A Publication of the

Foundation

for Landscape Studies

A Journal of Place Volume ııı | Number ıı | Spring 2008

Essays: After Industry: Transforming Landscapes 3 Elizabeth Barlow Rogers: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and other Great American Cities Elizabeth K. Meyer: Recycling: Landscape Architecture’s New Frontier Ethan Carr: The Hudson River Waterfront: Experience and Transformation Kenneth I. Helphand: Promenades and Promenading: San Francisco’s Crissy Field and Portland’s Eastbank Esplanade Julie Ann Grimm: The Santa Fe Railyard: Changing Place, Keeping Space

Book Reviews 15 Galen Cranz: Large Parks Edited by Julia Czerniak and George Hargreaves Leslie Rose Close: A Genius for Place: American Landscapes of the Country Place Era By Robin Karson David Schuyler: City Trees: A Historical Geography from the Renaissance through the Nineteenth Century By Henry W. Lawrence Robin Karson: Jacob Weidenmann: Pioneer Landscape Architect By Rudy J. Favretti

Awards 22

Calendar 23

Contributors 23 Letter from the Editor

oday the profes- The question is how best to entertainments designed Helphand and Ethan Carr presumption that the native workforces be dis- sional frontier for take advantage of vacancy to attract tourists are a com- point out in this issue. conversion of brownfield to counted. Further, one should landscape archi- and location. The noticeable mon form of waterfront Other kinds of brown- green field is inherently reckon as a cost the loss of tects has become trend toward making cities recycling. The creation of fields are more problem- beneficial. To be sure, our historical memory caused by urban brownfields, greener by enlarging their new parkland is another. atic. Converting abandoned expanded consciousness eradicating the industrial Tscarred and treeless sites park systems is one answer. Besides the natural attrac- industrial property and about the perils of environ- landscape as material cul- that are the opposite of Maritime commerce is tion of the water itself, decommissioned landfills mental contamination and ture, a testament to national greenfields, developable land nowadays mainly restricted waterfronts offer opportuni- into parkland often entails acceptance, confirmed by and urban histories, a theme that has not been polluted. to a few major seaports with ties to create linear land- decontaminating the site by legislation, of the need to that Elizabeth Meyer touches Whereas scenic potential was docking facilities for con- scapes serving popular forms removing toxic wastes and clean our land, water, and air upon in her essay. formerly a consideration in tainerships, military carriers, of contemporary recreation other dangerousresidues of has been one of the great The problems of simulta- the selection of land for oil tankers, and large vessels such as running and biking. past pollution. This neces- salutary cultural shifts of the neously sustaining both a parks, today the availability carrying raw materials for Being continuous and fre- sity has pointed landscape last fifty years. However, as healthy world economy and of a growing inventory of manufacture elsewhere. The quently adjacent to residen- architects in the direction of sociologist Galen Cranz a healthy natural world pre- obsolete landscapes is a shipping traffic that once tial areas – especially ones environmental science and remarks here, the consider- sent a far greater challenge more prevalent criterion. In plied rivers and canals has where old warehouses, now made their plans more able improvements that have than can be addressed by any many parts of the United been supplanted by overland abandoned like the water- process-oriented and open- been made in this country single profession. The recy- States and Western Europe, trucking. In addition, with front itself, are being con- ended than they were when and in Western Europe cling of postindustrial land- abandoned industrial plants, the general decline of basic verted into apartments – form and function were the should not be seen as any- scapes, however, is a task for factories, warehouses, and manufacturing in developed they also serve as neighbor- paramount considerations. thing but local victories which landscape architects commercial waterfronts countries, many waterfronts hood parks. Moreover, they Ecodesign and sustainability when the pollution that have a unique set of skills. along with decommissioned equipped for loading and are tourist attractions in an are relatively new terms accompanied the building of In this issue of Site/Lines, military bases and former unloading large vessels have age when cities are trying to in the professional parlance, industrial America has we look at some of their airfields have created a sup- become idle. The conversion revitalize their failing old signalling an attempt to merely been shifted to now responses to this challenging ply of land ripe for redevel- of obsolete piers, plants, fac- economies. For this reason, a bring a brownfield site full rapidly industrializing new professional frontier. opment. Site selection in the tories, and warehouses and historic urban landscape circle from its technological- nations such as China. Nor case of such “found land- their related urban water- amenity, the promenade, is ly inscribed, denatured can the effects of the disloca- Good green wishes, scapes” is not so much a front real estate to new non- being revived, as Kenneth appearance to its presumed tions brought about by matter of choice as a given. industrial uses has become original state as meadow, global flows of capital on prevalent as cities seek new forest, or wetland. economic identities. Histori- The word disturbed is cally themed districts with heard a great deal in discus- Elizabeth Barlow Rogers shops, restaurants, and sions of former industrial Editor sites, and there is a general

Important Message envelope and return to us. The Foundation for Landscape We are a donor-supported, Studies is shortening its mailing not-for-profit organization, and list in order to save on the the publication of Site/Lines hard-copy publication costs of depends on tax-deductible con- Site/Lines. If you prefer to tributions from our readers. read Site/Lines online or do If you do want to ensure its bian- On the Cover: not wish to continue to receive nual publication, please con- Overhead Crane for Stripping Ingots, it for any reason, please write sider placing your check in the c. 1930. Photograph by Luke Swank. your name and DO NOT SEND envelope instead. 2 on the inside of the enclosed After Industry: with bridges, fountains, and buildings of neo- classical architectural magnificence. Captains Transforming Landscapes of industry and their heirs became philan- thropists, established foundations, and The Life, Death, and Rebirth of Cleveland, Pittsburgh, bestowed on their own cities and others and other Great American Cities important cultural institutions housing great n America the founding of new cities and their subsequent collections of rare books, manuscripts, and industrialization is part of the epic story of the settlement by old-master art works. Although wealthy fami- Europeans of a historical frontier of continental dimensions. lies began to exchange their grand residences Today’s frontier, fueled by new technologies, is one of global in the heart of the city for ones in leafy sub- commerce and the large-scale industrialization of countries urban enclaves such as Shaker Heights and Isuch as China. The landscape consequences of shifts in how Sewickley, they still sustained, as many do raw materials are manufactured and transported are integral to today, the symphonies, museums, hospitals, the economic histories of all cities, particularly those of the and libraries their forebears founded. American Midwest. Cleveland and Pittsburgh, for example, are The Great Depression, which halted the palimpsests of their successive transformations from competi- country’s economic momentum, was felt with tive commercial hamlet to exuberant industrial metropolis particular severity in cities whose industrial to struggling post-industrial city. bases were undermined, with resulting mass For both these cities, geographical location was the para- unemployment and social unrest. During mount prerequisite for commercial success and the growth of World War II, American industry played a heavy industry. The mouth of the Cuyahoga River and Lake major role in bringing about the Allied Erie for Cleveland and the confluence of the Allegheny and the victory through the rapid production of ships, Monongahela in the case of Pittsburgh gave them important tanks, and other military equipment. transportation advantages. These water routes and the pres- Although industry remained strong in the decades immediate- ceased to operate, and com- Filling Molds with Molten Iron I, ence of nearby sources of coal made it logical for them to ly following the war as the pent-up demand for building mate- muters living in the sprawling 1934. Photograph by Luke Swank. become producers of steel after the discovery in 1866 of iron rials and consumer goods soared, demographic shifts spawned suburbs drove to work. ore in Minnesota’s Mesabi Range. The demand for steel at a serious urban problems. Immigration, which had always Competition from outlying shopping centers caused many critical moment in the nation’s history in order for other cities accounted for the bulk of these cities’ population growth, was fashionable center-city department stores to close, and seedi- to also construct large industrial plants and manufacture accompanied by the accelerating departure of the middle ness replaced elegance as grand boulevards and commercial tracks, railroad cars, automobiles, and various additional steel- class to new developer-built suburbs. The loss of blue-collar cynosures such as Cleveland’s famous Arcade turned from based products ensured their prosperity. workers of European ethnicities was accompanied by the glamorous to tawdry. As industry slowed in the 1970s, many Capitalist entrepreneurs amassed extraordinary wealth in influx of poor blacks from the South, which created a greater mills and factories shut down. Waterfronts no longer teemed the two cities: John D. Rockefeller started his Standard Oil need for social welfare services than could be adequately with dockworkers. Trash-strewn vacant lots multiplied, and Company in Cleveland in the decade following the discovery of covered by diminished tax revenues. parks became dangerous dumping grounds. In Cleveland, oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859; Henry Clay Frick Civic pride waned as center-city and inner-city neighbor- municipal finances were in such disarray that in 1978, even formed the H. C. Frick Coal and Coke Company in Pittsburgh hoods became desolate and crime-ridden. Schools declined, with two-thirds of its budget coming from the federal govern- in 1871; and Andrew Carnegie organized the Carnegie Steel and federal public housing programs and the Highway Act of ment, the city was forced to default on its municipal bond Company, the predecessor of U.S. Steel, in Pittsburgh in the 1956 had unintended negative effects. High-rise projects payments. 1870s. The era of prosperity ushered in by these and other replaced old dwellings in deteriorating neighborhoods, and The service economy that began to replace the old industri- businessmen lasted from roughly 1870 until the Great expressways carrying heavy motor traffic into the hearts of al one in the 1980s did little to help the remaining blue-collar Depression of the 1930s. During this period Cleveland and cities changed the complexion of downtowns. Old trolley lines residents of industrial cities as service jobs only generate less Pittsburgh, along with many other Midwestern cities such as than one ancillary job compared to three for manufacturing Chicago, Toledo, Akron, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, jobs. Gradually, however, urban physical deterioration began to and Detroit, epitomized growing America’s industrial might. be reversed, thanks to overall national prosperity as well as to Municipal governments, spurred by leading citizens, commis- the concerted efforts of citizen associations and civic leaders. sioned landscape architects to design parks, parkways, and As a new consumer economy became a dominant factor in rural cemeteries. They hired architects to embellish their cities

