrock, Ice, Sand, and Water: The Geological Landscape of New York City Christa Sadler: House of Stone and Time: The Grand Canyon as Home John Beardsley: Designed and Written in Stone: Four Freedoms Park and the FDR Memorial

Place Maker 16 Carole George: The Stones of the Spirit

Book Reviews 18 Lauren Belfer: The Best Planned City in the World: Olmsted, Vaux, and the Buffalo Park System By Frank R. Kowsky Edward S. Barnard: Ginkgo By Peter Crane Frederic C. Rich: Eat the City: A Tale of the Fishers, Foragers, Butchers, Farmers, Poultry Minders, Sugar Refiners, Cane Cutters, Beekeepers, Winemakers, and Brewers Who Built New York By Robin Shulman

Contributors 23 Letter from the Editor

andscapes of stone? siders how past and present allows us to perceive the gist by training, Sadler can ernmost tip of Roosevelt “Little Sparta,” a garden Stonehenge: a pre- designers have made stone effects of geology within the speak with expertise about Island. Here pale granite is of allusive words incised historic circle an essential element in their span of a single generation, the processes that formed used to create an elevated upon stones and structures of megaliths; Egyp- work. The mineral material it is nearly impossible for the extraordinary topogra- platform for a greensward that arrest the eye within tian pyramids and underlying the built world, most of us to comprehend phy of the canyon’s river- approached by imposing the rolling sheep-studded Ltemples, rising stark and on the other hand, speaks deep time – the millions carved walls, which are stairs; steeply canted walls landscape of southern Scot- colossal from the desert; the of the macro-landscape – a upon millions of years that banded by layer upon layer defining a perimeter prom- land. But whereas Finlay’s Athenian acropolis towering product of cosmic forces formed, eroded, re-formed, of sedimentary strata. But enade; and a roofless, three- rock-inscribed words are above the Agora; Japanese operating on a vastly greater and again eroded the she proves herself some- sided “room” enshrining metaphorical, classicizing, and Chinese gardens; grot- time scale. In my essay mountains whose roots are thing other than a scientist an inscription – the reso- and often polemical, hers tos; squares and plazas. All “Bedrock, Sand, and Water: the rock outcrops found in when she quotes the poet nant words of the wartime are oracular and existential, of these landscapes are man- The Geological Landscape Central Park and other city Alfred Bryan, who charac- president’s Four Freedoms an expressive articulation of made, some melded with of New York City” I attempt parks. That their surfaces terized this mind-boggling speech. The view from the ten qualities of being: char- nature, others quarried, to describe these primordial bear grooves and scratches slash in the American desert memorial is that of another acter, simplicity, discipline, carved, and constructed in processes of Earth’s forma- marking the passage of a landscape as “ten thousand landscape of stone: the unity, harmony, restraint, their entirety. Their chief tion from a local perspec- two-mile-tall wall of glacial cathedrals rolled into one.” memorable skyline of New boldness, solidity, délica- defining characteristic is tive. ice that scoured and pol- For Sadler, this confining York City. tesse, and consecration. durability, for rock outlives We worry, as we should, ished them a few thousands landscape of towering walls On her home ground Please remember that flesh – to the point that about the effects of a warm- of years ago is another cause is a never-ending wonder, in rural Virginia, Carole Site/Lines is made possible by landscapes and structures ing planet and bizarre for wonder. Talk about cli- and yet one that has become George nourishes a spiri- gifts from its readers. You made of stone are some- weather turbulence on the mate change! almost domestic through tual relationship with the can visit our website and times all that is left as lives of the eight million Christa Sadler tells long familiarity. land. In this issue’s Place donate online or place your material evidence of past human inhabitants who call another geological story in In “Designed and Written Maker essay she writes about contribution in the enclosed cultures. New York City home. But “House of Stone and Time.” in Stone: Four Freedoms the inscribed stones she envelope. Thank you! In his essay in this issue, such concern only takes into A professional river guide, Park and the FDR Memo- embedded into a hillside, a “From Suzhou to Malibu: account the tiniest, frac- she rafts us in words on an rial” landscape historian task undertaken in inti- With good green wishes, The Power of Stone in Land- tional part of a much larger, imaginary trip through and author John Beardsley mate dialogue with the site. scape Design,” the landscape longer, and ongoing story the Grand Canyon. A geolo- writes about the cut blocks George’s project brings to architect Laurie Olin con- of ice ages alternating with and elegant geometries mind Ian Hamilton Finlay’s global warming and ris- of Louis I. Kahn’s final ing sea levels. Although the commission, recently real- Elizabeth Barlow Rogers city’s coastal reconfiguration ized forty years after it President was designed for the south-

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From Suzhou to Malibu: One of the most famous and impressive is the Lingering element – sometimes their only element – was stone: natural The Power of Stone in Landscape Design, Garden, which contains what may be the single most famous and raw; cleft, carved, shaped, and shattered; raked, swept, hen we contemplate nature, it is difficult not stone in the country. This is the Cloud Capped Peak, a tall, and piled. Kyoto has one of the most outstanding collec- to think in terms of metaphors and similes: menhir-like piece of bizarrely eroded karst that stands in a tions of important gardens in the world, displaying a broad water is the blood of the earth; stones are the courtyard between two pavilions, affording each a markedly range of expression and form. Many of them were created bones; soil and plants are the flesh. And we different perspective. Another superb example of this aes- for members of the Imperial court and are associated with are like the clouds that drift across the moon thetic is that of the nearby Lion Grove garden, which pos- palaces, villas, and country retreats, but a number of the most Wor the leaves that are blown from the trees in all their colors, sesses an enormous rockery composed of dozens of upright admired, such as Ryoan-ji and Daisen-in, were developed leaving bare branches against the sky of approaching winter. stones (“lions”) standing in a pool; as one travels the twisting within monastic enclaves. But earth and stone remain. paths around it, small caves and tunnels reveal themselves In Kyoto, as in Suzhou, stone is key. One first encounters Stone, the mantle of the Earth, underlies everything every- among the numerous outcroppings and recesses. Gardens it on approaching the gardens: as the base for stucco walls where and forms the topography of the lands on which we such as these served as models for several built later by the and drain channels. Next, one inevitably finds a handsome make our homes. Poets and painters, architects and landscape Qianlong emperor: at a number of villas west of the Forbid- threshold of granite while stepping through a gate into the architects, garden designers, and builders all over the world den City; at others further afield at Yuan Ming Yuan; and at garden itself, where a path of beautifully fitted and perfectly have considered, sought out, confronted, and worked with his summer palace at Chengde, in lower Mongolia. placed stones awaits. Sometimes it might be a carpet of tightly stone: with boulders, rocks, and pebbles, whether cut, uncut, From very early times many cultural practices, ranging set, irregular shapes fused into cleft, carved, or tumbled; with stone of every size, shape, from Buddhism to metalworking, were imported from India a dramatic strip; elsewhere, Rockwork forming a mountain color, and density; and with sand, stone’s crushed or finely and China to Japan, where they would then evolve in fresh even within the same gar- composition by a pond of a former ground remains. Stone is fundamental, utilized throughout and sophisticated ways. Despite Buddhist tenets of asceti- den, slabs may be irregularly imperial villa on the grounds of human environments for thousands of years. cism, a latent animism from ancient Shinto beliefs seems to clustered or scattered, causing Tsinghua University, Beijing. (Draw- Chinese scrolls and paintings early displayed a keen have predisposed many Japanese artists, designers, connois- the visitor to consider each ings by the author.) recognition of stone’s absolute and obdurate nature. In the seurs, and spiritual leaders superb ink depictions of the Northern Sung and Jin Dynas- to perceive and express the ties, like the Streams and Mountains Without End scroll now in essence or spirit of things, the Cleveland Museum, human beings and their activities especially from the realm of take place against a vast geological extravaganza of mountain nature. The koans and haiku ranges, cliffs, cataracts, and coastlines. Summer palaces are by Basho and Issa and the wedged between soaring peaks and fishermen’s boats are flung-ink drawings by Zen tucked into inlets far below, while clouds and rain swirl in monks like Sesshu exem- and around heaving masses and towers of stone. plify both an urge toward Chinese scholars and political figures also collected stones refinement and abstraction and incorporated them into their gardens to evoke such and a direct expression of the imagery. Connoisseurship of rock and stones – their form, material properties of the arrangement, and character – eventually produced a consider- physical world. This tension able literature, ranging from poetic treatises to how-to manu- also produced some of the als on painting and garden construction. Some of the most most stunning gardens in revered gardens in China were created from the fifteenth history, and their principal through the eighteenth centuries in Suzhou, and many of these incorporate large and dramatic compositions of eroded limestone rocks extracted from nearby Lake Tai.

3 footstep, newly aware of his or her progress. In some gardens, rocks exist almost solely as a vehicle to support the growth of mosses; in others, they form the edge or shore of a pond; in still others, they have been used to create miniature versions of familiar yet distant mountains, cliffs, and bays. The serene stretch of beach at Sento-gosho, made of polished black stones, is a reference to a beloved spot on the coast of Honshu. The arrangement of rocks within the rectangular gravel court at Ryoan-ji has been likened to a representation of the archipelago of Japan itself; it has also been compared to the swirl- ing cosmos and its planets.