3 American life, abandoned industrial areas began to be convert- institution. In Minneapolis, below the Mississippi River’s only between a manufacturing and a service economy reduces the ed into entertainment districts and shopping malls designed falls, once the power source of sawmills and flourmills, a small number of taxpayers, thereby diminishing city coffers. As debt to lure tourists as well as regional residents. The site of U. S. local history museum acknowledges the bygone industrial service, pension payments, and social welfare expenditures Steel’s Homestead Works on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, where landscape. It occupies one of several recycled buildings beside balloon, the percentages of municipal budgets that cities once Carnegie and Frick’s historic battle with the Amalgamated the new Guthrie Theater designed by Jean Nouvel. Developers spent to build, maintain, and repair parks, not to mention Association of Iron and Steel Workers took place in 1892, is are buying up adjacent real estate and building high-rise con- bridges, water tunnels, roads, streets, sidewalks, and other now The Waterfront, an open-air super-mall. dominiums, and upscale shops and restaurants have begun to forms of infrastructure, have drastically declined. Because Urban memories die hard, and historic preservationists spring up in former warehouses and company offices. Beside budgets for parks are usually the first to be cut in times of fight to save symbolic portions of the past. In Cleveland a the river below the bluff on which these buildings sit joggers retrenchment, the concept of self-financing is growing. This committee campaigns to keep the city’s four remaining and strollers can be seen on a recently created trail. creates an obvious tension between citizens who believe Huletts – 880-ton, electrically powered ore unloaders named The creation of linear waterfront parks is occurring in that parks should be publicly financed and maintained by gov- for their inventor and unique to the Great Lakes – from being other Midwest cities. Cincinnati Riverfront Park, White River ernment through tax revenues (with the assistance in some turned into scrap metal. Meanwhile, their opponents wish State Park in Indianapolis, Pittsburgh’s Alleghany Riverfront cases of not-for-profit organizations like the Central Park to clear the Flats, as the low-lying banks of the Cuyahoga are Park, and Louisville’s Waterfront Park, are among the most Conservancy) and city officials responsible for preparing park called, in order to advance economic development projects. significant. But the reinvestment in historic waterfronts is not design guidelines and issuing permits and leases for lucrative Today the Nautica Entertainment Complex, a half-mile-long limited to the industrial Midwest. New York’s Hudson River concessions to independently sustain them. boardwalk combined with a 5000-seat amphitheater, restau- and Brooklyn Bridge Parks and Commons Park along the Battery Park City in New York provides a successful prece- rants, and sports and special events facilities, occupies the Platte River in Denver are examples of a ubiquitous trend. dent for integrating residential development with the creation western part of the Flats. On the other side of the bridge-laced Where these projects are coupled with commercial redevelop- of a tenant-supported waterfront promenade. Additional river, abandoned steel mills in the eastern part of the Flats ment, an uneasy relationship exists between historic preser- operating funds come from concession fees. However, this await demolition or conversion into new uses. As is true else- vationists and public park advocates on one side and real commendable example is spawning more ambitious and where, city officials anxious to replenish tax revenues tend to estate developers and government officials on the other. questionable strategies of generating revenue. As an example, a side with investors in redevelopment projects. Boston’s Quincy Market, New York’s South Street Seaport, and group of neighboring Greenwich Village residents is contest- Although reliance on tourism as a city’s economic backbone Baltimore’s Harborplace are is precariously dependent on the relationship between foreign conspicuous early examples and domestic currency values and the state of the national of commercial recycling economy, the competitive frenzy to build “starchitect”- done in the name of his- designed museums and performing arts centers – sometimes toric preservation. Individual thought of as the “cathedrals” of the twenty-first century – is urban pioneers, usually symptomatic of efforts to shore up ailing urban economies by artists, have started the creating attractions that will bring in outside visitors. It is incremental rebirth of many also a means of reasserting civic importance and generating old industrial neighbor- service jobs. The construction of sports stadiums such as hoods, but in the case of the Jacobs Field in Cleveland is another form of pump-priming, historic districts mentioned but a questionable one. In spite of the boost they give to a here it is safe to say that they city’s reputation, they create very few jobs for local business would have continued to and lay a deadening hand on the surrounding neighborhood stagnate without developer by depriving it of active street life. financing. Also in Cleveland, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and One may deplore the Museum designed by I. M. Pei on the shore of Lake Erie is the theme-parklike repackaging result of a successful bid to obtain this major tourist-luring of history, but it is impossi- ble to ignore the realities of modern urban economics. The unequal job equation