If the nature of stone – stone as nature – is the paramount leitmotif in Asian gardens, then the articulation of stone in gardens as archi- tecture is a Western phenomenon. One way to gain insight and pieces of worked stone, tell us that these were finely decorated heat and pressure; it is among Stone construction details for feeling for classical gardens – at least those of premedieval outdoor rooms. There were also fountains, basins, pavements, the densest of stones. Difficult retaining wall with steps, basins, urban and suburban villas – is to study those of Islam. In the railings, pavilions, seats, and sculpture of all sizes and sorts. to work but extremely durable, plinths, and urns at the Villino of gardens of Spain, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and Turkey The latter included wild animals, major and minor deities, it is split into small cubes and the Palazzo Farnese at Caprarola. one finds geometric stone pavements, marble fonts and figures and tableaux from myth and religion, heroes, athletes, elongated blocks that are ideal basins, and polychrome mosaics that perpetuate the elements and portraits of family members and rulers. Many of these for street cover. The glistening, dark grey pavements of the and materials of the ancient gardens that inspired them. statues were produced in quantity in workshops in Greece Piazza Navona are grey basalt with white travertine curbs and Caesar Augustus supposedly remarked late in life that he’d and Turkey and shipped throughout the empire to wealthy drains. found Rome in brick and left it in marble. Certainly in the customers. For centuries to come, these imperial gardens Everyone has favorite places that are largely made of local first and second centuries, Roman structures made of brick were treated as quarries and treasure chests to be plundered stone. Few compare to the remarkable garden at the Villa and concrete and clad in marble – temples, palaces, apart- for art objects and materials. Lante in Bagnaia, with its urns, basins, fountains, and statues ment blocks, theaters, baths, monuments, and public toilets This panoply of stone was revived and repurposed in the on multiple levels, including whimsical stone boats with – were ubiquitous. The city’s infrastructure (street curbs, Italian Renaissance, in large part by the Church for its struc- dwarves firing muskets that once served as spouting jets. aqueducts, public water basins) was of cheap, rough travertine tures and by powerful families throughout Italy and beyond Above these is a sculpture of Roman river gods and a witty from near Tivoli, whereas finer-grained marble for monu- for their homes and country residences. One cannot think of crayfish between diminutive obelisks terminating the catena ments and architectural detailing came from the Alps near Italian gardens without thinking of their terraces and ledges, d’aqua, an abstraction of a mountain stream in the form of Carrara or from Greece and Asia Minor. Similarly gardens, parapets, railings, urns, colonnades, pavilions, grottos, links in a chain. Nearly all of these fabrications are of a native, whether private havens or public precincts (like the ones fountains, basins, and sculpture, all fashioned of, or trimmed locally quarried stone that is mottled both by the nature of that accompanied public baths), were furnished with various with, white marble, the whole of which is set off by dark ever- its origin and the attractive lichens that favor its chemical architectural and sculptural features in marble as use and green hedges and trees. Underfoot are brick and gravel, edged makeup, rendering the entire ensemble a perfect counter- clients demanded. with stone bands. It is a realm of plants, stone, water, and sky, point to the dappled shade and bark of the plane trees fram- Even today one can still see remarkable stone pavements often enhanced by flowers, herbs, and birds. But, along with ing it. Another favorite stone creation of the late sixteenth and architectural fragments of poolside pavilions in situ at the grading of the earth, it is stone that establishes the struc- century is the valley garden at Bomarzo, with its dreamlike Hadrian’s Villa or Domitian’s Palace on the Palatine. Like- ture, the armature for the rest. Stone provides the frame, the carvings of phantasmagoric creatures, partly cut in situ from wise, at Pompeii and Ostia, stone impluvia over cisterns in bones of these gardens. ledges of bedrock and partly built on top of them. numerous atria and triclinia, as well as scattered bits and Many of the fundamental structures, whether humble curbs or ambitious grottos, were made of tufa, a volcanic rock formed from deposits of ash and cinders; honeycombed with air bubbles, it is light, cheap, and easy to cut. Basalt, however, another popular volcanic rock, is a product of unimaginable 4 In seventeenth-century France, André Le Nôtre did not use Certainly such a notion was familiar to Frederick Law in the form of mountains or bluffs or the surface beneath my less stone in his gardens than the creators of Italian Renais- Olmsted and Calvert Vaux when designing Central Park and feet; simply part of the scene. sance gardens, but he created on such a large scale that the later Prospect Park, both of which exploit natural rock fea- It was in college, as a design student, that I began to con- basins and ramps and urns and sculptures seem less obtru- tures to maximum dramatic effect. In Central Park, consider- sider rocks and stone as a subject in art and a material for sive in the bravura sweep of it all. And yet the entry sequences able effort was expended to remove soil and glacial alluvium architecture and building. Photographs of Japanese gardens to Versailles and Chantilly are entirely of stone. Stone to reveal rock outcrops, and glacial boulders were arranged and Frank Lloyd Wright houses put the uses of stone squarely cobbles, bollards, and walls; crunchy gravel, stone statues, for dramatic effect throughout the length of the park. The in front of us. Following history classes filled with Doric, and urns give way to stone buildings, terraces, and overlooks. more rugged, northern portion of the park was designed Ionic, Corinthian, Romanesque, and Gothic masterpieces – Beyond, in the parks and gardens, are stone basins, fountains, later and, like Prospect Park, shows the powerful influence all made of stone that was dressed and worked one way or stairs, and sculptural groups in stone settings. And yet there of Olmsted’s stint working for the Mariposa Company near another – my classmates and I began to scrutinize the monu- one’s eye is drawn to the blues and greens. Broad sweeps of Yosemite in the 1860s. One has only to look at Boulder Bridge mental works of the nineteenth-century American architect gravel lead to expanses of turf grass, rows of regimented trees, and the Ravine to recognize this as a vision of rugged wilder- H. H. Richardson, master of the use of rusticated stone in the hedges and fountains, and vast sheets of water. ness. Its lithic mood reveals Olmsted’s increased appreciation neo-Romanesque style, and the twentieth-century Finnish In numerous instances Le Nôtre built his retaining for stone in its rugged, undressed state, a park element he modernist architect and designer Alvar Aalto. We weren’t walls of rough stone or rubble, facing or dressing them sought to provide as a rustic counterpoint to the surrounding directed to study the awesome and intricate work of the with clipped hedges and then adding a crisp, architectural, urban architecture of cut and carved stone. Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas – my generation had to find those limestone cap above the green to hide the unsightly walls. (In While artificial grottos were not uncommon in English on its own – but they only added more weight to our sense of France one finds that almost all structural stone, whether in gardens in the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they stone’s profound universality and our need to master, or at a soaring cathedral or a garden stair, is hard limestone; the were mostly fabrications reminiscent of Italian precedents – least become conversant with, its use and the issues involved region is blessed with several particularly handsome variet- themselves inspired by seaside cliffs and caves of rough and in working with it. ies.) Likewise he fashioned a number of canal and basin walls eroded tufa, carved by wind and water and encrusted with Stone was an essential ingredient in many of the creations of roughly dressed stone with open joints, such as those at seashells and coral. There is none of this in the work of Olm- of the Prairie School – epitomized in Wright’s masterpieces Sceaux, to allow ground water to seep in and out of the basin sted and Vaux. Instead we see their enthusiasm for the gneiss at Taliesen and Fallingwater. The horizontal bedding planes without destroying the walls with lateral pressure. The con- and schist of Manhattan and the moraine left by the retreat- of the local limestone formations were recapitulated in his structions have worked superbly for the past three centuries, ing Wisconsin glacier on Long Island, and it is not fanciful to houses by layers of stone coursing, and echoed in pools, needing very little repair. read particular aspects of these pathbreaking parks as evoca- basins, and walls by landscape architects Jens Jensen and tive of the valleys and mountains of New England. Alfred Caldwell. These men produced a unique indigenous Stone and rock have been at the heart of American landscape Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Midwestern design vocabulary, which grew out of their art and appreciation since the end of the eighteenth cen- photographs and paintings of the American West (by Albert response to the land itself. With its overtones of Japanese art tury; they are intimately bound up with the aesthetic of the Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, and Carleton Watkins in the Rocky and architecture, their aesthetic was quite different from the picturesque and sublime. After Thomas Jefferson purchased a Mountains, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and the Sierras) European one that had been adapted by Richardson and parcel of land in Virginia that contained a natural limestone continued to stoke the national appetite for dramatic geologic the Olmsted firm for their craggy and somewhat heroic rock- bridge in a gorge, he built a retreat and took guests to see the formations. So did the investigations and writing of John faced bridges, retaining walls, and buildings. stone span, describing it as “the most Sublime of nature’s Muir, who realized, after years of climbing about California’s All of these designs, however, had one thing in common: works.” Paintings by Thomas Cole, Frederick Church, Jasper heights and valleys, that the spectacular valleys of Hetch their structures were clearly composed of two opposing yet Cropsey, John F. Kensett, Martin Johnson Heade, Sanford Hetchy and Yosemite had in fact been carved by glaciers. complementary parts. One was from and of the earth, made Gifford, Albert Bierstadt and others celebrate equally dra- of carved and stacked stone. It was heavy, a companion to the matic cliffs, hills, and rocks in the Hudson River Valley and Beyond the pleasure experienced by nearly every child throw- damp soil and water that often surrounded it. The other was Appalachian Mountains, and along the New England coast. ing stones – whether as far as possible or merely into water, drier and lighter – linear, planar, and more fragile. It was A supreme example is Asher Durand’s Kindred Spirits, to see the splash and hear the plunk – I have noticed rocks made of wood, metal, cloth, and glass, and sat atop and within which depicts William Cullen Bryant and Thomas Cole and stones as far back as I can remember. Still, while playing the first. There was a yin and yang about these two halves. standing on a ledge above a precipice, with a waterfall identi- in gravel pits and ponds near construction sites as a boy and This tension recalls the traditional architecture of China and fied by some as Katerskill Falls emerging from the Catskill wading through boulder-strewn glacial streams to fish or Japan, where wooden structures have sat upon stone bases for Mountains in the distance. Cole is gesturing toward a dra- explore as a teenager, I didn’t really ponder the nature of my millennia, and great attention is paid to the moment of meet- matic rock outcrop across the gorge, as if he is presenting this feelings toward rocks. They were just there wherever I went, ing, placement, and joining. rugged American landscape as an epitome of natural beauty; Throughout the twentieth century, artists and landscape as a sort of paradise to be studied, preserved, and emulated in architects have continued to explore the nature of stone and art and design.

5 its potential relationship to Field sketches of a marble boulder izes the sun or cycles of “ring energy”; and the dramatically its outdoor surroundings. to be used in a fountain at the poised cube – carved with mysterious notches and lines and Constantin Brancusi, argu- Getty Center in Los Angeles; note resembling a giant die in mid-tumble – stands for science and ably the first person to create the scale figure. art. truly abstract sculpture, Sunken Garden, one of the absolute best of Noguchi’s used stone extensively in his as if the stones have drawn commissions, is in a circular court at One Chase Manhattan Endless Column Complex, together through some force Plaza, in the financial district of New York (1960–61). An essay a First World War memorial of attraction or gathered in stone and water, he openly referred to it as “my Ryoan-ji.” he designed for his home- instinctively like a flock Viewed from either the plaza above or from the banking hall land, Romania, in the 1930s. of birds – with a common adjacent to it, this work consists of pale granite setts in an This monumental outdoor purpose that is both natural undulating plane, with languid, curving joints that vaguely ensemble in Targu-Jiu, and cosmic. conjure force fields and notations of longitude and latitude which commemorates the The enormously on a globe. A number of jagged, handsomely eroded boulders soldiers who died defend- influential sculptor Isamu from the bottom of the Uji River in Kyoto are arranged ing the capital, includes Noguchi, who fused a thor- on this circular plane’s highest points: in summer, when the two enormous pieces carved oughly modernist sensibil- garden becomes a fountain, these rocks suggest islands; from travertine: the Table of ity with a Japanese aesthetic, in winter, planets. It is a genuine masterpiece – evoking, as its Silence, which resembles an approached the art of land- creator intended, one of Japan’s most profound works of enormous millstone sur- scape design largely through art and landscape. I don’t know a landscape architect who has rounded by stone stools, the use of stone. Noguchi seen it and not admired its greatness. and the carved Gate of the once remarked, “Stone is Kiss. Barbara Hepworth the direct link to the heart In 1995, when I was working on the Getty Center in Los Ange- and Henry Moore, inspired of the matter – a marvelous les with Richard Meier, I had forgotten many of these associa- by Brancusi’s example and link. When I tap it I get an tions; they had settled down into the depths of my memory haunted by the Bronze Age echo of that which we are. like some sedimentary deposit, waiting to be brought unex- megaliths of Brittany and the Then the whole universe pectedly to the surface by an underground stream. I was, British Isles, proceeded to resonates.” The primacy of however, thinking vaguely of Nicola Salvi’s Trevi Fountain create superb works in stone this material for him was and Bernini’s work at the Piazza Navona, because we were intended for public spaces, already dramatically clear in developing a number of fountains and each was to have a plazas, and parks. Moore the first version of his gar- different character, depending on its situation within the went so far as to create a work that stands on the moors and is den for UNESCO in Paris (1956–58). Although enlarged today complex. intended solely for sheep to rub themselves against. and softened by the growth of plants and trees, it is a serene The buildings were to be clad in white travertine from the Many of the finest works of a subsequent generation of and sensual landscape with stone that has been carved, fitted, quarries near Tivoli and Hadrian’s Villa. For the pavement, British artists that includes Andy Goldsworthy and Richard and arranged alongside natural rocks that the artist carefully it was decided to use some of the stone referred to as barco, Long are made of fieldstone, slate, and the debris of shattered selected and brought from Japan. Noguchi would continue to which was being rejected for the facades due to the occasional formations, carefully arranged in the landscape or in art work with the motifs displayed here – stone circles, pyra- presence of minerals that gave it a rosy or light tan tint. The galleries and museums. Goldsworthy openly acknowledges mids, cubes, standing figures, and slabs – for several decades, basins were to be made of both the white stone and barco. For that works such as his superb installation at Storm King Art while developing the ground and shaping the spaces that host one large central basin that was to be circular, I decided that Center, The Wall That Went For a Walk, have grown out of the them. it would be nice to incorporate natural boulders amid some traditional, dry-laid stone walls and huts of the Cotswolds From the mid-1950s through the 1960s he received a num- vertical jets – in part, simply for the contrast and, in part, and the north and west of England. Long, working with thin ber of commissions to create garden and courtyard spaces, because of the long tradition of rustication associated with pieces of broken stone, has repeatedly created beguiling com- several from the prominent firm of Skidmore, Owings & fountains in classical and baroque Rome. positions of circles or lines on the floor or ground. It appears Merrill. One of the earliest was the courtyard garden at the After a year-long search, we finally located a source of Bienecke Rare Book Library at Yale University. This brilliant, native marble boulders in the foothills of the Sierras near sunlit space consists of a pure white Vermont marble floor and three objects: a pyramid, an upright circle of stone, and a cube standing on one of its corners. Noguchi has said that the pyramid represents earth, or matter; the stone circle symbol-

6 Columbia, California. This stone had originally been created Bedrock, Sand, and Water: The Geological Landscape their surfaces. It is wonderful, really, to claim one of these by the collision of two tectonic plates – the Pacific plate and of New York City massive chunks and stretch out for a nap in the sun with the one containing the American continents – a slow-moving ometimes I am asked what my favorite place in exposed flesh touching warm stone. but intense event that uplifted the great chain of mountains Central Park is, a question to which there is really Thus are these bold presences of nature tamed by comfort- running from southern Alaska into northern Mexico and no answer. The park is about circuitous movement able familiarity. They are our rocks – rooted, immoveable, and melted portions of the ancient seabed. Far more recently, the through a sequence of scenes orchestrated by its unchanging in their mass and outlines. But are they? A vastly marble had been brought to the surface by local mining dur- designers, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. different perspective, in which time is measured by the geo- ing California’s Gold Rush, which produced gigantic piles of SThe modeling of the park’s terrain into gently swelling hills logical rather than historical clock, tells otherwise. From our waste rock. The stash of travertine boulders in the woods of and broad, flat meadows; the creation of its beautiful artificial own much more immediate viewpoint, which is based on the Columbia was essentially a boneyard left behind by the forty- lakes, streams, and ponds; and the construction of its infra- calendrical computation of dates, this is a story as fantastic as niners, well over a century earlier. structure of transverse roads, pathways, and bridle trails pro- science fiction, only it deals not with the future but a past so vide an unparalleled demonstration of the sophistication of deep as to seem inconceivable to anyone other than an earth I went to examine them. Some of the boulders had been taken nineteenth-century engineering technology put in the service scientist. to a local stone yard; others were still in the woods. They of a naturalistic landscape ideal. were marvelous – stream-washed and fantastically eroded. I But not all of Central Park is manmade. Nature played Overview was overjoyed. I also learned that the mining camp that had a singular role, too, one that Olmsted and Vaux were wise Long before New York became real estate, divided and occu- unearthed them had experienced one of the first terrible race enough to take into account. The ingenuity of their plan, pied in accordance with political and economic dictates; long riots in the West, between its Anglo and its Chinese laborers. with its imaginative orchestration of scenically varied parts, before it became imprinted with human occupation; in fact, In sum, these rocks represented both the natural and cultural capitalizes on a powerful natural feature: bold outcrops of long before the human species even existed, there were the history of the place. They seemed perfect. Manhattan schist bedrock. Elsewhere, outside the park, land and the sea. And just as the New York of real estate and I made a number of sketches of the most interesting stones bedrock protrusions were urban planning is dynamic – a city constantly erasing and while there and began composing an arrangement on the blasted away to make the A Central Park wedding beside a rebuilding itself – the New York of bedrock, sand, and water is plane ride back to Los Angeles. A few weeks later, we returned ground plane an almost level rock outcrop on the Hernshead prom- mobile and forever altering in response to the forces of geol- to create a full-size mock-up in the woods, moving and surface able to accommodate ontory at the edge of the Lake. ogy and climate. Difficult as it is for us to realize in our own adjusting the stones with a small crane on the back of a truck. a grid of streets and avenues; After taking Meier, the contractor, and the Getty’s director however, within the park, the John Walsh to see this grouping in a driving rainstorm, the rock outcrops were treated as design was approved and the entire ensemble was moved and important design elements reassembled in the museum’s courtyard. in the landscape. I was surprised, after the museum opened, when a news- I love these great elephan- paper critic wrote that the fountain was based upon oriental tine protrusions. Some art. The paintings of China and Japan and the rock work of define the shoreline of the Suzhou weren’t on my mind at all when I was making it. And Lake; others guide the align- yet, of course, it was all there in my unconscious, waiting to ment of a path or provide a be disturbed – the scrolls, the gardens, my experiences in vantage point for viewing the the mountains and bays of the Northwest, my fondness for surrounding landscape – as Noguchi. This experience also served as a powerful reminder names such as Vista Rock of the potential stimulus for the creative imagination that and Summit Rock suggest. unfiltered contact with primal phenomena can offer. Unlike rugged escarpments For me, today, the fountain has many connotations. Meta- elsewhere, the outcrops in phorically, it is as if the top of the mountain upon which the Central Park are mostly institution sits pokes up through the circle of the fountain’s smooth and inviting to basin – like a bill spike fixing the architecture in place. It also climb. In fact, Olmsted and evokes, for those who know it, the history of California. Even Vaux catered to this urge by more importantly, however, the dramatically shaped boulders cutting steps into some of represent the raw material from which the architecture is made – Nature, from which all of life comes. – Laurie Olin

7 lifetimes that the only real permanence is change, we instinc- A much more recent land- The Kinderberg, a glacially polished tively resist the notion that Earth is anything but fixed in its scape transformation occurred Central Park outcrop into which place in the universe and its geography something mutable. during the late Pleistocene steps have been cut. To carry this notion to a contemporary and local level, the Epoch, when a series of ice fact that the new Freedom Tower may one distant day be ages ensued. The last of these took place during the Wis- drowned beneath hundreds of feet of seawater or its steel and consin glaciation, 85,000 to 11,000 years ago, when a wall concrete incorporated into the mineral structure of some of ice approximately two miles in height covered what are future geological formation is unfathomable. now Canada and the northern United States. This ponder- The latest topographical configuration of New York City, ous moving force, with its load of rocks, gravel, and other the one we know at present, is essentially the product of abrasive debris, scoured and polished the eroded stumps of two forces. The first was the ancient mountain range. As it retreated, it left in its wake Relaxing on a rock in Central Park. an ancient tectonic event a morainal landscape of hills, random boulders, an alluvial outwash plain, and numerous lakes and ponds, where large chunks of melting ice had been trapped in the glacial till. Think about this when you are relaxing on your favorite rock in Central Park: there were once lofty peaks of Alpine proportions again we are talking about what is to most of us an incompre- where you sit today. Equally astonishing, hensible time scale – the mineral content of these original little more than ten thousand years ago, your sedimentary strata changed as their ions reordered and spot in the sun lay buried beneath a thou- recrystallized, hardening into much tougher, more coarsely sand feet of ice. grained formations as they reached a new and thermodynam- Central Park, of course, is not the only ically stable equilibrium. During this process the malleable New York City landscape upon which to read material was slowly shoved into mountain-building folds. earth history. There are several other large Because of their mineral transformation, such rock forma- parks that are exceptionally well endowed tions are called metamorphic and given names other than with evidence of the dynamic forces that those of their parent sedimentary strata. For example – to account for the configuration of their cur- choose the rocks principally composing New York City – rent landscapes. Mine is a very partial and metamorphosed shale becomes gneiss and schist, whereas site-specific knowledge of geology, gleaned limestone turns into marble. mainly from exploration of a handful of Around a hundred and twenty million years after the these unbuilt urban places – in particular, Taconic orogeny, the Acadian orogeny further metamor- Inwood Hill Park, Pelham Bay Park, and the phosed formations whose minerals could still be traced to known as the Taconic orogeny, which occurred some 495 to Staten Island Greenbelt – with American Museum of Natu- their parent sedimentary layers. The Earth’s intense internal 440 million years ago as the Iapetus Ocean, the precursor of ral History geologist Sidney Horenstein and New York City pressure caused these formations to fracture. This allowed the Atlantic, shrank during the collision of the North Ameri- Department of Parks naturalist Michael Feller. Here are some injections of igneous origin to permeate the existing bedrock can continental plate and the neighboring oceanic plate. With of the things I have learned from them. where there was a fault zone – a place where the earth’s crust the subduction of the latter as it moved sideways and down- had fractured and slipped, creating a displacement and dis- ward beneath the earth’s mantle, the folding and elevation New York City Geology 101 continuity between two strata that left space for an intrusion of the eastern portion of North American landmass occurred, Seven hundred million years ago the piece of geography now of molten, subterranean material. When cooled, crystallized, giving birth to what are now the Appalachian Mountains. occupied by the city lay far below sea level, accumulating and solidified, such a vertical igneous intrusion is called a Eons of erosion caused their towering peaks to disappear sediments of mud and seawater precipitates that subsequently dike. In similar fashion, magma filling a fracture cutting until the continent’s crustal subsurface was squeezed and became strata of shale and limestone. Then, some 300 mil- more or less horizontally across strata is called a sill. For uplifted once more by another tectonic episode, the Acadian lion years later, during the Taconic orogeny, the pressure and instance, the New Jersey Palisades is a sill, a solid wall whose orogeny, occurring between approximately 375 and 325 mil- intense heat produced by continental drift and the collision tough igneous stone confines the west bank of the Hudson lion years ago. of two continental plates turned these once-solid strata, River. On a smaller scale, mineral intrusions derived from which had subsided under the weight of thousands of feet of subsequent sedimentation, into a mobile crustal mass capable of mineral transformation. Over more millions of years – 8 igneous material appear as bands or contorted stipes that face appearance in Astoria, Queens. underlain with the soft, whitish stone. have been squeezed into fissures and cracks of older rocks. Roosevelt Island in the East River is a spit of Fordham The youngest formation is called Manhattan schist, often Not surprisingly, mineralogists find New York City an gneiss, too. Its stone – quarried by convict labor in the last referred to as Manhattan mica schist because of the spar- optimal ground for study. Their extensive excavations of its century, when the place was still known as Blackwell’s kling scales of mica that are frequently seen on its surface. bedrock have yielded over one hundred seventy of the earth’s Island – was used to build not only the island’s almshouse but This is the bedrock of Central Park. It is also the bedrock two thousand known minerals, many of spectacular size and also a now-demolished, gray, fortresslike prison and some of that supports the city’s towering skyscrapers. The division of quite a few of gem quality. Amateur geologists who visit the the hospitals in which the mentally ill or patients with infec- Manhattan into two zones of tall buildings – downtown and city’s parks and other places where there are exposed rock tious diseases were quarantined. midtown – is not accidental. South of Thirtieth Street the faces sometimes find granite pegmatites (a coarse-grained, The rock formation lying on top of the Fordham gneiss bedrock dips several feet beneath the earth but is still acces- crystalline granite with large mineral grains indicative of a is called Inwood marble. It takes its name from the Inwood sible for building foundations until it reaches the north side slow cooling process) that are studded with gemlike crystals – section of Manhattan, where it can be seen in a few exposed of Washington Square, where it plunges more than a hundred garnets, tourmalines, beryl, and other semiprecious stones. surfaces. Because marble is a soft stone, it is easily eroded. feet below the surface. Greenwich Village and the loft dis- Another igneous rock, serpentine, forms the hilly spine It is natural, therefore, that the Harlem and Hudson rivers trict to the south form the “valley,” a region of low buildings running down the center of Staten Island. Capping this ridge cut their beds into this formation rather than into the more set on top of glacial sediments and artificial landfill. Near is Todt Hill, 410 feet above sea level, the highest landmark resistant, neighboring gneiss. The northeastern section of Chambers Street, however, the schist comes back to within along the entire eastern coastline south of Massachusetts. Manhattan upon which Harlem was built is also underlain fewer than one hundred feet of street level, giving sufficient This serpentine, like the metamorphic rocks discussed above, with Inwood marble, as are parts of the Bronx. In colonial anchor to the towers of the financial district. The zoning code has undergone alteration far below the earth’s surface. Unlike times, large portions of these flat low-lying areas were of Manhattan is thus written as much by geology as by city them, however, it was formed of igneous rather than sedi- covered with extensive salt marshes. In several places, long, planners. mentary material. continuous bands of Inwood marble lie between “heights” During the eons that these bedrock strata still lay far of tougher, less-erodable stone. These marble valleys were beneath the earth’s surface, submerged under the crush- The Big Three the most accessible transportation routes in the city’s early ing weight of the mountains above, the ocean periodically New York City’s most ubiquitous geological formations are days, and in time became its major thoroughfares. Broadway advanced and then retreated, leaving behind sedimentary three metamorphic ones: Fordham gneiss, Inwood marble, in Manhattan and its continuation in the Bronx, along with deposits. As these eroded over time, the pressure on the and Manhattan schist. The most ancient of these bedrock Jerome, Webster, and Tremont avenues, also in the Bronx, are weighty land mass below was lightened, and the metamor- strata is the Fordham gneiss, phic rocks that had existed as the roots of ancient moun- an extremely contorted, tains responded by rising slowly. During the ensuing eons metamorphosed sandstone they became layered with additional sedimentary deposits. characterized by wavy, black- Subsequent earth movements folded and pushed these into and-white bands. This is the mountainous ridges and fractured the old metamorphic underlying bedrock of the formations beneath them, creating fault zones. Once more all New York City area. Sur- the sedimentary strata were almost entirely eroded, leaving face exposures of it appear only the ancient, metamorphic gneiss and marble and schist mainly in the Bronx – in the with their later contortions and mineral intrusions. This is New York Botanical Garden, what we see today when we examine the protruding bedrocks for instance. A durable stone and stone fragments that lie on the ground. resistant to erosion, it forms Valleys often mark the lines of the major geologic faults an elevated ridge in River- that occurred during the eons in which all this dynamic dale. The names Fordham activity was taking place. Trending in a generally east-west Heights, Morris Heights, direction, they became the courses of streambeds and later and Highbridge signify the logical routes for crosstown streets. At the northern end another prominent elevation of Manhattan, the Dyckman Street fault bisects the Fort of gneiss immediately to the Washington ridge of Manhattan schist, separating Fort east, where a two-pronged Tryon Park and the Cloisters from Inwood Hill Park. A little ridge is found. This forma- farther south, 155th Street is aligned along another fault tion slopes downward into zone. The deepest and most conspicuous of the fault valleys the earth at a southeasterly extends from the Hudson River across 125th Street, bending angle, making its final sur-