South Cove, Battery Park City. Battery Park City is supported through maintenance charges to 4 tenants in the adjacent buildings. ing the commercial development of Pier 40, part of Hudson Recycling: Three trends that emerged in the 1970s account for the recy- River Park immediately to the north of Battery Park City. The Landscape Architecture’s New Frontier cling of former industrial sites into public parks. The first group opposes the Related Companies’ proposal to build a s a teenager growing up in Virginia Beach, one consisted of the closing of obsolete early-twentieth-centu- $600 million entertainment complex with a permanent home California, in the early 1970s, I often gazed from the ry factories and the relocation of American manufacturing for the Cirque du Soleil and the Tribeca Film Festival, which is backseat of the family station wagon at the large to other countries with less stringent environmental laws and expected to draw 2.7 million visitors a year. The partnership, landfill beside the new expressway. As seagulls lower labor costs. The second trend was the shift from rail modeled on the Central Park Conservancy and the Randall’s swooped towards the garbage mounds not yet to truck transportation, which decentralized shipping. Since Island Sports Foundation, represents the current users of the Acapped with clay, bulldozers moved across this curious terrain, new plants could now be located practically anywhere, abetting pier’s playing fields. The group seeks to raise $30 million to regrading its contours to form the hill and lake of a new park. the galloping pace of suburban sprawl, large industrial sites repair the rotting piers and preserve the fields as a public How out of place the large hill appeared in that flat coastal within cities were abandoned. The third development was the amenity for which it would pay rent. The Hudson River Park landscape! Years later, as a landscape architect, I asked myself inclusion of landscapes as well as architecture within the Trust, the entity appointed by the mayor and the governor to whether it was deceitful to conceal a trash heap under a recre- purview of historic preservationists. Preservationists further build and manage the park, is obliged by legislation to fund its ational park or resourceful to recycle the garbage dump into broadened their scope to encompass vernacular buildings, annual budget with on-site concession revenues. The Trust’s something new. including industrial buildings. request for proposals in 2003 was clearly in line with this Recycling both garbage and landscapes was a novel concept The convergence of these three trends resulted in numer- objective. The compromise solution it is now considering is a in 1973 when Mount Trashmore Park opened to grand pro- ous opportunities to recycle not only brownfields – abandoned reduction of the size of the entertainment complex and the nouncements that it was the first park in the world to be built urban sites awaiting development – but also old docks and substitution of nine additional public basketball courts, more on a landfill. Then I did not know enough about the history of piers, former airfields, and defunct rail yards. Creating new community space, and a museum instead of the originally landscape architecture to be skeptical of such a bold assertion. parks on brownfields became a frequent and popular sugges- planned 1,800-seat music hall. A farmers market, a 1.5-acre A few years later I visited Parc des Buttes Chaumont, which tion. Nevertheless, people were ambivalent; brownfields open space on the south side of the pier, and new rooftop Baron Haussmann had constructed on the site of a former were simultaneously feared because of their contamination playing fields are further community-oriented amendments to gypsum quarry and refuse dump as part of his massive trans- and loved because of their embodied memories. At the the original plan. In spite of the opposition of some elected formation of the city of Paris in the 1860s . I also saw how same time, they were often the only large parcels located close officials and the Pier 40 Partnership, the $5 million in rent that more than a century later Paris had furthered its reputation to inner-city neighborhoods and to the warehouse districts Related Companies would pay will obviously influence the for innovative urban planning by holding design competitions and downtown commercial areas undergoing conversion to decision. for the sites of the former Citroën automobile factory on the residential use. Permanent economic stagnation is one means of historic city’s southern edge and the relocated slaughterhouse district preservation, and the villages and towns left behind by time on its eastern perimeter. These competitions resulted in Earthworks artist and industrial landscape aficionado Robert can profit from the faded allure of their former selves. Large radically recycled landscapes with major parks as their center- Smithson died the year Mount Trashmore opened. Many land- cities with highly visible obsolete infrastructures cannot. Their pieces. scape architects have subsequently discovered the postindus- populations may shrink, but those who remain must find new A seminal experience for me as a student was hearing land- trial landscape as a locus for practice through Smithson’s livelihoods. Therefore it is incumbent on these cities to attract scape architect Rich Haag lecture. From him I learned about copious writings on the subject, his “non-site” installations, profitable urban land uses and successfully compete within a more ambitious, and now much revered, recycled landscape, and the earthworks he constructed or envisioned. Books such the global economy. There will be winners and losers in this Gas Works Park, which opened in 1975 on an abandoned as John Beardsley’s Earthworks and Lucy Lippard’s Overlay process. The only thing that is sure is that cities continually power plant site beside Lake Union in Seattle. Design journals exposed an even broader audience to his and other artists’ change and that their futures depend to a large degree on just around the world noted Haag’s originality in celebrating works. As the number of former industrial sites in and close to how their landscapes are reshaped. The burgeoning “green rather than disguising the industrial history of the site by cities increased, the contingent of artists and landscape archi- cities” ethos, which fosters ecological regeneration while also retaining the gas generator towers, colorfully painting the tects interested in industrial landscapes grew. Smithson’s serving recreational needs, is resulting in an array of projects exhaust-compressor, and reusing the boiler house as a picnic works provide a critical hinge between site-specific art using such as rails-to-trails, rooftop landscaping, and the imagina- pavilion. Haag also reshaped the capped waste into a sixty- industrial detritus and the innovations of late-twentieth-cen- tive conversion into parks of several kinds of urban infra- foot-high sculptural earthwork. tury landscape architectural theory and practice. structure, including former garbage dumps and land within highway rights-of-way. Regardless of the question of who Over thirty years have passed since Smithson speculated pays and how, this is surely a move in the right direction. about the artistic possibilities of remaking industrial sites and – Elizabeth Barlow Rogers since Haag transformed a refuse mound and remnants of a

5 gas works plant into a park that has become a touchstone for in southern California is being transformed into Orange Collective Amnesia | Tabula Rasa postindustrial landscape design. Since then, my generation County Great Park. Designed by a team of landscape archi- Perhaps the most common form of recycling a postindustrial of landscape architects has come of age. Many of us find dis- tects, engineers, and ecologists led by landscape architect Ken site is to clear it, erase its former patterns of development and turbed sites a more intriguing design challenge than other Smith, the plan capitalizes on a sixty-foot-deep, two-and-a- use, and start over. This approach views underutilized postin- kinds of commissions; indeed, we are eager to regenerate what half-mile-long canyon enlivened with pools of water and fast- dustrial sites as real estate valued for their locations but for lit- we experienced as students only through books and periodi- flowing streams. It also calls for a 70-acre botanical garden, a tle else. As the memory of former appearance and function cals or in our imaginations as we gazed at the Northeast 165-acre sports park, a 122-acre terrace for cultural attractions fades, collective amnesia regarding what now appears as a tab- Corridor’s industrial wastelands through Amtrak windows. and events, an air museum, a golf course, and a three-mile- ula rasa sets in. The tabula-rasa mentality is in a sense a con- From abandoned railroad right-of-ways to obsolete facto- long protected corridor for wildlife migration. tinuation of modernist architects’ and landscape designers’ ries, from cramped urban waterfronts to sprawling decommis- Third, during the past decade landscape architects have treatment of all sites as amorphous, empty parcels waiting to sioned military bases, these odd and frequently contaminated learned from several kinds of publications on the postindus- be given form. Bernard Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette in Paris is landscapes are filled with indecipherable building fragments, trial landscape. From monographs on a single artist to a more recent example this kind of site reading and response. unexpected juxtapositions of scale, emergent vegetation, and conference anthologies to personal manifestos to exhibition The competition brief depicted the site as cleared; its former memories of human toil and invention. They can be read as catalogs, this varied literature shows how postindustrial slaughterhouse history was all but forgotten. The designer did texts in which the histories of technology, society, and ecology sites are understood by nondesigners, as well as how they have not challenge this, and his scheme did not acknowledge any are intertwined. They challenge us because they make us been altered by designers. of the prior uses of the site. reconsider existing tropes for conceptualizing nature and con- structing landscapes. In light of today’s heightened environmental concerns, we Cultural Memories | Physical Traces must ask ourselves what role the landscape architect should Postindustrial sites may be valued for varied reasons: their Contemporary landscape architects have been involved in the play in remediating and regenerating biophysical systems as physical appearance, their associations with the history of regeneration of several kinds of industrial landscapes and well as in harvesting and recycling the energy embodied in industry and labor, or their connections to local communities have developed various means of perceiving them. First, they formerly contaminated materials. Should we go beyond trans- whose families worked and lived in and around them. Many have studied or participated in design competitions. Among forming brownfields into new parks to work with environ- have remarkable structures and infrastructure: canals, sluices, the most prominent were those held for Parc de la Villette and mental scientists and engineers who deal with dangerous filtration ponds, treatment tanks, coke ovens, furnaces, and Parc André Citroën in Paris in the 1980s, and those conducted materials and processes that continue to exist within recycled gasometers. Often landfill mounds or quarry excavations can more recently for Downsview Park in Toronto, and the High landscapes? The answer to this question has profound aesthet- be capitalized on as ready-made earthworks. Line, Governor’s Island, and Fresh Kills Park in New York City. ic, ethical, and contractual implications. It is important there- Some projects seek to recycle as much of the extant struc- Second, students and professional practitioners have visited fore to examine the decisions made during the design process, ture as possible while still transforming the site for a new use. or read about other new parks on waterfront sites in landscape understand the importance of collaborating with experts such A surreal beauty results as unexpected juxtapositions of age, magazines and journals (see Kenneth Helphand’s and Ethan as soil scientists and ecologists, and appreciate the necessity of scale, and function are created and site memories are pre- Carr’s articles in this issue). Two notable examples in rapidly educating others about the nature of site evolution. In an served by inscribing the ghosts of former forms in a new developing China are Margie Ruddick’s 1998 Living Water Park effort to provide a working outline of this kind of landscape design. The parks that result are, in the French sociologist and in Chengdu, Sichuan, and Kongjian Yu and Turen Design design, I offer here four ways of pairing a site reading with a philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s term, full spaces, not open sites. Institute’s 2001 Zhongshan Shipyard Park. There has been site response. These are identified by labels intended as a They evoke memories of the past and function as an inventive considerable interest in Barcelona’s recycled landscapes: Parc shorthand means of categorizing diverse approaches to the and playful postmodern recovery of history. de la Creueta del Coll and Fossar de Moragues, both within problems posed by different kinds of sites. abandoned quarry sites; the Botanic Garden on Montjuïc’s Encapsulated Danger | Enigmatic Figures landfill; and Parc de la Trinitat within the terrain vague of a Many postindustrial sites are polluted due to a toxic spill, the highway exit ramp, transit station, and high tension utility undocumented burial of chemicals, long-term accumulation right of way. In this country, a decommissioned marine base of residual contaminants in the soil, or undetected under- ground flows called plumes. The environmental history of these places demands something other than the preservation of memory through landscape design. The health of the local community depends on limiting the impact of future contam- inant release, but sometimes it is impossible to remove conta-

6 minants from a site. Contain- Capping Fresh Kills Landfill, Staten these projects is as much in ing and controlling toxic Island. the ways they have posed material on site through the problem and redefined encapsulation is one option, but landscape architects are the relationships between currently exploring safer and more imaginative alternatives to ecology and technology as in “capping and covering.” In some cases, however, they are the ways they have proposed forced to adhere to design guidelines that mandate retention to contain, regenerate and of already contained and presumably decontaminated land- recirculate post-industrial forms, and this demands creativity as well. sites and systems. For instance, in their winning design in the competition to I am intrigued by this convert New York City’s Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island direction the landscape into a park, James Corner and his associates in the firm Field design profession has taken Operations were constrained by the prohibition against pene- because I believe these pro- trating the landfill’s clay cap. This meant that they could not jects, some built and some propose reconfiguring the enormous mounds into dramatical- still proposals, will resonate ly sculpted earthworks. Instead, they proposed a strategy based with a public concerned on ecological processes, subtly reshaping the mounds’ surface about the effects toxic wastes to guide the flow of surface water in ways that promote soil are having on their personal accretion and plant succession. Legible neither as landfill nor health, as well as on the as contemporary earthworks, for future visitors the mounds, environment. I should incongruously higher than any other point along the north- quickly add that habits of eastern coast of United States, will be enigmatic figures in the consumption have yet to landscape. alter in ways that are com- mensurate with this chang- Ecological + Technological Flows | Regenerate + ing attitude toward the Recycle + Recirculate In their impressive recent book, Living Systems: Innovative relationship between human beings and nature. Yet, looking The last category in this working analysis of postindustrial Materials and Technologies for Landscape Architecture, Liat back at how far we have come, I am hopeful about the future. landscape design commits to ecological and economical Margulis and Alexander Robinson address the many reasons Recycling our litter was a novel concept to my brothers and on-site regeneration of systems. This approach focuses upon why on-site regenerative techniques are gaining favor over sister and me in the 1960s. Converting a garbage dump into industrial landscapes as biophysical environments. As an clearing, capping and hauling. Some are market-driven, inas- Mount Trashmore Park seemed bizarre. We could not have example, at Reclamation Park in Vintondale, Pennsylvania, much as environmental regulation has increased the cost and imagined the creative possibilities of regenerating and recy- Julie Bargman of DIRT Studio, in collaboration with historian liability of removing materials from a site. But others are cling landscapes nor the educational value of allowing T. Allan Comp, scientist Robert Deason, and artist Stacy Levy, based on environmental ethics. In either case, when it is no processes of environmental cleansing and regeneration to be aerated and filtered surface water contaminated with acid longer possible to dispose of garbage and toxins elsewhere, witnessed by, worked on, and confronted by local citizens. mine drainage by pumping it through a series of limestone- they either continue to degrade on-site with possible harmful Forty years later, these projects are not yet mainstream, but lined treatment ponds. Cattails and other plants along the results or enter into a system of recycling and recirculating they are receiving considerable critical attention. They are the wetland margins reduce the water’s acidity and extract heavy waste ecologies, to use a phrase of Toronto landscape architect reason why many current students of landscape architecture metals. As the water moves from one basin to another it Pierre Belanger. are drawn to the profession – and perhaps why US News and changes in chemical composition and also in color, from World Report lists landscape architecture as one of 2008’s Best orange to yellow to green and blue. Slowly, provisionally, and tentatively, disturbed sites will be Careers. – Elizabeth K. Meyer redeveloped. Landscape architects working out the challenges presented by the extreme situations of postindustrial land- scapes have invented new theories, techniques, and tactics that are applicable to other project types and sites. The value of

7 The Hudson River Waterfront: for ruins,” evidence of dramatic discontinuity with the past, as social and personal liberations taking place around us. Yet we Recollections and Observations a precondition and incentive for reanimating old places with experienced the heady atmosphere of rebellion in the air, with ven as the region’s economy has moved into its new uses and meanings. The vacated Hudson River waterfront the waterfront literally and metaphorically expressing the col- postindustrial stage, New York Harbor remains one was in this light a ruin ripe for transformation. lapse of old institutions and attitudes. Environmentalists of of the busiest ports in the world. Tankers, container Despite its awesome scale and close proximity, the river the era experienced the same spirit of destruction and renew- ships, and barges still ply the waters near Manhattan itself had been off-limits and therefore no more than a distant al, and they had their own reasons for being drawn to the Island. But today the ships are likely to be headed view for West Villagers. Both Riverside Park and the Battery, river. One of the richest and most scenic estuaries in the Efor modernized port facilities in New Jersey or elsewhere. the nearest points with waterfront access, were too distant to world, the Hudson had become a byword for industrial abuse Manhattan’s working waterfronts, once teeming with long- visit often. But by the late 1960s, the decrepit West 10th Street and unchecked pollution. The movement to prevent further shoremen and crowded with goods from around the world, Pier and other abandoned piers along the Lower Hudson desecration of the river led to legal precedents that helped fell silent decades ago. had become favorite haunts for neighborhood residents. My launch the modern environmental movement in the mid- The transition from busy docks to abandoned piers had a schoolmates and I would make our way through collapsing 1960s. When Pete Seeger and the sloop Clearwater sailed by the dramatic effect on adjacent neighborhoods, including the fences and out onto the rotting, hazardous deck still suspend- West 10th Street Pier, we all got a free concert along with the West Village where I lived as a child and went to school. My ed over the river. These after-school trespasses became regular sense that things were really changing. April 22, 1970, the first childhood in fact coincided with the containerized shipping events in good weather. Here we discovered that Manhattan Earth Day, saw the closing of 14th Street to traffic and its tem- revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, which finished off older was indeed an island and that the estuary of the Hudson as it porary conversion into the setting for a crosstown environ- port facilities such as those on Manhattan’s West Side, where opened into New York Harbor was a sublime landscape of sun- mentalist demonstration. It was hard not to feel the exuberant the acreage for stacking and moving shipping containers shine, breezes, and watery expanse, all set in a rough fore- idealism and hopefulness of the era, and the transforming was unavailable. While such analysis escaped me at the time, ground of industrial decrepitude. Hudson River waterfront was both the location and the mani- I did experience the effects, which were pervasive and At that time the West 10th Street pier was becoming a scene festation of the new consciousness taking place. Through it palpable and had everything to do with the conditions that of gay culture and a gathering point for political protests of all, the power of the river’s natural beauty had a special appeal created a certain sense of place. For those old enough many kinds. Although the nude sunbathers made an impres- in the context of industrial decay. The Hudson’s shoreline to remember, the vacant buildings and quiet streets of the sion, as children we had little appreciation of the profound was sloughing off its port infrastructure as a merely temporary abandoned waterfront pro- indignity as the great river continued its ancient business of vided a strong contrast to the tides and currents. The rest of us, and society as a whole, could noise, dirt, and truck traffic hope for our own rebirth. of the past. But, for postwar Little changed along the waterfront for years, although children and for the new the infamous collapse of a section of the old elevated highway waves of adult residents along the shoreline in 1973 indicated that decay could be moving into the old neigh- allowed to go only so far. After it was closed to traffic, the road- borhoods, the waterfront was bed began to support windblown soil, volunteer plants, and rarely perceived with a sense inevitably another kind of surreptitious waterfront experience, of change or loss. Disuse, at least for those of us who found our way past the traffic bar- in fact, made it available to riers and up its steep ramps. Although hailed as a historic us, and decline fostered its piece of urban design when it first opened in 1929, its granite- own sensibility. The Hudson block pavement and rigid, railroad-style engineering lacked River shoreline became a the elegance of the Henry Hudson Parkway that Robert Moses new kind of experience, one built a few years later north of 79th Street. But even as its imprinted with the special demolition was proceeding apace, it made a magnificent and appeal of ruins. The geographer J. B. Jackson was writing at about this time on the “necessity