Indian Cave, Inwood Hill Park. 9 diagonally south to enter the East River at These glacial grooves in Umpire erratics more frequently Ninety-sixth Street. Following Broadway from Rock in Central Park were created by resemble metamorphic Seventy-second Street to Columbus Circle, glacial movement in a southeasterly rocks of Connecticut origin. another fault zone continues south to enter direction. The unglaciated portions the East River at Twenty-third Street. of New York City – the southern tip of Staten Island and southern Brooklyn and Burnished by Ice Queens – became part of a vast outwash plain. Carried by It is important to emphasize that today’s sur- coursing glacial meltwaters, deposits of sand and gravel face exposures of gneiss, marble, and schist spread out to form the flat alluvial landscape that would later are mere remnants of towering mountain remind early Dutch settlers of Holland. Postglacial move- peaks that were created by repeated cycles ments of morainal sands from east to west along the Long of sedimentation followed by metamorphic Island coastline created a chain of barrier beaches. In New deformation. It was only after hundreds of York City the Rockaway Peninsula, the barrier beach for millions of years that the ranges were leveled Jamaica Bay, continues to push westward an estimated two by erosion and their subsurfaces exposed as hundred feet per year, or one mile every twenty-three years. the immense overburden gradually washed away. Their subsequent cracking into fault Here and Now zones and the erasure of most of the sedimen- During the past three hundred years – the last fraction of a tary deposits from their surfaces set the stage second on the geologic clock – human beings have undoubt- for a new act in New York City’s long and con- edly been the major ecological agents and sculptors of the tinuing geologic drama: the age of glaciation. New York City landscape, chopping down forests of trees to In all, four huge ice sheets pushed down from the north Island, Brooklyn, and Queens. Where it traversed the mouth make way for a forest of buildings; dredging rivers and bays, to cover portions of Europe and North America. The last and of the Hudson River, it constricted New York Bay into the and spanning them with beautifully engineered suspension most important, whose passage is imprinted on the land- Narrows, leaving an elevated bracket of defense outposts (Fort bridges; filling in marshy inlets and rechanneling streams scape of the modern city, was the Wisconsin advance, begin- Hamilton in Brooklyn and Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island). into a network of sewers; and blasting away bedrock to create ning less than one hundred thousand years ago, a very small Not only was this an ideal geographical configuration from a the world’s largest system of underground transportation unit on the geologic clock, which for the most part measures military perspective but it also provided for a harbor with an tunnels. time in millions of years rather than mere millennia. As ample, protected shoreline for numerous docks. Thus, geol- Still, though encrusted with pavements and buildings, the the earth’s climate became colder, winters lengthened and ogy is the foundation of New York’s status as one of the great old landforms can be discerned: the gneiss and schist escarp- accumulated snows packed together into a frozen ice mass. port cities of the world. ments of the Bronx and Manhattan rearing above the flat val- At an estimated rate of a foot a day, the great ice sheet moved The postglacial landscape of these portions of New York leys and plains of Inwood marble; the rolling morainal hills ponderously southward. In the process the gathered frag- is what geologists call knob and kettle country, featuring of northern Brooklyn and Queens; the flat, alluvial, glacial- ments it contained scoured and polished exposed surfaces depressions alternating with low, moundlike hills. The outwash plain fanning out to embrace Jamaica Bay; the Nar- of bedrock. Today glacial striations – grooves running depressed areas, often boggy or water filled, are kettle holes, rows marking the place where the terminal moraine crosses northeast to southwest – mark its passage over the outcrop- formed by fragments of ice trapped in the moraine. As the the harbor; and, protruding here and there from beneath its pings of many rock surfaces in New York City. Finally, some chunks of ice melted, they left basins of varying dimensions cover of glacial till, the greenish serpentine, the firm core seventeen thousand years ago, the ice stabilized, its southern in their place, which served as containers for melted glacial that pushes Staten Island up out of the sea. edge tracing a line midway along the length of Long Island ice and rainwater. All are shrunken from their original size, Tantalizing transitory glimpses of the geology of the city and the central spine of part of Staten Island. Manhattan and for as the land became once again covered by green and living are offered to sidewalk superintendents by new building the Bronx lay deeply buried under a thousand feet of ice and things, plants encroached upon their still waters, and year by excavations. For more extended field exploration, there are frozen glacial debris. year leaves and eroded debris from the surrounding slopes the parks. In Pelham Bay Park you will find the most south- When the winters became warmer, however, the ice sheet have layered their depths with organic and mineral deposits. erly segments of the rocky coastline characteristic of New retreated, and its meltwaters deposited their load of sand and Other evidence of glacial visitation is found in the form England and eastern Canada. This is a glaciated or “drowned” rocks and boulders. At its southernmost edge it left a ridgy of large boulders, or erratics, which can be seen in all five coast, different in appearance from the mature, alluvial, mass of till marking the final stage of its advance. Known as boroughs. The often precariously perched erratics of Central unglaciated barrier-beach coastlines of Long Island and New a terminal moraine, this till forms the hilly parts of Staten Park and the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx are, for Jersey. The origin of these Pelham Bay rocks is still some- the most part, chunks of igneous diabase plucked by the gla- thing of an enigma; geology students attack them with ham- cier from the New Jersey Palisades or lumps of metamorphic rock yanked from the Hudson Highlands. On Long Island 10 mers because their relationship to the rest of the New York green mantle of duckweed floats on their placid surfaces, and House of Stone and Time: The Grand Canyon as Home City formations has not yet been scientifically established, skunk cabbages and swamp maples fringe their spongy, peaty hen I first moved to northern Arizona, I was making them an ideal subject for doctoral dissertations. In borders. Jamaica Bay and the Rockaways present more volatile so delighted to live within ninety minutes of Central Park you can study bedrock outcroppings of mica scenes as coastal geology, abetted by climate change, gnaws at the Grand Canyon that I would often jump schist, ribboned with granite intrusions and grooved with the city’s marine landscapes. in my car to go visit the canyon for an hour glacial scratches – evidence of the northeast-to-southwest or two before starting my day. One morning movement of the Wisconsin ice sheet. Here and in the New The geological clock is forever ticking, and while the slow WI was sitting below the overlook at Grandview Point, dan- York Botanical Garden you will also find curiously poised erosion of the city’s bedrock is hard to perceive, the dynamics gling my feet off the rim, when an older couple strolled to the erratics, left behind when the ice that carried them melted. of change are more starkly evident along the city’s shoreline. wall above me. They didn’t see me sitting below them, and Morningside Park in Manhattan has a high, vertical wall This is especially true today when nature, like an angry God, after a short silence, the woman shook her head and said in of schist once used by mountain climbers for rock-scaling appears to be meting out punishment for human indiffer- a bemused tone, “I just don’t get it.” Then they turned and practice. Inwood Hill Park and Fort Tryon Park – twin eleva- ence to the welfare of the planet. While drought parches walked away. tions of Manhattan schist bisected by the Dyckman Street other parts of the country, devastating coastal storms have To this day I am not sure whether the woman was fault valley – form the northerly extension of the Fort Wash- battered the Atlantic coastline. This brings into question our announcing her confusion over what all the fuss regarding ington ridge, of which Morningside Park is a part. In Inwood impulse to fly in the face of the predictions of climatologists, the Grand Canyon was about or that she just couldn’t begin to Hill Park you can find glacial potholes: bowl-like depressions meteorologists, and oceanographers, and rely instead almost comprehend the panorama spread before her. I’ve always cho- scoured out of the bedrock by the gravel-laden meltwaters of entirely on technology to protect heavily populated exist- sen to believe the latter, and I still use this story as a starting the glacier. ing shorelines. It is important to realize that nature itself is point for my geology classes at the canyon. Glacial action can be seen also in the rolling terrain of sublimely indifferent to such remedial action and that, It is challenging to comprehend the Grand Canyon. Sta- Prospect Park in Brooklyn, which was modeled by the lumpy given New York City’s current geological status, its fringe of tistics about length, depth, and width serve only to make the gravels of the terminal moraine. Kettle-hole ponds are found wetlands will shrink, its marshes disappear, its islands inch listener’s eyes glaze over. Declarations of age in geologic time at High Rock Conservation Center on Staten Island, High- toward submersion, and its beaches be periodically ravaged. numb the mind. To stand at the rim is to view a canyon fully land Park in Brooklyn, and This is not an excuse for inaction with regard to saving as formed in all its color, size, and character – already an almost- Pelham Bay Park’s rocky coastline, a Alley Pond Park and Cun- much of the current landscape as possible. Nevertheless, the incomprehensible spectacle. Trying to understand the geol- geological enigma. ningham Park in Queens. A process of doing so should be one of partnership with nature, ogy of the canyon only adds more bewildering information, rather than reliance solely so most people settle for memorizing names and figures. on human intervention. We live in historical time rather The River-Carved Canyon Landscape than geological time, and In this bed of marble . . . carvings are seen which suggest we cannot control planetary architectural forms, though on a scale so grand that architectural fate in the long term. Still, terms belittle them. appreciating New York City’s – John Wesley Powell1 extraordinary geology and the forces that continue to It goes without saying that in order to build a home, one shape its topography is a must have materials with which to build. Likewise to carve start towards a more respon- a canyon, there must be something from which to carve it. sible alignment of human Seen from the rim, the layers that make up the canyon walls actions with the here and blend together in a jumble of color, light, and shadow. Up now of nature’s independent close, though, they have form, texture, and personality. Up dynamic. close, one comes to know them and thus understand some- – Elizabeth Barlow Rogers thing of the span of time and processes that formed them. Up close, the canyon walls become home, with deep time and the To view additional images related to this article, visit patient fingers of weathering and erosion their builder. The www.foundationforland- best way I know of to really become familiar with this home is scapestudies.org/gallery. to take a river trip through its very heart. At Lees Ferry, fifteen miles downstream of Glen Canyon Dam and the Utah-Arizona border, there is no Grand Canyon.

1 In 1869, Powell led the first recorded expedition down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. 11 The Colorado River has just exited the sandstone confines ids and how to pack their bags, as well as inevitably fretting The Redwall Limestone contains fossils of corals, crinoids, of Glen Canyon. The river flows wide and slow as it carves about the toilet. But within a few days people begin to sink and brachiopods that indicate warm tropical conditions in a an enormous bowl from the soft, painted mudstones of the into the place, and the concerns of the modern world slough sea that once stretched across the continent. The Muav Lime- Chinle Formation. The Vermilion and Echo Cliffs rise to away like so much sand into the river. Time slows and eyes stone looks different from the Redwall, because 500 million either side, but they are set far enough back from the river open. Now the geology begins to mean something. years ago the ocean was closer to the ancient continent, and that a road has been built straight to the water, along the The youngest rock layer in the Grand Canyon – the Kaibab any mud and sand that washed off the land mixed in with the enormous bench of the Marble Platform at the base of the Formation – formed in a shallow, near-equatorial sea that lime, making it crumbly and yellow. The Tapeats Sandstone cliffs. It is here that river journeys into the Grand Canyon sloshed over the edge of the continent millions of years before is ledgy and coarse-grained and still carries echoes from the begin, and it is here that the Grand Canyon is born. the dinosaurs appeared. Below this are older sedimentary waves hitting that ancient, sandy beach. The great challenge Most of the year, Lees Ferry is a busy place. Bewildered layers, each one representing a single chapter in the building of geology is to see what is no longer there, to understand passengers don awkward life jackets while boatmen lug heavy of our continent. Each stratum has its own unique charac- what is no longer happening. In the Grand Canyon, that is gear onto rafts and dories, and the engines of fishing boats ter, color, grain size, shape, weathering pattern, and fossils. easy. cough and sputter. Few people here contemplate their sur- These features are the result of the environment in which roundings, other than to comment on the temperature of the sediment was originally deposited. Sedimentary rocks A Geological Textbook the river or express concern about sunscreen. But it is worth form in environments such as oceans, rivers, beaches, and All about me are interesting geologic records. The book is open and considering the confluence of geologic forces that brought deserts. Any place you find sediments today – such as sand, I can read as I run. Lees Ferry into being. Here a massive fold in the Earth’s crust mud, gravel, or lime – is a potential environment of deposi- – John Wesley Powell brought soft shale to the surface, shale that could be easily tion, a potential nursery for sedimentary rocks. If conditions eroded to form a wide basin – historically the only place in are right, the soft sediment will be compacted and cemented Sixty-two miles into a river trip, a group has already traveled more than five hundred miles where a vehicle could reach the together with minerals in groundwater and – millions of through 500 million years of Earth history and lived among river for a crossing. Below this shale the layers of the Grand years later – exhumed by erosion. rocks that began their lives when this part of the world was Canyon lie, waiting to be exposed. As the canyon walls rise, the layers begin to take on the assembling supercontinent known as Pangaea. Half a bil- Although it may go unnoticed in the excitement of one’s meaning. At first, these meanings are associated with one’s lion years of Earth history seems like an enormous amount of first moments on the river, a marled, beige experience of the river: this time, but the canyon shares even older secrets just around the rock layer begins to rise from the river a few rock hurts if you scrape corner. hundred yards downstream from the launch against it; that rock forms Soon the river meanders into a wide bend of bright red ramp. Within minutes this unassuming stra- good ledges on which to put sandstone and shale called the Dox Formation. This layer is tum has formed an impressive wall. This is your things; another rock more than a billion years old, yet is still soft enough that the the Kaibab Formation, 270 million years old is slippery when wet. But river has been able to carve through it laterally and wear a and the rim rock of the Grand Canyon. This soon recognition sets in: huge valley out of the canyon’s walls. This is one of the layers is the layer a visitor stands on when peering sandstones and limestones of a series collectively known as the Grand Canyon Super- into the depths from Grand Canyon Village, are hard and form cliffs. group – layers that have been faulted and tilted, making the searching for the river a mile below. The door Shales and mudstones are river look as though it is careening downhill in places. has opened, and you have just entered the softer and weather to slopes. The tilted layers of the Grand Canyon Supergroup were Grand Canyon – welcome! Red rocks indicate oxidized mostly eroded hundreds of millions of years ago. What was For the first thirty miles or so of such a iron in the sediment, and once thirteen thousand feet of sedimentary layers, ranging in river trip, the walls rise out of the river at a some color is simply a thin age from 700 million to 1200 million years old, now can only rate of about a hundred feet per mile. This is veneer, a stain over a true be seen in patches along the river. These layers tell the story due largely to the tilt of the land rather than interior color. The Coconino of the assemblage and breakup of a previous supercontinent the gradient of the river. The southwestward- Sandstone contains tracks of known as Rodinia, and in the shales and limestones of some trending Colorado River flows against the arthropods and reptiles that Supergroup strata we see the earliest life-forms in the Grand grain of the land, which tilts down to the marched over ancient sand Canyon: crenulated, cabbagelike heads of stromatolites – algal northeast, so for the first few days of a river dunes and left their foot- mats that grew in shallow, sunlit areas along the coastline. trip the walls grow quickly. Every few miles a prints behind in the desert. But most of this record is gone, and much of the story must new rock layer comes to the surface, and the be pieced together from what remains. character of the canyon changes. At first, river The absence of rock in the walls of the Grand Canyon is as travelers spend time worrying about the rap- important as what is there. Absences of rock, called “uncon- formities,” exist between almost every layer in the canyon Dories at rest along the Colorado 12 River in the Grand Canyon. The Grand Wash Cliffs in The crust of the Earth here on the Colorado Plateau is as northwestern Arizona mark the much as forty or fifty kilometers thick, the lion’s share of it end of the Grand Canyon. made of rocks just like these. There is no more limestone, no more sandstone beneath these rocks. Just more hard and twisted metamorphic and igneous rock. Pretty much the walls. These absences tell entire continent is built on top of rocks such as these. us that the land was subject At this point in a river trip, many people feel as though to erosion for long periods they are becoming part of the canyon. They are a little gritty; of time – long enough to sand has worked its way inexorably into the tiniest folds of erode thousands of feet of their gear; many are becoming the lovely red brown of the sediment from the surface rocks themselves. Deep time finally means something. It of the Earth, leaving a slate begins to feel as though mountains can thrust upwards and for the deposition of more be worn down, that continents can be built and canyons sediment at a later time. In eroded – all within the span of a river trip. The voice of the the timeline of Earth history river is the soundtrack of one’s days, and it is clearer now how represented by the rocks of water can shape the land with its persistence. the Grand Canyon, more is As they journey further into the canyon, people become gone than exists, and yet it is familiar enough with the walls of their home that they begin still one of the best records to notice differences from the first days of their trip. The of geologic history in the Muav Limestone now forms a sheer grey cliff, because this world. part of the formation was laid down further away from The river continues slic- the influence of the mud and sand washing off that ancient ing deeper into the Earth. It continent. Here the Supai Group and Hermit Shale are is aided in its efforts by the thicker than further east. The Esplanade appears on top of fact that across its path lies an uplifted blister of crust known metamorphic rocks began life almost 2 billion years ago as the Supai – a massive bench that erodes to strange goblin as the Kaibab Upwarp that brings deeply buried rocks closer sediments and volcanic rocks on the floor of an ancient ocean. shapes on the inner rim of the canyon. The schist dips below to the surface. When the river enters the canyon’s deepest and When heated and compressed during subduction under the river once again, reappears briefly; then drops away until oldest rocks in the Inner Gorge, things get dramatic. The ancestral North America, they metamorphosed into hard much further west. Old friends like the Tapeats Sandstone, canyon narrows, the water picks up speed, and rapids growl schist and gneiss. At the same time, deeper molten magma Bright Angel Shale, and Muav Limestone reappear at river with a throaty bass. Beaches are few and small, and the dark squeezed its way towards the surface, intruding into the still level. You haven’t seen them for more than fifty miles. They walls are sharp and sheer. metamorphosing rock and solidifying to form spider webs of look familiar – welcome, even – after that dark chasm. pink granite veins. All this Further down, black basalt Running the River happened as much as nine appears near Lava Falls miles below the surface of Rapid, frozen in place on Heretofore, hard rocks have given us bad river; soft rocks, smooth the Earth. These rocks have the walls of the canyon, water; and a series of rocks harder than any we have experienced literally been through hell. festooning the older rocks sets in. We can see but a little way into the granite gorge, but it looks Geologists call these with starburst patterns threatening. “basement” rocks, because of hexagonal columns from – John Wesley Powell there is nothing but more the cooling and shrinking The walls in the Inner Gorge are made of black schist shot of the same beneath them. of these ancient lavas. through with silver mica and pebbled with garnets, polished All the layers above this – The river dives once more to ebony smoothness by the waters of the river. In places the the red sandstone, golden into the dark metamorphics walls are marbled gneiss in streaked pink and black. These limestone, and variegated and swirling eddies of the shale – are but a thin veneer Lower Granite Gorge and on what turns out to be an then back into the limestone extraordinarily thick crust.

Limestone walls of Tuckup Canyon, a tributary to the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. 13 for good. The canyon walls are broken and shattered with Designed and Written in Stone: Four Freedoms Park poration. A whole team of advisors, including Kahn family fault lines in the western Grand Canyon. The whole place is and the FDR Memorial members, former Kahn employees, and architectural histori- being pulled apart, yet the walls still rise thousands of feet he story of how Four Freedoms Park came to be ans – among them Bill Whitaker, curator of the Architectural above the river. Two hundred seventy-seven miles from Lees has all the qualities of a legend in the making. A Archives of the University of Pennsylvania, where Kahn’s Ferry and the beginning of your trip, you come around the four-acre memorial to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, papers are on permanent loan from the Pennsylvania Histori- corner and the walls are suddenly gone as though they never situated on the tapering, southern tip of Roosevelt cal and Museum Commission – were called upon to be sure existed; before you lies the open desert. The Grand Canyon Island in New York City’s East River, the park the project stayed as true as possible to Kahn’s intentions. and the entire Colorado Plateau end at Grand Wash Cliffs and Twas announced in 1973 but not completed until 2012, nearly Construction began in 2010 and the park opened to the public Grand Wash Fault. What began and deepened slowly across forty years later. Designed by Louis Kahn, its conception on October 24, 2012. the land culminates suddenly, with little warning. It is a was nearly complete when the architect died suddenly of a But there are other narratives to tell here – more subtle, shock to be so abruptly removed from the comforting walls heart attack in a Penn Station men’s room in 1974, making perhaps, but no less interesting. The park is a serenely, even that have surrounded you for days. Some people feel uneasy the memorial his last creation. Subsequently New York slid sublimely, simple composition of just three materials – gran- out there in all that sky, as though suddenly they had been into near-bankruptcy and the project foundered. Thirty years ite, grass, and trees, with a strong emphasis on the stone. As spirited away from everything familiar. This is one of the later it was revived, inspired in part by Kahn’s son Nathaniel’s might be expected, this choice of material confers monu- beauties of a Grand Canyon river trip: that the unknown and touching 2003 film My Architect and in part by an exhibition mentality on the memorial, but also has less-expected effects. unknowable can become comfortable. You have watched the of the design studies, models, and construction documents Some of the park’s most compelling details and most inter- canyon be born and mature; now you see it end. for the project at the Cooper Union in 2005, sponsored by the esting experiential qualities can be attributed to the unusual The metamorphic and igneous rocks of the Inner Gorge Reed Foundation and co-curated by architect and archivist ways the stone was cut and finished. are the Grand Canyon’s oldest (even though they are not Gina Pollara. The Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute Four Freedoms Park is approached from the north along even half the age of Earth). The basalt flows in the western announced its commitment to raise the funds necessary for either the east or west sides of the island. An entry court is Grand Canyon are the canyon’s toddlers, a mere half million construction; over the next several years, significant dona- dominated by imposing stairs, one hundred feet wide and years old or even less. These lavas poured into a fully formed tions came from the Arthur Ross, Kaplan, and Alphawood twelve feet high, centered in steeply canted granite-faced canyon, damming the river and creating lakes that exploded Foundations, among others, and the project was back on the walls. From here visitors can proceed up the steps or along when the dams failed catastrophically, piling debris six hun- boards. sloping paths that hug the dred feet above the river. Massive landslides have wracked the Mitchell/Giurgola Architects, who had completed the con- shorelines. The stairs are At Four Freedoms Park in New canyon within the past few hundred thousand years, in one struction documents for the project in the mid-70s, returned enticing – what lies at the top York’s East River, a grand entry stair place literally forcing the river to move and carve a new chan- as architects of record; Pollara was named project director is obscured from view. Climb- leads to a sloped and tapering lawn nel. Debris from these landslides sloshed up several hundred on behalf of the New York State Urban Development Cor- ing up, you reach a narrow, framed by littleleaf lindens. feet onto the opposite side of the river. Huge floods have coursed through the canyon in the past, floods large enough to leave debris well above the river. Yet all of this drama is not really what created the canyon. Although geologists still disagree about the timing, and which river(s) played the greatest role, we do know that the Grand Canyon, in all its vastness and beauty, was formed for the most part through small processes, things unnoticed. Like the small nails holding the walls of a home together, it was the droplets of water, the grains of sand moving downslope and downstream, the plant roots wedging their way into the rocks, the inexorable play of gravity on the land that combined with an unimaginable amount of time to form this landscape. In 1921 poet Alfred Bryan called this sublime excavation “ten thousand cathedrals rolled into one.” But for me, and for many others in the world, it is simply home. – Christa Sadler

14 level platform of stone, from At the south end of the park, a which a long, rectangular stone-walled room is empty but for panel of grass slopes away, an inscribed quotation from FDR flanked by double rows of about the four freedoms he consid- littleleaf lindens – 120 in all – ered essential to a just society. framed by low stone parapets. In addition to a twelve-foot grade change, the lawn features a forced perspective, created by a sharp narrowing of the rows of trees. The vista ends with a tall stone niche, which contains a bronze bust of FDR enlarged from a life portrait created by Jo Davidson in 1934. Behind this lies a sixty-by-sixty-foot chamber, defined on three sides by granite piers, six by six by twelve feet, spaced about one inch apart. This room is open on the fourth side (to the south). It is separated from the water by a stone trench – a ha-ha of sorts – in front of a final, low parapet wall facing the river. The room was designed for public gatherings but also for contemplation – the city all but disappears from the space. It is unembellished, save for an inscribed quotation from FDR’s State of the Union address on January 4, 1941, in which he enumerated the four freedoms he considered the foundation of a just society: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Not new supply tunnel, City Tunnel No. 3, that runs partly under and soils engineered for the different species. The tree grid coincidentally, if you stand at the open end of the room, the the East River. The fill from this section of the tunnel, begun was enlarged from ten by ten to twelve by fifteen feet; little- United Nations is visible – an institution Roosevelt helped to in the 1970s and completed in 1993, was deposited at the leaf lindens were specified, although European hornbeams build, which enshrines the four freedoms in its charter. southern tip of Roosevelt Island; it provided a portion of the had also been considered in Kahn’s day. Copper beeches were The size of this room is just about perfect: large enough physical platform for the memorial. As early as 1994, when chosen for the entry space. Plant material was selected for to feel ceremonial, but small enough to be human in scale. the project was still in limbo, the fill was graded, compacted, hardiness, according to Pollara: “It’s a tough environment, “It is public, but intimate and comfortable,” says Michael A. and shaped to Kahn’s specifications. with a lot of wind and salt spray.” Notwithstanding the many Rubenstein, who was project architect for Mitchell/Giurgola Over the years the design went through several iterations. changes over the years, the basic outlines of the original until the UDC ran short of funds in 1975 and returned as an The first changes were made by Kahn himself, in collabora- design remained: monumental stairs, sloping grass plinth, unpaid consultant when the project was revived. The room tion with landscape architect Harriet Pattison, his colleague allées of trees, walled chamber – and the stone.1 also features one of the memorial’s most intriguing design and the mother of Nathaniel. Initially, for instance, the room The stone, a very pale, reflective grey, was selected from a details, which apparently dates back to Kahn’s original con- featured sixty-foot-high walls of brushed stainless steel. source in Mount Airy, North Carolina, said to be the world’s ception for the space: the massive piers are finished with saw- As this was well beyond the project’s budget, the chamber largest open-face granite quarry – so large, in fact, at about cut matte surfaces, except in the hidden spaces between them, was quickly reimagined as a scaled-down structure made of a half a square mile, that the stone is quarried horizontally which are polished. This has the effect of amplifying both concrete, which Kahn had used successfully in projects such rather than vertically. In operation since 1743, it once supplied sound and light from outside the chamber. Reflected light as the Salk Center in San Diego. But then Edward Logue, Works Progress Administration building projects across the radiates from these narrow apertures, and if you put your ear head of the New York State Urban Development Corporation, country. The granite was then cut to exacting specifications. to them, you get the concentrated sound of passing ships and in consultation with the Roosevelt family, made the decision In addition to the saw-cut and smooth finishes of the piers, water. The “floor “ of the chamber is as carefully engineered that the room should be of stone, believing it a material more the walls feature “knuckle stones” where either the slope as the rest of the space: the pavers actually float on pedestals, appropriate for a memorial. changes or the angle of the wall narrows. Edges and corners and have small gaps between them to facilitate drainage. Thirty years later, other changes were made by Mitchell/ throughout are sharp rather than beveled, which the stone As seems to be so often the case these days – think of the Giurgola, some mandated by new accessibility standards, oth- masons originally worried would chip – but they were per- recently completed parks over the Big Dig in Boston – the ers for improved seismic protection and flood control. Deci- 1 The narrative of the design’s development is told deftly new public space on Roosevelt Island was in part the by-prod- sions on the size, spacing, and species of trees were made, and in detail by Samuel Hughes in “Constructing a New Kahn,” uct of an infrastructure upgrade. New York’s water authority Penn Gazette (March/April 2103), accessed wanted to build redundancy into its system against the day at http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0313/feature2_1.html. that century-old supply lines had to be repaired, so it dug a 15 The granite piers of the room are thousand cubic yards of it, sixty-five percent Place Maker separated by narrow polished slots, recycled from the site, all carefully hand set which amplify sound and light off by stone masons – is in some ways as evoca- the river. tive as the experience of the memorial itself. The dark grey stone locates you in this par- The Stones of the Spirit suaded by the designers to ticular place, even as it signifies the power of ucked away in a remote corner of the property, a make them work.2 Indeed, the passing water. footpath of ten stone steps curves upward from the Rubenstein reports that Still more compelling is the view over the lower pasture to the highest point of the ground. one of the most rewarding water from the southern end of the memorial Etched into each stone is a single word: a distilla- experiences of the construc- onto a shoal that is said to be the southern- tion of a concept that directed the transformation of tion process was inspired by most piece of exposed bedrock on the eastern Ta twenty-two-acre farm from a tangle of neglected woodland Kahn’s commitment to the seaboard. Tidal fluctuations in the river into a joyous hymn of thanksgiving. highest possible standards cause water to surge back and forth across You could say that these ten words trace the entire process, of workmanship, which was this outcrop nearly all the time. The restless from the initial creative impulse to the ultimate composition. embraced by the builders. water creates an effective, if inadvertent, con- They are also crystallizations of my evolving relationship There are other, more trast with the serenity of the chamber, along with the spirit of the place – that ancient notion of the genius familiar uses of the Mount with a dialogue between worked stone and loci. In that sense, the words on the stones operate the way Airy stone in the park. found stone. The shoal is hard evidence of ornaments of Baroque music do: as condensations of sur- Cobblestones are used in nature in an otherwise entirely constructed rounding melody, suggesting, not dictating, interpretation. the entry plaza, and crushed site. The effect is distinctly nautical, as if you granite, dispersed under were on the prow of a ship slicing through The spirit of the place began its elusive ministration the first the allées, resembles the the water – but it is the river moving in this day I saw the property. Even in its pathetic state of untended pea gravel beneath trees in instance, not the vessel. chaos, it exuded an atmosphere of freedom and lightness many European parks. Set It is easy to get transfixed by the technolo- of heart. I knew at once that no escape would be possible, in resin to make the paths gies of the memorial: how the thirty-six-ton for there was an unmistakable invitation to join something ADA-accessible, the granite stones that make up the room were too heavy intensely real; a summons from the pervading spirit. The call chips don’t make the satis- for the bridge to Roosevelt Island and had was to produce a living, consequential work in concert with fying sound of gravel shifting underfoot, but the resin-set to be sent by barge; how the foundations were built to bear this place. The call was addressed to me. stone requires less maintenance, in addition to improving their weight; how they had to be “tripped” in large sand pits For two years, I simply breathed in the spirit of my new accessibility. Some minor flaws in the memorial are also to prevent damage when they were shifted from horizontal to surroundings. Every day I spent hours walking around the related to stone. The sloping surfaces that flank the entry vertical positions. While these construction details are fas- ground, greeting the dawn over the innocent front pasture, stair are veneered rather than solid and have a blank look to cinating, so are the scale and material qualities of the place. feeling the tingle of fresh country air on my skin, bathing in them; moisture behind them has already started to discolor In this, granite has a major role. It has all the monumentality the total rural darkness at night, inhaling the herbal fra- the stone. At the other end of the park, the open-air granite and gravitas the patrons wanted. It has archaic qualities: the grance of tall grasses. I had no prefabricated landscape in my chamber with its southern exposure is bound to be hot and memorial’s mastaba shape, most evident from the entry plaza, mind; rather I felt a desire to give clarity to what was already blindingly bright on summer days (although on a cloudy, evokes Egyptian tombs, which Kahn saw on visits to Egypt there. I trusted the ground to hint to me what it needed. breezy spring day, it was sheltered and serene). in 1951 and 1959. The stone enclosure of the room is like an It was immediately obvious that a great amount of clearing There are some deeply satisfying and less obvious attri- open-air classical temple, albeit in a stripped-down, modern- and cleaning would be necessary, and my three local help- butes of the memorial that relate to the native stone of the ist idiom. It is an austere and solemn place, this memorial, ers charged into the two-year project of removing tangles island. The park is adjacent to the old Smallpox Hospital, fitting to the memory of a wartime president and the free- of scrub trees, draperies of dead vines, skinny fruit bushes, designed by James Renwick and built of dark local granite in doms his generation secured. In less capable hands, allusions miles of rusted barbed wire, even an abandoned refrigerator. 1856. Kahn specified that the same local granite be used to to the Pyramids and ancient temples might seem pretentious, While they worked their way around the great swath of lower form the riprap edge that protects the park from the ero- even preposterous. But the team that created Four Freedoms pasture, I explored the perimeter, which is bounded by a sive effects of the river. Looking down at this stone – eleven Park – Kahn and his later interlocutors and interpreters – got thirty-foot-wide stream lined with handsome old maples and 2 Technical and construction details, particularly regarding them just about right. – John Beardsley sycamores. the stone quarrying, fabrication, transportation, and setting can be Gradually the land revealed itself to me. Its basic topogra- found in Four Freedoms Park, eds. Gina Pollara and Stephen Martin phy is unusual. The lower level is in the shape of an elongated (New York: Four Freedoms Park Conservancy, 2013). oval. Rising out of the center is a substantial mound, which