8 Hudson River Park Bikeway. evocative promenade. I doubt that the recent Hudson River Park. familiar New York City park interest in preserving the abandoned High design details and materials: Line, the elevated rail spur paralleling the the benches designed for New York’s 1939 World’s Fair and southernmost stretch of the West Side High- used widely in city parks thereafter, hexagonal paving blocks, way, would have occurred if not for this and iron railings similar to those of the Carl Schutz and memorable, ephemeral experience of prome- Brooklyn Heights promenades. Other landscape architects nading in a ruined roadbed. were hired to design parts of the Battery Park City waterfront, Years later, when I began working as the and public artworks were commissioned to enrich the park historian for the New York City designs. One notable example was the 1988 collaboration of Department of Parks & Recreation, I became landscape architect Susan Child and artist Mary Miss with less parochial and learned to appreciate other Eckstut on the design of South Cove. A poetic evocation of the waterfront neighborhoods with comparable naturalizing, postindustrial Hudson River shoreline, South pasts, such as Brooklyn Heights and Long Cove created a different sort of waterfront space that neverthe- Island City. But I still lived in Manhattan, less seemed familiar and contextually appropriate. now further uptown, and I began to frequent The complex of corporate and residential buildings making the abandoned rail yards along the Hudson up Battery Park City did not achieve all the goals set forth in between 59th and 72nd Streets. For those who the Cooper/ Eckstut master plan. After the West Side Highway slipped through the broken fences – a miscel- was torn down, traffic had continued at street level along lany of dog walkers, urban explorers, and the old route of the highway. By preventing the connection of homeless persons – the rail yards were a kind its streets with those of the surrounding neighborhood, this of southern annex to Riverside Park. This improvisational traffic artery effectively cut off Battery Park landscape embodied the same appeal as the City from the rest of the city. Its proposed replacement with a abandoned waterfront I had frequented as a different kind of highway had been a contentious cause boy, but on a larger and more self-contained site. A collapsing was assured of success. Because of its scale and location next célèbre in the annals of New York City planning history. world of rotting piers, twisted gantries, and half-burned ware- to historic Battery Park, it was named Battery Park City. Back in 1974 planners had conceived of Westway, a bold plan houses loomed just out of sight of the more organized chaos The original master plan set forth by the Battery Park City of commercial, residential, and park development that called of the city. The old landfill that composed its shoreline began Authority, a subsidiary of New York State’s newly formed for landfilling north of Battery Park City out to the legal bulk- to reappear as bits of gravelly beach here and there, with vol- Urban Development Corporation, called for “pods” of high- head line. It envisioned putting the replacement highway unteer ailanthus, sumac, locust, and grasses finding their way rise residential and commercial development within a mod- in a submerged five-mile-long tunnel just offshore. The name into every crevice where soil accumulated. Impervious to man- ernist footprint of superblocks. Wisely, this mundane plan was Westway quickly became an anathema for West Village made order, this naturally evolving landscape made entropy scrapped, and in 1979 architects Alexander Cooper and Stanton residents. “Westway Will Never Be Built” was a mantra of my and decay into something romantic, inevitable, and beautiful. Eckstut produced a new master plan connecting the streets youth. Community advocates perceived the expensive and But New York has never really succumbed to picturesque and within Battery Park City to the existing street grid. Flanked by elaborate scheme as nothing less than the complete destruc- poetical ruin, and in the minds of city planners and develop- the World Financial Center and over twenty residential build- tion of their historic neighborhoods by the population and ers the abandonment of the Hudson River waterfront by ings, 28 acres – nearly one-third of the site – was slated for traffic the new development would bring. Environmentalists industrial uses created a void to be filled. parkland along the water’s edge. opposed the new highway because they did not want further I have always been grateful for the fiscal and general may- Opened in 1983, the park designed by landscape architects accommodation of automobiles in the city. They wished hem of the 1970s that seemed to stymie large-scale urban Hanna/Olin is an esplanade running the length of the site. instead that the federal money appropriated for the highway renewal. However, such paralysis was not the case downtown Bordered by trees and well-tended planting beds, it features be fungible so that the city could spend it on the deteriorating where big plans were afoot. These were given a strong chance subway system. Westway opponents strengthened their argu- of success because material from the 1966 excavation for the ment by focusing on the potential ecological damage that the footings of the World Trade Center had been used as landfill massive extension of landfill would have on the Hudson River to create 92 new acres next to the financial district. With estuary. Although New York had been extending its shoreline strong backing from Governor Nelson Rockefeller, this project

9 since the seventeenth century, in 1985 the predicted environ- In 1998 the Hudson River Park was officially created mental impact of continuing this process helped bring about through a partnership between the city and state. Neither gov- the judicial ruling that put an end to Westway. ernment was charged with the management of the park. The As Phillip Lopate observes in Waterfront: A Walk Around Hudson River Park Trust was therefore created and empow- Manhattan, for a project that was never implemented, Westway ered to design, construct, and operate the park’s recreational has cast a long shadow. Judicial decisions could proscribe piers, bikeway, seating areas, gardens, and concessions. Aside landfill operations, but they could not specify what to do from the bikeway, the bulk of the park was to be located on the instead. For the next decade, city and state governments, the remaining former piers, including my childhood haunt, the West Side Task Force, community groups, and myriad inter- West 10th Street Pier. A lot of imagination, community organi- ested parties negotiated over what guiding vision should zation, and creativity was employed as landscape architects replace Westway as a general strategy for the redevelopment of and engineers prepared final designs. Construction on the the waterfront. By the early 1990s the various parties had park is ongoing, but significant portions are now complete, finally outlined the contours of the future landscape. No major including the boulevard, the bikeway, and the section of the landfilling and no new highway construction would be part park adjacent to the West Village. of the plans. Instead, a four-lane surface boulevard would carry Although influenced by my own memories and sense of traffic along the same right-of-way as that occupied by the place and identity, I have tried as a landscape historian to demolished elevated highway. The remaining area, a thin strip objectively consider how the Hudson River Park now emerg- of land and thirteen piers ing compares to what might have been had Westway been that retained enough structural integrity to be rehabilitated, built. I find that I am glad the history and ecology of the A narrow stretch of lawn in designed by Frederick Law would become Hudson River Park, a 550-acre strip of which waterfront have not been eradicated. The twentieth-century Hudson River Park. Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in 400 acres were open water between the remaining piers. A five- shoreline and the interpier marine habitat zones remain the 1870s, was extended by mile continuous bikeway was also to be squeezed in along the intact. Much of the old industrial infrastructure of the water- Robert Moses in the 1930s through the addition of a broad length of the site between 59th Street and Battery Park City. front had disappeared before the creation of the park, but the swath of landfill extending from the shore to the bulkhead The potential environmental damage of the new highway- remaining now-stabilized fragments hint at the city’s industri- line. Instead of calling for private development alongside the width boulevard designed for heavy traffic was minimized al past. Even if they are too preciously framed by railings, park as the Westway planners did, Moses converted the entire by the park scheme, and budget impacts were designed to be lawns, and planting beds, they still preserve some aspects of landfill area into new parkland whose landscape is well inte- minimal as well. The state and city governments would not their appeal as ruins. If Westway had gone forward and the grated with the contiguous Olmsted and Vaux park. He also assume new fiscal burdens for the park’s maintenance. While highway had been encased in an offshore park- and prome- built the Henry Hudson Parkway. While it prevents pedestrian the boulevard would be maintained through tax dollars, the nade-covered tunnel, the park, rather than the dauntingly wide access to the river in some places, it does not separate the park park was expected to cover its own operational costs through boulevard-style highway, would have bordered adjacent neigh- from its surrounding neighborhood, and several passages leases with park concessionaires and private investors. The borhoods. This may seem like a good thing, but the scale beneath it carry park visitors to the water’s edge. As a driving redevelopment of Chelsea Piers, the passenger line piers built and amount of residential and commercial development the experience it can be delightful; from the north it is one of the between 23rd and 17th Streets in the early twentieth century, Westway planners envisioned would have overwhelmed the most dramatic automotive entrances to any American city. soon showed the way. In 1995 the piers were converted into a West Village and Chelsea. Westway was predicated on the eco- Overall, I am glad New York City ended up with Hudson twenty-eight-acre sports and entertainment complex. A finan- nomic potential of the real estate development its landfill River Park rather than Westway and that it was intended cial as well as a popular success, Chelsea Piers provided an would have created. In comparison, the concept of a conces- to preserve the utilitarian character of the cultural landscape economic model for the kind of revenue generation that sion-supported Hudson River Park is a more desirable alterna- as well as the river’s natural ecosystems. I like to ride along would help the park pay for itself. Nonetheless, some com- tive from my point of view. the bikeway, which provides experiences not usually available plained that even though they were recreational in nature, the It is unfortunate that the Westway planners did not look to parkgoers. These include municipal garages, ferry landings, fee-supported athletic facilities prevented public access to the north of 79th Street for inspiration. Riverside Park, originally and the city’s remaining passenger terminal for large ships. water, just as the industrial port had done when the piers were I often wonder what tourists must think when, drawn by the piled with cargo. Intrepid Museum or the Circle Line, they continue south for a walk in Hudson River Park and encounter the sanitation department piers with garbage trucks and scows plying in either direction or the municipal pier used for storing towed and impounded cars – all sights of the working city.