16 supports the buildings. Its plateau is also ovoid. One side is new being in its own right. “Harmony” metaphorically medi- ing winking in the sunlight. Seen together, they were simply forested; the other opens out into a serene, parklike area. ated this new entity with its poetic, musical, and spiritual beautiful. The stream, the trees, the ground. Everything I could pos- environment. The complementarity of “Restraint” and “Bold- sibly need was there on the property, waiting to be rearranged ness” energized the entire creative process, while “Solidity” The following spring, as soon as all the snow had melted and into a more coherent statement. Any stones needed for build- contributed ballast, Vitruvius’s notion of firmitas. And upon the ground was sufficiently dry, four men carrying shovels ing trim could be carried from the streambed. The trees were that base, the irrepressible spirit of “Délicatesse” embellished gathered at the site I had meticulously measured and staked a natural symphony of greens. Even the terracotta Virginia with touches of exquisite care, even gilding the lily. for the path of these stones. The scene that April day brought soil was distinct. And while I inventoried the natural poten- One term required careful consideration, to mind the charming tial of the site, I was developing a profound affection – even as it carried religious overtones. Originally episode in Cao Xuegin’s reverence – for the place. I had been shy of using “Consecration.” But eighteenth-century classic, By the third year, I was ready to enter into an actual work- as I pondered the list of words, I recognized The Story of the Stone, in ing relationship with the land. I believed I could tactfully that I had accepted the relationship with the which a precocious boy and borrow just enough from the French classic landscape tradi- land as a sacred trust and the work had been a his father and retinue of tion to enhance its natural loveliness. I would straighten the sacrament. scholars are challenged to road to create a central connecting axis and define a number These became oracle words for me, col- create verses for stones – of garden compartments around a taut, geometrical center. lectively presenting a synopsis of every step already identified and pol- This would give sufficient shape to allow the ground to pro- of my work with the ground. They were not ished – in their new garden. claim its resplendent beauty. Moving out centrifugally, the abbreviations. They were concentrations. It As they proceed around the land would gradually drift off into the negligent charm of the then felt inevitable that they would be etched garden, thoughtfully debat- countryside. in stone. ing legends to represent Slowly and surely, in the course of the next three years, my notable places or construc- land and I produced a serene and measured little world where In a letter to another painter, Cezanne described his reaction tions, several principles are enunciated. It is preferable, they there is no ostentation, where everything is handled with to the rock outcrops on Mont Sainte-Victoire. “These masses announce, to select lines from old poetry rather than impro- an extremely light touch, all parts seamlessly fused into an are made of fire,” he wrote. His paintings investigate their vise new rhymes. Texts may operate as allusions, but must individualized whole that can now be perceived as a cohesive weight, density, and solidity – “the absolute internal power” nevertheless accurately describe. totality, unique in its own manifest existence. The final act of the substance of those forms. Similarly I believed that the In Cao Xuegin’s story, the emphasis is on the texts to be was the placement of the staircase of ten stones, marrying the compressed strength of the stones was the instrumentality engraved. The lines are to be added to stones existing natu- graceful expanse of the upper plateau with the pasture below. that could best express the voice of the spirit. Their highly rally in the garden, and those stones are scarcely described. concentrated energies would amplify the tightly bound con- In this sense, the Chinese program differs significantly from The idea of composing the list of words occurred to me some- tents of the words. Together they would emanate their vibra- my own. Not only was I incising texts into the earth, I was time during my fifth year at the farm. When locating trees or tions into the atmosphere. implanting stones into its surface. benches, selecting materials, or scoring paths on the surface My next venture was to visit a tombstone company in a It could be argued that the planting of the stones is the of ground, I often found myself referring to principles that neighboring village. When I asked how it would be possible to more significant act. One might dismiss our concluding were embedded in my mind. Some came from art history, collect ten stones of different types and colors for my words, activity as dislodging nothing more than mere soil, but others from music. I was directed to the refuse pile behind the workshop. After I knew that in so doing I was disturbing entire systems My choice of the word “Character” – an homage to a many afternoons investigating this scrap heap, I arranged of microscopic living creatures. While I had consistently vanished age – denoted my row of ten marble and granite rem- endeavored to make the minimal intervention to achieve my historical associations that nants on the ground. Some were polished ends, I knew that all along I had been interfering with the provided my style refer- and smoothly edged. Others were raw, with land’s natural state. For this – as for the entire program I had ents. “Simplicity” referred rough edges and irregular sides. “Har- engineered on the land – I bore a heavy responsibility. to elemental materials and mony,” for instance, would be represented Retracing the origins of mankind, archaeologist Rich- qualities available on the on a thick slab of polished pink and grey ard Bradley, in Altering the Earth, reminds us of a time when site; “Discipline” summa- granite that reminded me of Baudelaire’s the arranging of stones into recognizable form was a major, rized the order necessary to line (or Debussy’s appropriation of it), “Les irreversible act that “must have required the overcoming of assemble the garden’s ele- sons et les parfums tournent dans l‘air du feelings of sacrilege: these early peoples were ‘altering the ments into a visual unity, a soir.” “Restraint” fit onto a chunk of granite Earth’ for the first time.” This is not to claim that to position that contracted in the middle. “Délicatesse” ten stepping-stones into a path compares to the immensity of would leisurely unfold on a large smooth rectangle of pure white marble, gold letter- 17 Neolithic man’s monuments, but the arranging of stones into Book Reviews est in the world. With its the Reservation at nearby When I grew up in Buf- discrete forms is not frivolous. Nor is it disinterested. pivotal location – at the Niagara Falls, which was the falo during the 1960s and The ten stone steps were my signature: they at once com- easternmost point of Lake country’s first state park. early 1970s, the names of memorated my relationship with the land and declared it a Erie and terminus of the During their decades of Frederick Law Olmsted and work of art. They also gently captured and held the spirit of The Best Planned City Erie Canal – and its growing work in Buffalo, Olmsted, Calvert Vaux were rarely the place that had directed every step I had taken. Perhaps in the World: Olmsted, Vaux, railroad facilities, Buffalo Vaux, and the Olmsted firm heard. In those days, few in placing the stones was not as dramatic as moving the road or and the Buffalo Park System was the conduit for goods designed and built (I am Buffalo seemed to value or clearing away hundreds of scrub trees. But the compactness of By Francis R. Kowsky from America’s interior to using their modern names): even remember the city’s the stones gave the steps a formal dignity and a finality. Amherst: University of the eastern seaboard and Delaware, Front, Martin past glories. The scenic Of course I recognized that without my constant efforts Massachusetts Press, 2013. abroad. Grain, lumber, cat- Luther King Jr., South, Caze- lake in Delaware Park had to brush away leaves or twigs that had settled onto them, the tle, and coal flowed through novia, and Riverside Parks; become an oozing dumping stones would quickly be lost in a field of native grasses and On the occa- the city, and Bidwell, Lincoln, Chapin, ground. Front Park, with its wildflowers. Merely a year or two of soil shifting across their sion of the industry and and Humboldt Parkways; breathtaking view of Lake surfaces would be enough to bury them gracefully in the Centennial commerce Gates Circle, Soldier’s Place, Erie, was lost amid a confu- earth or, at the least, to obliterate the carved letters. Nonethe- International flourished. Colonial Circle, and Sym- sion of highways and entry less, to me they represented durability, and I took them as a Exhibition Farsighted phony Circle; the extensive ramps. Much of Vaux’s work verified restatement of my entire encounter with this ground. in Philadel- business- landscape of the Buffalo had been lost, not only to phia in 1876, men, flush Psychiatric Center and the fire but also to civic disre- Go ahead. Stand on one of the stones. Better yet, walk the Frederick with prosper- grounds of the Old County gard. entire footpath. Then you may ask, What is the purpose of Law Olmsted ity and civic Hall; the Parkside neighbor- But enough remained of this staircase? Where do these steps lead? described pride, decided hood, Richmond Avenue, the Olmsted and Vaux legacy Ah, but that is up to you. a certain that Buffalo Niagara Square, Prospect that when I remember the Although the words on the steps are profoundly personal American city needed parks Place, and more. Buffalo of my childhood, I to me, they are also intentionally ordinary. Thus they are as “the best worthy of its Calvert Vaux’s collabora- see myself walking within similar to my landscape. It, too, is intensely intimate – even planned city, as to its streets, national prominence. tion was pivotal for Dela- the landscape they created: autobiographical – and yet my story is told on the ground public places and grounds, Olmsted and his firm ware Park, Martin Luther the alluring residential with such reserve that a viewer can spend time there and in the United States, if not worked in Buffalo for over King, Jr. Park, and the boulevards lined with rows feel the freedom to fashion his own story around it. Anyone the world.” Surprisingly he thirty years, and his plan Buffalo Psychiatric Center. of mature elm trees, their who has eyes to see how the themes were developed – indeed was writing about Buffalo, for the city entailed much He filled the two parks with branches meeting in a sun- anyone who takes the time to contemplate the words written New York, today a city more more than scattered urban whimsical structures that dappled roof above my head; there – can transpose these ideas into his own patterns of renowned for urban blight, parks; instead, he envisioned included covered benches, a the rustic paths through experience, whether he is laying out a garden or pondering chicken wings, and snow a cohesive, citywide system spired gazebo, and a wooden Delaware Park, where I his philosophy of being. than for landscaped thor- of parks, boulevards, and boathouse. His vast Parade rode my bike or walked Ultimately, the actual words become less significant than oughfares and expansive public spaces. He wanted to House, located in what is with friends; the tranquil the steps themselves. Through their humble presence on the parks. create, as Buffalo’s present- now Martin Luther King Parkside neighborhood with ground, the stones deliver their message in some preverbal Nonetheless, when day Olmsted fans are fond Jr. Park, provided a gather- its curving streets, where I form of discourse. Buffalo’s business leaders of quoting, “a city within a ing place for such festivities went each week for my piano Stand back with me and observe the scene. These stone invited Olmsted to the city park.” as dancing, dining, music, lesson; the meadow vistas pieces are laid in a perfectly modulated semicircle, rising in 1868 to advise on possible The realization of this and theater. Alas, the Parade stretching into the distance. from a low point to a high overlook. They are open, as though parks, Buffalo was among concept was not his alone. House, one of Vaux’s great- All this gave me a sense ready to embrace. You could go further and say they are raised the wealthiest and most Calvert Vaux collaborated est creations, was destroyed not simply of natural beauty, “to lift up the heart in a spirit of praise and thankfulness,” important cities in America, on the early projects, until by fire in 1877. but also of exhilaration as Gertrude Jekyll described the consummate achievement of its harbor one of the busi- the Olmsted/Vaux part- and renewal. Even though I a garden. nership dissolved in 1872; didn’t know their names, This is a site of high concentration. Before you are ten and in the 1880s the two I lived within Olmsted’s and stones, which delicately hold (not contain) the spirit of the joined forces again to create Vaux’s imaginations every place. They are steps to something beyond. Or simply to day of my Buffalo youth. behold. – Carole George

18 Their vision shaped the them – from their initial of this book. Quotations Olmsted conceived the diminish the purity of Olm- nothing, compared with world I grew up in, and so design and their growth from Olmsted’s letters and idea to turn the area into sted’s vision in Buffalo. Wil- what was to come. shaped my life. into maturity through their other documents reveal his a “reservation” owned by liam McMillan, superinten- In the late 1950s an Francis R. Kowsky, the heartbreaking decline and, and his colleagues’ thought the State of New York. The dent of the Buffalo parks for expressway replaced Dela- author of The Best Planned in recent times, tentative processes over years of details of his campaign, over twenty-five years and a ware Park’s North Meadow City in the World, has also rebirth. An extraordinary work. Local newspaper com- with its complex political stalwart defender of Olm- carriage drive. Access to the known daily life within the variety and abundance of mentaries show how the maneuvering, private din- sted’s principles, was fired park lake from the north imaginations of Frederick illustrations fill the book, citizens of Buffalo reacted ners among power brokers, in 1897, apparently because became a pedestrian over- Law Olmsted and Calvert including photographs new to their new landscapes – and attempts to influence he opposed discordant pass. And then in the 1960s, Vaux, and he credits his and old, maps, diagrams, enthusiastically and other- public opinion, read like construction within the as Kowsky says of Hum- firsthand experiences as an paintings, and lithographs. wise. Kowsky is especially a suspense story. In 1886, park. Soon two monumental boldt Parkway, “city leaders inspiration for this book. As a physical object, The eloquent in his description the Niagara Reservation museums, both Neoclassi- decided . . . that the distin- Kowsky spent his teaching Best Planned City in the World of Calvert Vaux’s Parade became a reality. No longer, cal in design, were built on guished boulevard and career at Buffalo State Col- has a beauty worthy of its House, which he calls a writes Kowsky, was the area promontories overlooking its surrounding neighbor- lege – where he is now SUNY subject. “double-storied towered immediately around the Delaware Park’s lake. Cal- hood” – home to a strong Distinguished Professor of Kowsky begins by chalet [that] summoned visi- falls “in danger of being vert Vaux’s fanciful wooden middle-class African-Amer- Fine Arts (Emeritus) – one examining the origins and tors to revelries simply by overrun by the unchecked boathouse was replaced by ican community – “were block from Olmsted and development of the Ameri- its wondrous appearance.” forces of commerce, manu- what Kowsky calls “a bulky expendable. As in many Vaux’s Delaware Park and can park movement, review- The illustrations of the lost facturing, and hucksterism.” masonry building reminis- other places, a sense of his- next door to the Buffalo ing its British and French Parade House more than At this point, Olmsted and cent of Pompeian villas.” tory and an appreciation for Psychiatric Center, with its antecedents. He explains the justify this claim, and the Vaux’s labors truly began at In 1905 a life-size repro- urban life were absent from Olmsted and Vaux-designed philosophy that led to Olm- author’s detailed descrip- Niagara, as they reclaimed duction of Michelangelo’s the city’s political circles. landscape. “This book,” he sted and Vaux’s proposal for tions of its planning are and redesigned the land- statue of David was donated Transportation, one of writes, “commemorates my Central Park and shows how fascinating. scape to bring it back to a by a wealthy park patron the major forces that built personal journey through the two men transformed Kowsky interrupts his more natural state. and placed in a prominent the city, would now begin the early history of the Olm- their ideals into reality. narrative on Buffalo to pro- Kowsky believes that the position on a bluff over- to destroy it.” For Buffalo sted cityscape.” Kowsky is Having thus set the stage, vide a fascinating examina- years have not been kind to looking the water, where it residents, photographs of steeped in the Olmsted and Kowsky turns to Buffalo. tion of the forces brought Olmsted and Vaux’s work remains a startling sight. healthy, mature trees being Vaux legacies, and his earlier Before Olmsted’s arrival, to bear in Olmsted’s cam- at Niagara. He particularly As time passed, the park’s cut down by the dozen on writings include the land- Buffalo had one notable paign to preserve Niagara laments the current condi- meadow became a golf Humboldt Parkway are sear- mark study, Country, Park designed landscape: Forest Falls, roughly seventeen tions on Goat Island, with course and its Deer Paddock ing to this day. The replace- & City: The Architecture and Lawn Cemetery, dedicated miles from the city. When its extensive surface park- a zoo with surface parking. ment of the astonishing Life of Calvert Vaux (Oxford in 1866 and still one of the Olmsted began his work in ing, large restaurant, Tennis courts and baseball urban landscape that was University Press, 2003). jewels of the city. Olmsted Buffalo, the area around the souvenir shop, and fast-food diamonds joined the mix. Olmsted’s grand creation – In his magnificent new decided to build his park, American Falls was literally concessions. And yet . . . Later generations might say almost two miles long, two book, with its lucid prose now called Delaware Park, a carnival, rife with huck- on the adjoining Three that the museums and their hundred feet wide, six rows and deft organization, on land adjacent to the sterism and criminality. Sisters Islands, visitors can classical-revival grandeur of trees across – with a hid- Kowsky follows the evolu- cemetery. The islands in the rapids still walk through peaceful at least contributed to the eous and, some in Buffalo tion of Olmsted and Vaux’s Kowsky examines first had become a manufactur- glades amid lush vegeta- cultural life of the city and would say now, unnecessary astonishing creations in this project and then each ing center. A paper mill, tion, bathed by sparkling, perhaps added to the beauty expressway was one of the Buffalo – those “landscapes of the Olmsted/Vaux and tannery, foundry, even a misty light, and experience of Delaware Park, even tragedies of the city’s twen- of recreation, residence, Olmsted firm’s designs for laundry, exploited the water Olmsted and Vaux’s original though they went against tieth-century history and a memory, and healing,” as Buffalo. The author’s ability power of the Niagara rapids. vision for this remarkable Olmsted’s sylvan ideal. But loss to the nation itself. he so gracefully describes to look at projects from a place. these depredations were Nature, too, took its toll seedlings-in-the-ground to By the late nineteenth on Buffalo. Olmsted favored a citywide perspective is one century, politics and patron- the use of the elm tree on of the great achievements age were beginning to

19 the city’s boulevards and Parkway as it used to be. Ginkgo Botanic Garden, Kew – us about the evolution of the configurations and cli- streets, and thousands of This option would have By Peter Crane has managed in Ginkgo to single living species.” mactic patterns. A possible elms were planted in Buffalo been inconceivable not so New Haven: Yale University tell it better than anyone One of the most striking third cause might have at his direction. As a result long ago. Press, 2013 else to date. fossils pictured in Ginkgo been the extinction of the of Dutch elm disease, at its On a recent trip to Buf- “Ginkgo is one of the is a slab from Afghanistan dinosaurs and marsupial- worst in the 1960s, entire falo, I decided to walk to Ginkgo comes world’s most with seven or eight ginkgo like mammals that ate and neighborhoods lost their Delaware Park from my from a place distinctive leaves, each consisting of dispersed its nuts. Whatever glorious trees. Before long mother’s home. I went down so distant, so plants,” Crane some six bilobed segments. the causes, ginkgo eventu- the whole city was stripped Chapin Parkway, two hun- deep in time, writes, “and This slab, thought to be ally vanished from almost bare. Ironically Olmsted dred feet wide, with its six that it appears has one of the roughly 190 million years all the many places around and Vaux had opted to rows of replanted trees lead- as a botani- longest pedi- old, is not the oldest ginkgo the world where it had once plant Humboldt Parkway ing me along the boulevard cal alien that grees; there fossil, however. Older exam- thrived, only managing with linden and tulip trees, as if through a stately forest. might almost is no other ples have been found in Arc- to survive “the Pleistocene which presumably would The trees didn’t yet meet in have come living tree tic Canada, eastern North glaciations in two Asian have survived the devasta- a cathedral-like arch above from another with a prehis- America, and northwestern refuges: one in Tianmu tion of Dutch elm disease, if my head, but they were tall planet. We tory so deeply Mexico, and those dating Mountain not far from the they hadn’t been destroyed and shapely. I rounded the assign num- intertwined back 240 million years come Chinese coast and the to make way for a multilane traffic circle at Soldier’s bers, such as with that of from the Karoo Basin of other farther inland in the highway. Place and turned onto Lin- 240 million our planet.” South Africa. Indeed ginkgo protected valleys along Finally, when Buffalo’s coln Parkway, with its own years ago, to position the In his amazingly detailed, fossils have turned up in the southern margin of the heritage seemed all but lost, six rows of trees to lead me oldest ginkgo fossils in the painstakingly researched yet many different parts of the Sichuan Basin.” Very big liv- new visionaries stepped onward. The park beckoned sequence of geological ages, eminently readable book, world – not only in North ing ginkgo trees can still be forward to take responsibil- in the distance. The sun was and it is hard to reckon Crane thoroughly examines America, Africa, and Asia found in these areas today. ity for their city’s future. out after a rainstorm, and with the fact that this curi- ginkgo’s ancient history, but also in Europe, Green- So this very odd tree Money was raised to replant the damp leaves shimmered ous tree is from a world in physiology, anatomy, and land, and Australia. Accord- made it, if just barely, into the parkways. Local groups and shone as the dazzling which North America, South cultural history, leavening ing to Crane, this geological historical times, when organized to fight to place light filtered among them. America, Africa, Antarctica, his account with illuminat- evidence demonstrates that human beings became Olmsted’s park and parkway With a sense of exaltation, and Australia were welded ing anecdotes about the between 100 million and interested in its welfare and system, as well as the Park- I walked through Freder- together into one vast con- paleobotanists, plant explor- 225 million years ago there propagation. People love its side neighborhood, onto the ick Law Olmsted’s vision tinent. This was a world in ers, and collectors connected was great diversity among deltoid-shaped leaf, with a National Register of Historic of what a city could, and which primitive mammals in one way or another with ginkgo and its relatives, but fan of fine veins so different Places. Preservationists suc- should, be. were first appearing, a world the tree. Some of these men, that it was followed over from the leaf of any other cessfully fought for National “Buffalo (including Niag- that existed more than 85 such as the eminent Chinese time by the gradual emer- plant. Historic Landmark status ara),” writes Kowsky, “was billion sunsets ago. paleobotanist Zhou Zhiyan, gence of “a single winner One of the most impres- for the Buffalo Psychiatric the client for which Olmsted Ginkgo is a tree that Crane knew personally and many losers.” sive living ginkgos in China Center. The Buffalo Olmsted exercised the fullest mea- has persisted, little changed, during his early academic Crane speculates that is the grand Ginkgo King Parks Conservancy, modeled sure of his genius.” In this for these unimaginable career at the University of one reason the number of near Li Jiawan, a small on the Central Park Conser- essential and remarkable eons, and its history is Reading. “More than anyone ginkgo species began to hamlet in Guizhou in vancy, became the manager book, the author shows us an extraordinary tale of else,” Crane says, “in his decline 100 million years southern China. It is nearly of the Olmsted parks and what the fullest measure of survival against great odds. own gentle and understated ago may have been competi- one hundred feet tall, with a parkways on behalf of the Frederick Law Olmsted’s Nevertheless, Peter Crane – way, Zhou Zhiyan has helped tion from flowering plants, trunk nineteen feet across; city. The conservancy’s over- genius looked like. who is the Carl W. Knobloch make sense of the fossil which were rapidly becom- size alone suggests that it all plan includes the goal of – Lauren Belfer Jr. Dean of the School of ginkgolike leaves . . . and has ing dominant in the Middle is “among the most ancient dismantling the expressway Forestry & Environmental illuminated what they tell Cretaceous. Another cause of all living ginkgo trees.” and rebuilding Humboldt Studies at Yale University, was probably a speed up in Altogether, about a hundred a professor of botany at continental drift, which the same institution, and a created new geographical former director of the Royal

20 great trees spread around employ of the Dutch, Carl ginkgo in their collections. movements of thousands people saved.” Today, he ginkgo is best known for its China, some near temples, Peter Thunberg and Philipp By 1784 it had crossed the of tiny hairs. “Swimming tells us, it is among the most leaves, which are promoted appear to be a thousand Franz von Siebold. Accord- Atlantic, perhaps having sperm,” Crane notes, “were widely planted street trees as having memory-enhanc- years old or more. Legends ing to Crane, Deshima been sent to wealthy Phila- well known in ferns, mosses, in the world. Over sixteen ing properties. He adds that about ancient ginkgos in became the primary route delphia plant collector and similar plants but had thousand ginkgo trees line although ginkgo has become Korea and Japan assert through which Western William Hamilton by Peter never been observed in any New York City’s streets – the a top-selling herbal medi- ages of over eleven hun- science first learned about Collinson, the London seed-producing plant.” Soon largest number of ginkgo cine in the United States, dred years, but the tree was the plants of East Asia. He linen draper and plant after Hirase’s discovery, trees in any North American neuroscientists believe cultivated in these countries imagines that “Kaempfer, enthusiast long associated motile sperm were also seen city. Most are male trees more information is needed following its spread from Thunberg, and Siebold with the American botanist in the reproduction of the because New York City’s before they can conclude China, so it is more likely may all have eaten ginkgo John Bartram. Hamilton Sago Cycad, proving that Department of Parks and whether or not it improves that the oldest trees do not nuts during their time at then gave a male ginkgo to reproduction in both ginkgo Recreation avoids the prob- cognition. exceed seven or eight hun- Deshima, perhaps in tradi- Bartram, which still stands and cycads harks back to lem of the malodorous fruit In Ginkgo’s concluding dred years in age. tional dishes little different in Bartram’s garden by the an earlier evolutionary stage from female trees dropping sections Crane celebrates Englebert Kaempfer, a from those of today.” Schuykill River and is the when plant reproduction on sidewalks by planting the plant’s good fortune, German-born physician- Although Kaempfer was oldest ginkgo in the West- was more reliant on water. only male trees. noting that through its botanist, was the first the first Western scientist to ern Hemisphere. Also around 1896, there Some statistics: accord- association with people, the European to introduce describe ginkgo, he appar- During the nineteenth were reports that occasion- ing to Crane, in Manhat- population of ginkgo trees ginkgo to Western science. ently did not introduce century ginkgo traveled ally ginkgo leaves produced tan ginkgo accounts for growing around the world When he arrived in 1690 at seeds or living plants to across America. Henry Clay seeds and pollen sacs on the 10 percent of the urban has been vastly increased. Deshima Island, the head- Europe. Linnaeus, the great helped to spread it in the margins of otherwise nor- forest and is the third-most- He cautions that “letting quarters of the Dutch East Swedish botanist, may have South. The Missouri Botani- mal-looking leaves. These common of all street trees. species go extinct when we India Company in Nagasaki known about ginkgo, but he cal Garden had ginkgo trees observations, combined In Japan, ginkgo accounts have the power to intervene Harbor, the ginkgo had did not include a description by 1859; Harvard’s Arnold with the discovery of motile for around 11 percent of is like letting the library already been assimilated of this plant in his monu- Arboretum by 1890; the New sperm cells, strongly sug- all street trees and is the burn just as we are learning into Japanese culture for mental Species Plantarum, York Botanical Garden by gested that ginkgo evolved most widely planted tree how to read the books.” two or three centuries and, published in 1753, perhaps 1891; and the University of from fernlike ancestors, but in the country. One of the Crane’s own book is a as Kaempfer observed, was because he did not have a California, Berkeley, and the exact relationship is far reasons that ginkgo is so remarkable achievement. being grown almost every- specimen to study. A British City University of New York from settled. Crane queries, common in urban settings, In its preface he writes, “my where in Japan. His account gardener, James Gordon, by the turn of the twentieth “Is ginkgo more closely Crane explains, is that it can reach may have exceeded of his travels to Persia and did supply Linnaeus with a century. related to cycads than it is withstand root compaction my grasp, but the chal- Southeast Asia, Amoenitatum living plant, but not until Crane explains that bota- to conifers, or vice versa?” better than most trees. lenge of trying to balance Exoticarum (1712), contains 1769. Apparently Gordon nists have long marveled at Then he proposes that DNA Crane also treats the my scientific inclination the first Western illustration was receiving plants from ginkgo’s peculiar process sequences and fossil evi- commercial uses of ginkgo for depth with the need for of a ginkgo, and it was likely China as early as the 1750s, of reproduction. Sakugoro dence support the view that in great detail. Some eight breadth has brought its own drawn by Kaempfer himself. although his suppliers are Hirase, a Japanese scientist, ginkgo seems to be more hundred thousand ginkgo rewards.” Certainly I know Kaempfer was also respon- not documented. Crane created a sensation in 1896 closely related to conifers trees are cultivated in China of no other book on a single sible for the word ginkgo, thinks it likely that Gordon when he discovered what than to any other group of for an average annual crop tree species that can com- which he probably found was the source of the great happens when pollen grains living seed plants. Neverthe- of seven thousand tons of pare with it for readability in a seventeenth-century Old Lion ginkgo at Kew. from a male ginkgo tree hit less, he ends his discussion dried fruit. He explains that and thoroughness. It is a Japanese pictorial diction- Toward the close of the a pollination drop exuded of plant relationships with- besides eating ginkgo nuts milestone in the botanical ary, Kinmo Zui, which listed eighteenth century, many from a stalked ovule of a out a firm conclusion. in traditional dishes, Chi- canon and will remain the a Japanese phonetic spell- botanical gardens through- female tree: the sperm cells Crane refers to the recent nese and other Asian people most authoritative account ing, or kana, along with each out the Continent had released into a cavity in the history of the ginkgo as “a use the nut as an antitussive, of this fascinating species Chinese character. ovule swim a short distance good news story: a tree that expectorant, and antiasth- for many years to come. Kaempfer was succeeded to fertilize the egg, pro- matic, as well as in the treat- – Edward Barnard by two other distinguished pelled by the synchronized ment of bladder infections. botanist-physicians in the In the West, however, the