10 Now, when I revisit the West Village waterfront of my youth, Promenades and Promenading: Historically, boulevard promenading involved a leisurely I find few traces of the place I remember. The renovated West San Francisco’s Crissy Field and Portland’s and oftentimes ritualistic walk, a back and forth perambu- 10th Street Pier, where under hazardous circumstances I first Eastbank Esplanade lation. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century promenades were experienced the exhilarating spectacle of the river, has been he deindustrialization of old railroad, port, and genteel spaces for social display. In spite of their aristocratic open to the public since 2003. Despite the preservation of industrial facilities along urban waterfronts has ambiance, they were frequented by the demimonde as well as nearby pilings and other bits of the former industrial shore- sparked the revival of the promenade as a civic and the upper classes. In the late eighteenth century, the word line, it would be impossible for it to possess either the poetics recreational amenity. A generation ago most indus- promenade acquired the specific meaning of a “walkway by the of its ruined state or the rough atmosphere of its maritime trial waterfronts were inaccessible, with people sea.” This type of promenade was also called an esplanade, past. It is a well- designed, thoughtfully built place to stroll, Texcluded by custom, law, barriers, or dangerous conditions. a term that continues to be applied to seaside boardwalks and play games, and sunbathe – not a bad thing. Now that many of them are defunct the opporunity exists recreational riverside embankments. Judging the landscape design of the new Hudson River to return them to public use. Because these sites are often cut Although contemporary promenading in the U.S. takes Park is difficult. The role of design was conceived early in the off from their surrounding neighborhoods, forging a recon- place at a few successful outdoor pedestrian malls such as planning process as a matter of stabilizing existing conditions, nection to the city and providing public access is a challenging Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade and Boulder’s Pearl and the planning strategy for Hudson River Park was based problem in urban landscape design. Street Mall, most promenaders gravitate to enclosed shopping on preservationist intentions. But the meanings, evocations, The physical reclamation of abandoned industrial sites and malls. Their atriums act as indoor Main Streets for strollers. and sensibilities of the place that were once there could not be waste areas as waterfront promenades has catalyzed the revival An atavism, this kind of promenade is a place to see and sustained by simply maintaining a few relics of the old com- of a dormant social and cultural practice. The word “prome- be seen, and it has developed it own social code and rituals. mercial waterfront amidst an array of tasteful amenities. Each nade,” which is both a noun and a verb, denotes the space for Two recent award-winning waterfront promenades are section appears reasonably well executed by its own team and activity of urban strolling. In the eighteenth century, Crissy Field in San Francisco, a project of George Hargreaves of consultants. But in the context of the entire park, these dis- promenading became a pleasurable use of the tops of city walls Associates (designers George Hargreaves and Mary Margaret crete landscapes, though pleasing, fail to add up to more than whose defensive functions had become obsolete. As these Jones, project manager Kirt Reider), and the Vera Katz East- the sum of their parts. walls were subsequently demolished, the land where they had bank Esplanade in Portland, Oregon, designed by the Portland A ruined state, as Jackson observed, is necessary for the stood was converted into boulevards, where the tradition firm of Mayer/Reed. The Eastbank Esplanade is a component rebirth of a landscape. But so is a strong, unified vision for of promenading continues. Today, as industrial waterfronts of the Willamette River Eastbank Riverfront Master Plan, pre- what the new meanings and appearance of the reborn land- become as void of purpose as the militarily obsolete walls viously developed by Hargreaves Associates. Crissy Field is scape should be. A stronger creative vision for the Hudson of the past, they offer a similarly grand opportunity for the subsumed within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, River Park would have required more willingness to go beyond construction of promenades. a collection of sites on the northern tip of the San Francisco the notion of historic preservation. The planning vision was peninsula and the southern tip of Marin driven by mandates regarding what not to do: not to create County. new acres with landfill; not to build a new highway; not to Crissy Field is a decommissioned military remove piers and other historic structures; not to take on new airfield that was once part of the Presidio fiscal burdens for maintenance. But good historic preservation Army Base, now a national park. Thanks to its has never been accomplished by decisions about what not to proximity to the Golden Gate Bridge, it pro- do but rather by the creative transformation of places. Preser- vided an unusually fine opportunity for con- vation demands a central role for design based on an overall, version into a park and restored wetland in unified vision. I cannot escape the feeling that the park that is the 1990s. In contrast, the site of the Eastbank emerging today amounts to landscape design as placeholder – Esplanade was originally deemed impossible. an interim, transitional treatment of a place that is waiting to It is located beneath an elevated portion of become something else. Compared to Riverside Park to the Interstate 5, the West Coast freeway running north and Battery Park City to the south, Hudson River Park is through Portland along the bank of the a splendid site still lacking a truly grand vision. – Ethan Carr

Eastbank Esplanade, Portland. 11 Willamette. At first there appeared to be no room to build a there isn’t a time when it is not in use,” she observes. “That meteorological drama of advancing and receding fog and the recreational corridor here. But the landscape architects continuous activity keeps it healthy.” The project has spawned winds off the bay are famously characteristic of the city. The ingeniously created a park under the freeway, constructing adjacent economic activity, and a walk after dinner from near- Crissy Field site is perhaps the ideal area to experience these a linear promenade that incorporates the remnant of an old by restaurants has added what Mayer-Reed calls a new “pulse” ever-changing phenomena. Hargreaves Associates Senior seawall and periodically cantilevers over the river, thereby to the site. Principal Mary Margaret Jones notes that wind direction is an providing n outstanding example of learning to live with the At Crissy Field, the mile-long promenade that runs through important factor and, depending on which way one is walking, transportation infrastructure choices of the past. While the the park has the beach and bay on one side and, on the other, a the experience can be “completely different.” She goes on promenade and the floating dock they placed in the river are restored tidal wetland and the former airfield, which has been to describe the park as a “fabulous mixing bowl of everybody.” elegant pieces of contemporary engineering, the designers also converted to a plain of grass. The promenade itself is soft-tex- She and Hargreaves see the promenade as modern in its sought to ensure that much of the bank would be devoted to tured, decomposed granite, a surface that mediates between design of lines and planes, with the promenade as the “regu- habitat protection. the grassy field and the sandy beach. The parking lot, which lating line.” The designs of both the Crissy Field promenade and the doubles as an important social space, allows automobile access Although both Crissy Field’s bayside walkway and the Eastbank Esplanade capitalize on their spectacular views. At to the bay’s edge. The promenade was the first stage in the Eastbank Esplanade stretch a mile or more, most people visit Crissy Field a line of trees directs the eye towards the water, as construction of the park and was opened with much celebra- only a particular area. They come alone or in small groups: do steeply sloped, turfed mounds. The view is of the unfolding tion. In fact, it was so successful that Hargreaves Associates saunterers, joggers, rollerbladers, skateboarders, bicyclists, dog panorama of San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz, Angel Island, and, immediately redesigned it and expanded its width. walkers, and parents pushing baby strollers. People meander, most dramatically, the orange span of the Golden Gate Bridge. Both Crissy Field and the Eastbank Esplanade are subject to stand, sit, and watch the flow of this communal procession. In Portland, the view reaches across the river to the fine Tom the vicissitudes of weather – the climate of each city is an They become flâneurs, joining in the urban parade but also McCall Waterfront Park, created in 1974 after the demolition aspect of its distinct identity – but neither promenade offers acting as observers of the scene. of the riverbank highway, an initial step in the city’s long-term much shelter from the elements. In Portland the pervasiveness Although their clothes are different and their recreational project of reclaiming the riverfront for recreational use. of winter rain diminishes but does not halt outdoor activity, pursuits more varied, I am reminded of the people seated on Behind the McCall Waterfront Park looms Portland’s compact while the dry summers and northern latitude make it possible benches watching the parade of carriages and walkers in skyline and the western hills beyond. Looking back across the to frequent the esplanade during the extended daylight hours Maurice Prendergast’s (1858-1924) watercolor paintings of the river, the view is still dominated by Interstate 5, but the East- and stay to enjoy the late sunset. In San Francisco the daily Central Park Mall. Before motion pictures, he captured the bank Esplanade now snakes beneath it. kinetic beat of park activity. Because waterfronts are typically long, narrow strands, the The parade continues most appropriate and logical response to their redesign capi- there and elsewhere as a talizes upon, and even dramatizes, their linearity. They serve as contemporary version of a spines giving structure and unity to the disparate elements of centuries-old promenade the site. Crissy Field and the Eastbank Esplanade are designed culture. It inspires documen- in this way, as a collection of individual parts united by tation as well, in the digital their promenades. The mile-and-a-half-long, paved Eastbank media of our day. YouTube, Esplanade is a series of links in a chain designed to connect for instance, offers such the downtown bridges that are icons of Portland’s urban land- images as bike activists, scape and make passage beneath and across them accessible skateboarders, fire dancers to all, including handicapped persons. In one section, where and drum circles enlivening there was no buildable shoreline, a continuous seventeen-foot- the East Bank Esplanade; wide, twelve hundred-foot-long floating walkway provides a at Chrissy Field there are rare opportunity to be in intimate contact with the Willamette. kite fliers, windsurfers, and Designer Carol Mayer-Reed describes this gracefully bowed schoolchildren, along with part of the promenade as the place where one “feels the river.” a violin performer, a baby She looks out at the Esplanade from her downtown office taking his first steps, window and monitors its activity. “Even in the worst weather, and someone “just chillin.” – Kenneth I. Helphand