21 Eat the City: A Tale of the readable and entertaining Amy Trubek, another vations into some grand able parts of our inheritance ties, thriving on the remark- Fishers, Foragers, Butchers, book, Eat the City: A Tale of proponent of a broader cul- thesis about the urban food is food.” Moreover, she able symbiosis (offered by Farmers, Poultry Minders, the Fishers, Foragers, Butch- tural view of terroir, uses the movement. Instead she cel- observes, “We eat what we the Hudson Valley today) Sugar Refiners, Cane ers, Farmers, Poultry Minders, metaphor of a double helix ebrates their particularities miss and what we want to between prime farmland Cutters, Beekeepers, Sugar Refiners, Cane Cutters, to describe the many inter- as dreamers, thrill seekers, become, the foods of our and proximity to a dynamic Winemakers, and Brewers Beekeepers, Winemakers, and twining strands that link spendthrifts, sentimental- childhoods and the symbols and growing market. Who Built New York Brewers Who Built New York, taste and place: “spiraling, ists, health nuts, artisans, of the lives we hope to lead.” Shulman describes the By Robin Shulman invites us to consider the interdependent, and univer- and philosophers. At the deepest level, these decline of once-vibrant New York: broader notion of cultural sal.” Her book, The Taste of Her observations are are the desires that drive the and essential food-related Crown Publishing, 2012 terroir: how the history, Place: A Cultural Journey into often incisive, as in this food-obsessed people whose industries like fishing, ethnicity, culture, and Terroir, asserts that terroir riff on a young Brooklynite lives she chronicles. sugar refining, and beer Homogeniza- psychology is not just a simple matter obsessed with butchering, Eat the City joins a long making, but one is sur- tion is of distinctive of physical causes affecting who teaches a class on the and distinguished literature prised to learn just how the one thing neighborhoods taste but rather is strongly pairing of meat and gin (yes, about the natural resources brief the most recent ebb that all stu- within Amer- influenced by cultural fac- gin): “Once upon a time, of New York and the people tide of urban agriculture has dents of ica’s greatest tors that drive discernment, the fantasy of the rock star who are attracted by them. been. Beekeeping was only place stand metropolis such as economics, poli- meant sex and debauchery – Because the author casts banned between 1999 and against – manifest tics, and aesthetics. Their the reckless freedom a gen- her net so widely, the book’s 2010. The city lost its last homogeniza- themselves significance is illustrated eration wanted to taste. Now, individual chapters do not brewery in the mid-1970s, tion of the in an array of most vividly in France, apparently, rock star status approach the depth of, say, but this drought lasted only natural and food-making which gives legal imprima- includes the domestic fan- Mark Kurlansky’s The Big until 1988 when the Brook- built environ- activities as tur to taste of place through tasy of a married butcher in Oyster: History on the Half lyn Brewery set up shop. ment and the diverse as its appellation d’origine con- a flannel shirt who works in Shell, or the subtlety and And every time New York corresponding the city’s trôlée system. As one of her a store full of kitchen gad- literary quality of Joseph was beset by crisis, New homogeniza- inhabitants. sources puts it, “Terroir . . . gets and likes to talk about Mitchell’s The Bottom of Yorkers returned to home- tion of the Once is the triumph of diversity environmental issues while the Harbor. Nonetheless, scale agriculture. When the experience of human beings primarily the province of over homogeneity.” he cuts meat for dinner.” She Shulman gives us enough bottom dropped out of the in it. If fast food is both a oenophiles, the concept of The proponents of ter- delights in the fact that that about the city’s food his- city’s economy in the 1970s, symptom and partial cause terroir is enjoying a renais- roir can sometimes be a bit an Iraqi immigrant from tory to provide context for urban pioneers reacted by of the homogenization of sance. Rowan Jacobsen, overblown in their claims Basra, Latif JiJi, now settled her profiles of contempo- pushing drug dealers out place, then the concept of whose American Terroir: for seeing place through on East Ninety-second Street rary urban foodies. She of the mushrooming stock terroir – the unique, organo- Savoring the Flavors of Our the lens of culinary culture. and tending an enormous, reminds us that, at various of vacant lots and cultivat- leptic qualities associated Woods, Waters, and Fields Jacobsen, for example, calls fifty-foot-tall grape vine, times, New York City led ing the abandoned earth. It with food and drink from preceded Shulman’s book by it “a whole new way of read- labels his homemade wine the country in the produc- is no accident that the first a specific place – is surely a a couple of years, embraced, ing the American land- Chateau Latif. tion of oysters, coffee, sugar, community garden lease powerful antidote. as Shuman does, an expan- scape.” But Shulman cannot Although Shulman vegetables, milk, yogurt, ice was offered by the city in the We most often associate sive definition, calling it “a be accused of this sort of has fun with her subject, she cream, margarine, beer, and dark days of 1974. terroir with the way in which partnership between person, ambition. Hers is not a book also takes it seriously. kosher wine. We learn that, The history that emerges the physical characteristics plant, and environment to of theory and makes no She understands that food by 1842, roughly ten thou- from Eat the City includes of soil and climate influence bring something unique such grand claims. Instead, is elemental. She argues sand stray pigs wandered trivia that doesn’t necessar- the flavor of foods grown into the world.” It may be she is simply a clear-eyed that “every human being is city streets, prompting “hog ily drive the story forward, there: a distinctive blend of true, as Jacobsen cautions, observer who takes her a museum piece. Along riots” throughout the 1820s but is delightful nonethe- mineralization, soil chemis- that regionalism, tradition, book’s subjects as she finds with DNA, we inherit and 1830s. And as late at the less. We learn that the try, moisture, temperature, and terroir are not the same them and resists the urge the language, knowledge, 1880s, Brooklyn and Queens charter of Trinity Church altitude, slope, and light. thing, but certainly it is to spin their many and and values of the people who were the country’s major includes perpetual rights But Robin Shulman’s highly their synergistic interplay sometimes chaotic moti- raised us, and those who vegetable-producing coun- to any whales that strand that produces the people and raised them. Among the themselves on the beaches products Shulman encoun- most profound and unshak- of lower Manhattan; that ters. the cloyingly sweet Sidecar, 22 Old-fashioned, and Manhat- itself, or that it would want Contributors tan cocktails were created to to, even if it could? Shulman mask the unpleasant taste does not answer these ques- of Prohibition-era bootleg tions directly but instead whiskey; and that the coun- offers valuable psychologi- Edward S. Barnard was senior has also organized many in production and will be Project Finance Group. try’s densest city still boasts cal, cultural, and historical staff editor and managing exhibitions, including available from Incline Press Active in many environmen- 240 varieties of wild bees. In context for thinking about editor of Reader’s Digest “Human Nature: Art and in early 2014. She is cur- tal organizations, Mr. Rich one of her most endearing the answer. Her stories General Books for sev- Landscape in Charleston rently writing the story of is a director of the Land chapters, Shulman details illustrate that growing and enteen years and project and the Low Country” for her twelve years with a flock Trust Alliance, a national how urban beekeepers work making food in the city editor of Our Living World the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. of pet Karakul sheep. land-conservation group, their alchemical magic by is about more than feed- of Nature, a fifteen-volume (1997), and “The Quilts of and a longtime director and literally transforming the ing oneself – it is an outlet ecology series published by Gee’s Bend” for the Museum Laurie Olin is a professor of former board chairman of urban environment into for the creative impulse, a McGraw-Hill and World of Fine Arts, Houston (2002). landscape architecture at the Scenic Hudson, a fifty-year- something we can eat. call to community, and an Book Encyclopedia. Recently He has taught history and University of Pennsylvania old organization dedicated So what are we to take assertion of identity. Specific he co-produced, with Ken theory in landscape-archi- and founding partner of to land conservation and away from this artful weav- acts of agriculture are Chaya, Central Park Entire, tecture programs at the OLIN, a landscape architec- environmental quality in ing of urban food history, deeply connected to broader the most detailed map of Universities of Virginia and tural firm in Philadelphia. the Hudson River Valley. A explications of neighbor- expressions of ethnic and Central Park available. He Pennsylvania and was on He is the author of Across writer on diverse subjects, hood terroir, and profiles of national culture. This is not, is keenly interested in old- the faculty at the Harvard the Open Field: Essays Drawn including garden history, contemporary foodies? In we understand after putting growth trees and has volun- Graduate School of Design from English Landscapes (1999) international finance, her review, Alice Waters says the book down, about the teered as a tree-ring techni- from 1998 to 2013. and coauthor of La Foce: and a permanent site for that Shulman “convinces us carbon footprint of tomatoes cian at the Lamont-Doherty A Garden and Landscape in the Olympic Games, he is that in order to live and eat from Florida or blueberries Earth Observatory’s Tree Lauren Belfer’s first novel, Tuscany (2001) and Vizcaya: the author of the recently in a city, we must under- from Chile; it is not about Ring Research Laboratory. City of Light (1999), is a An American Villa and its published Christian Nation, stand where our food comes insulating rooftops, buffer- His current writing projects portrait of Buffalo during Makers (2006). The designer a dystopian political novel from and how it is made.” ing storm water, fighting include a book on Central its glory days at the turn for the transformation of (2013). I don’t think that is it. Will childhood obesity, or alle- Park’s trees and a field guide of the last century. City of Bryant Park and Columbus everyone – whether urban, viating poverty. These may to Philadelphia’s trees. Light was a New York Times Circle in New York City, the Christa Sadler has a master’s suburban, or rural – eat bet- be the happy consequences Notable Book as well as a grounds of the Washington degree in earth sciences ter if they understand more of an urban food revival, but John Beardsley is director New York Times bestseller. Monument in Washington, and works throughout the about the provenance of their they are not its animating of the Garden and Land- Her second novel, A Fierce D.C., and the new Getty Southwest, Alaska, and Baja food? Of course. But Shul- force. scape Studies program at Radiance (2010), takes place Center in Los Angeles, he California as a geology man’s book is about the city This is a valuable les- Dumbarton Oaks in Wash- in New York City during received the American Soci- educator, writer, and back- in particular. And a particu- son. And for those of us ington, D.C. Trained as an World War II and focuses ety of Landscape Architects packing, river, and sea-kayak lar city at a particular time – who celebrate the power of art historian at Harvard and on how the development of Medal for Lifetime Achieve- guide. She has been a river when urban agriculture and place, Shulman’s book is a the University of Virginia, antibiotics affected indi- ment in 2011. guide in the Grand Canyon locavore eating are raging welcome reminder that food he has written numerous viduals and families. A Fierce since 1988, and although she trends, and most thought- and taste have always been books on contemporary art Radiance was a Washington Frederic C. Rich, chairman of has a passion for every wild ful people don’t quite know important layers in the great and design, including Earth- Post Best Novel of the Year the Foundation for Land- place where she has worked, what to make of them. palimpsest that defines this works and Beyond: Contempo- and an NPR Best Mystery of scape Studies and a dedi- the canyon is her one true Reading Eat the City extraordinary city. Their rary Art in the Landscape the Year. cated gardener, is a partner love. When not away on forces you to ask yourself embrace by today’s popular (4th ed. 2006) and Gardens of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP wilderness expeditions, she whether the 2010s’ flavor culture gives us great hope of Revelation: Environments Carole George is the author in New York. He was co-head is a resident of Flagstaff, of urban agriculture is that diversity will indeed by Visionary Artists (1995). He of The Spirit of the Stones, of the corporate practice and Arizona, where she tends a anything more than a fad. triumph over homogeneity – a philosophical treatise currently heads the Global two-acre landscape of native Isn’t it folly to think the and that New York will never describing her creation of plants and cinder cones, contemporary city can feed become like anything other a pastoral landscape on her home to several boisterous than itself. Virginia farm. The book is piñon jays. – Frederic C. Rich 23 Volume ix, Number i Fall 2013

Publisher: Foundation for Landscape Studies Board of Directors: Antonia Adezio Vincent Buonanno Kenneth I. Helphand Robin Karson Nancy Newcomb Laurie Olin Therese O’Malley John A. Pinto Reuben M. Rainey Frederic C. Rich, Chairman Elizabeth Barlow Rogers Margaret Sullivan

Editor: Elizabeth Barlow Rogers Associate Editor: Alice Truax Assistant Editor: Margaret Sullivan Copy Editor: Margaret Oppenheimer Designer: Skeggs Design

udies Contributors: t Edward S. Barnard John Beardsley Lauren Belfer Carole George ape S Laurie Olin Frederic C. Rich Christa Sadler

For more information about the Foundation for Landscape Landsc

Studies, visit www.foundationfor landscapestudies.org., or

f or contact info@foundationfor landscapestudies.org oundation oundation 7 West 81st Street7 New York, NY 10024 F