12 Chrissy Field, San Francisco. The Santa Fe Railyard: company formed a development corporation Changing Place, Keeping Space and proposed to demolish and replace the he history of the Santa Fe Railyard occupies a span converted industrial buildings on the site of just over 120 years, a fraction of the time since with two six-story structures containing more Spanish explorers joined the indigenous population than a million square feet of retail and office and founded Santa Fe in 1690. Today the capital city space. The plan was so incongruous in the of about 65,000 people in the high country of north- context of Santa Fe’s architectural character Tern New Mexico has one of the oldest historic preservation and so at odds with community visions for ordinances in the nation. the area that city leaders rejected it in 1992. At the center of the downtown area, where land-use regula- The alternative advanced was for the city to tions limit building height and exteriors, is the Plaza, a town buy and redevelop the site. square surrounded by a shopping and museum district that While city officials were debating the draws an estimated two million visitors annually. Just outside Railyard’s future, the Trust for Public Land this historic core, the city become less homogeneous in was eyeing a large tract within its boundaries. appearance as other styles are interspersed with Santa Fe’s sig- The director of the Trust’s Santa Fe office, nature adobe architecture. In this combined residential and Jenny Parks, recently reflected, “It really fit commercial quarter the railroad tracks cut a north–south line our mission, which is to provide land for peo- bordered by vacant land, corrugated metal buildings, and other ple, and there was the desire on the part of structures built from rail cars. Known as the Railyard, the area the community to see that land become serves commercial and artistic uses while also providing shel- something other than hotels and retail. There ter for the homeless. Today more than fifty acres of trackside was always the intent on our part to have a land are in the process of becoming a lively new district of large part of the site become public space and parkland. It was state has also appropriated Santa Fe Southern train at the cultural, commercial, and recreational attractions. This project, one of the last places in downtown Santa Fe where that was funds for sidewalks and other Railyard. funded through a public-private financial partnership, echoes possible.” forms of infrastructure. what is going on in many other cities as abandoned industrial History, too, was at stake when it became apparent that the Cultural, social, and commercial uses, which include the sites are yielding up properties for redevelopment. railroad tracks and the 1910 mission-style depot were in contemporary art museum SITE Santa Fe, art galleries, antique danger of disappearing. A salvage firm made a cash offer to the and craft businesses, and a community center, have established The Santa Fe Railyard exists because of a major public invest- railway company, proposing to tear out the eighteen miles themselves in the newly desirable location even as the public ment in 1880 of $150,000 to build a spur connecting Santa Fe of track between Santa Fe and Lamy and sell the steel for planning process has continued, much encumbered by local to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, newly arrived in scrap. Fortunately, local entrepreneurs stepped forward and politics and city bureaucracy. All agree, however, that a perma- Lamy, fifteen miles south. The railroad shipped freight on formed the Santa Fe Southern Railroad corporation, which nent designated space within the site for the Santa Fe’s the spur for the next hundred years, supplying outlets for the saved the line and the depot. Today the line provides a limited Farmers Market, a popular longtime occupant of the Railyard region’s timber, coal and mineral industries, and delivering amount of freight delivery and is a popular tourist attraction area, is a boon. goods and news from back east. offering passenger excursions. After the construction of the Interstate Highway System, In 1995, Santa Fe City and the Trust for Public Land pur- In order to advance beyond its own tortuous planning efforts, train service ceased and the site was partially abandoned, leav- chased the Railyard property for approximately $21 million, the city collaborated with the American Institute of Architects, ing dirt lots and large patches of wild plants. In the 1980s and Governor Bill Richardson revived the idea of regular com- the Trust for Public Land, and the Land Use Resource Center, the railway company decided to seek a more profitable return muter rail in New Mexico. Richardson obtained federal and a grassroots nonprofit organization. This initiated an eighteen- on the fifty-acre site than the revenue generated from a hand- state money to buy the Santa Fe Southern tracks and made an month democratic process involving 6,000 city residents. After ful of tenants that it had allowed to set up businesses. The agreement that allows the privately operated excursion line numerous community hearings, seven hundred people voted to continue in business. In 2006 the New Mexico Rail Runner in an election to determine which visions for the Railyard best Express began shuttling commuters between Santa Fe and Lamy. The line is being extended to Albuquerque and the gov- ernor has declared that commuter service will begin in 2008. Because the Railyard will serve as the terminus of the line, the

13 matched community desires. both bike trails and footpaths. Over four hundred native tree The majority consensus was species will be planted – cottonwood, ponderosa pine, piñon, to keep the railroad opera- juniper, elm, and ash – along with an orchard of apricot and tional and preserve the his- apple trees. A children’s play area will contain boulders and toric depot, followed by slides and an outdoor performance space with a turf-covered requests for a large park and hillside for audience seating. space for local businesses, galleries, and cultural orga- The nonprofit organizations that are current tenants make up nizations. one-fifth of the leased space. All were established on Railyard Architects and plan- property before the city’s purchase, and each has had to adapt ners were hired to create a to the new plan. For example, a teen center had flourished in a conceptual master plan. cheaply rented, dilapidated building that was slated for demo- Although controversial in lition, and the Farmers’ Market occupied the site designated some quarters, the plan gar- for the park. In order to build new structures, these groups are nered City Council approval now engaged in fundraising. In addition to lobbying the state in late 1997, the same year legislature for a budget appropriation, teen-center supporters funding was assured by ear- have asked for private donations. Although the center has not marking a portion of future yet met its campaign goal, construction crews began working tax revenues to write down Water Tank and Farmers Market, Situated on the edge of the property, the ten-acre Railyard last summer on the shell of a new structure a few feet from seventy percent of the Railyard Park, Santa Fe Park is likely to be the most visible part of the project and the the center’s old site. The Farmers Market is not completely city’s debt on the purchase Ken Smith Landscape Architect. most valuable to the people of the city. The Trust for Public funded either, but it is also proceeding to build. The Trust for of the land. The Santa Fe land is overseeing its construction, along with a three-acre Public Land is missing final funding to pay for the park, yet it Community Corporation, a not-for-profit organization, was paved plaza in the redeveloped part of the site. The park will too has broken ground. Private development is also under- formed to implement the plan. Addressing arguments for be linked to a network of area trails and walkways. In 2002 the way. One large national chain store is nearing completion and maximum economic development advanced by real-estate Trust held a design competition in which the team of land- several smaller projects, including a number of new art gal- entrepreneurs, architect Steven Robinson, the president of the scape architect Ken Smith, architect Frederic Schwartz, and leries, are already occupied. Unfortunately, the city govern- community corporation’s board of directors, maintains, “This artist Mary Miss was chosen from among several other nation- ment appropriation needed for the preservation of the historic is about short-term vision versus long-term vision. If your ally prominent entrants. depot has not yet materialized. primary interest is what the real-estate industry calls highest Because of community desire to ensure a final outcome The same ambivalence that is often expressed elsewhere and best use, you are required to get the greatest return on honoring both the special nature of Santa Fe’s existing land- about the renewal of old industrial sites was recently voiced by your investment as soon as possible. That’s not our goal. Our scape and the recreational needs of its diverse population, one local observer, who said, “In some ways, I think the penny goal is to create a community asset. What it says is that we are Smith met many times with city residents. He redrew the park loafers won. They are getting more uptight about having a community that cares enough about its people to take a terrain, depressing the grade near its center to define an everything sparkling and neat and clean, even though people long-term view. The financial returns will take time, but they arroyo, a ubiquitous feature of the historic landscape. In addi- wanted it to be gritty. Every time I turn around I am getting will be there.” tion, the plan calls for low walls along the streets that border squeezed by developers. ‘Can we put our building a foot closer Data on today’s financial picture confirms Robinson’s posi- the park. In the interior there will be long, linear gabion to the railroad?’ It’s not being treated like a railyard, it’s being tion. The city is scheduled to make its final payment on the walls invoking railroad track siding and gardens with drought- treated like a high-end redevelopment project. But it is still purchase debt in 2010, and the private sector has development tolerant plants. A water-harvesting system will provide most going to be good. I think it unequivocally, absolutely is a bene- approval for about $60 million worth of new buildings. Strict of the needed irrigation. A holding tank has been made a fit to our community and it’s absolutely the right way to do development regulations regarding the massing and align- prominent design feature in order to reinforce the importance this kind of project, with people with different perspectives ment of buildings are aimed at protecting the Railyard’s open of water as a basic human resource. Steel tracks will echo and different objectives.” – Julie Ann Grimm character and views of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. the old rail spurs that cut across the Railyard to former ware- houses in the loading area, and a geometrically designed garden to be planted beside them will resemble in plan the boxcars that once lined the tracks. The park will contain

14 Books with the provision of bath- continuous ecological Which people want those whether large parks in James Corner and Stan houses, play lots, and com- dynamic working over time qualities, who among them industrially contaminated Allen’s 2000 proposal for munity centers in immigrant while also serving the recre- want which ones, and are areas can become more than Downsview Park, Toronto. I neighborhoods; the Recre- ational needs of people, The there others that are desired? remediation sites with cir- cannot accept the dichotomy Large Parks ation Facility (1930-1965), Sustainable Park recycles on- In her essay “Re-placing cuit walks along metal between symbolic and actual. Edited by Julia Czerniak and denoting the addition of site materials, serves as a Process,” Anita Berrizbeitia, boardwalks elevated above a Dismissal of environmental George Hargreaves such recreational services as model for other sites, and Associate Professor of Land- toxic ground plane planted education belies what I think Princeton Architectural ball fields, tennis courts, helps create ecological bal- scape Architecture at the with heavy-metal-accumulat- is one of the roles of the Press, 2007 swimming pools, and golf ance in the surrounding University of Pennsylvania, ing plants. She hopes that Sustainable Park. In this era courses to expanding munic- area. Large Parks helps define carefully parses the terms park designers will find a of transition in which we try Large Parks, a ipal park sys- the large-scale Sustainable place, site-specificity, and combination of form and to transform former indus- collection of tems; and the Park. process. She leans in the program that will instill val- trial sites into something seven essays and Open Space James Corner’s foreword direction of letting design ues of good citizenship, more closely mimicking bio- a foreword, System (1965- lays out the issues well. guide biological and social making environmentalists logical processes, educational edited by Julia 1990), distin- “Large parks,” defined as processes. However, there out of consumers. However, uses are part of the process. Czerniak, guished by a greater than 500 acres, have still remains the need to reg- in her discussion of toxicity Human impact on the envi- Associate network of three major functions. They ister public reaction with she misses one important ronment is as fundamental Professor of public areas – are experiential reserves for regard to the appeal of parks aspect of the environment: as the environment itself. In Architecture at parks of vari- people walking through whose original purposes are the shadow kingdom of the general, however, I applaud Syracuse able size and “alternating sequences of primarily environmental disturbed landscape is one Lister for acknowledging University, and location – prospect and refuge,” land- rather than recreational in that is interior as well as limits to economic growth, George which, together scape theaters that help cul- the traditional sense. exterior. Toxicity from the imperative of social equi- Hargreaves, with streets ture embrace nature, and Elizabeth Meyer, Associate industrial agriculture is the ty (since pollution does not Professor of and sidewalks, ecological workhorses for Professor of Architecture environmental degradation stay in neighborhoods or Landscape enlarge the urban environments. All of and Landscape Architecture we experience as consumers countries), and her emphasis Architecture at Harvard realm of parks programming the essays circle around at the University of Virginia, of food. The environment is on the need for local knowl- University, addresses the through participatory art. the question of how much offers one of the richest thus inside as well as outside edge of the environment. problem of how to turn When the book was pub- structure and what kind is essays in the collection, our bodies! But if, as she suggests, abandoned industrial sites lished twenty-five years ago, I necessary to support these “Uncertain Parks: Disturbed In “Sustainable Large designers should listen to a into parks. In so doing, these noted that parks always serve purposes, thereby posing the Sites, Citizens, and a Risk Parks: Ecological Design or diversity of voices and essays advance our collective social ends, but I did not central question: Should a Society.” She poses informed, Designer Ecology?,” Nina- values, then more education understanding of a new park anticipate that park planners landscape designer follow provocative, and hard-to- Marie Lister, Associate Pro- in ethnographic-style listen- type, the Sustainable Park. would be challenged with one or more of the park par- answer questions. For fessor of Urban and Regional ing – listening for the cate- In my 1982 book, The decontaminating abandoned adigms inherited from the example, she asks: Could Planning at Ryerson gories of thought that locals Politics of Park Design, I char- industrial sites. Recently I past or create new ones? designers of large parks University in Toronto, sets use to describe and under- acterized park design as have concluded that a new This raises an important make spatially legible the up a dichotomy between stand their lives and envi- falling into four eras: the fifth model has been estab- social issue. If a park is contradictions between symbolic gestures that recall ronments – will be required Pleasure Ground (1850-1900), lished in landscape theory, devoted only to wildness and broad social values such as or represent natural systems in design, architecture, plan- characterized by large parks, which I call the Sustainable ongoing natural ecological environmentalism and indi- for educational purposes – ning, and landscape schools. such as New York’s Central Park, one that establishes a transformations, it may not vidual habits such as con- such as Toronto’s Yorkville This is a teaching strategy I Park, built near the urban attract people who desire, as sumption? She wonders Park, which she dismisses as periphery as counterpoints Corner assumes, “structure “designer ecology” – and to the stresses of industrial- and identity, . . . grandeur, “operational ecology” that izing cities; the Reform Park theatricality, novelty, or sheer facilitates the evolution of (1900-1930), typifying the experiential power” in their self-organizing systems, like Progressive Era social agenda large parks. I would like to question this statement:

15 have advocated for the last offers a refreshingly socio- able font size. In addition, of orchestrating his key vari- production in China, India, Landscapes of the Country thirty-five years. logical perspective on how the book would have been ables – site, program, and elsewhere. Place Era is a study of the In “Matrix Landscape: large parks are actually used. more useful if it had an evolutionary process, and Still, these essays move us extravagant domestic land- Construction of Identity in He also ties financing mech- index. In Lister’s essay stu- informed management – in the right direction as they scape architecture of those the Large Park,” Linda Pol- anisms to the goals of dents will find an informa- will yield compelling form. assist political leaders, city years, beginning with the lak, a published researcher democracy, environmental tive contrast and comparison None of the essays planners, community advo- work of Frederick Law and New York-based archi- justice, and social diversity of the work of Ian McHarg, acknowledges the global cates, and landscape archi- Olmsted and ending with tect, offers a new analytical by discussing ways in which author of Design With Nature, dimensions of the problems tects who face the practical Fletcher Steele and the early vocabulary of terms, such as the expectation that parks and that of James Corner’s and opportunities of dein- problems of how large, dam- stirrings of modernism. non-equilibrium ecology, land- should be either self-paying firm, Field Operations. I also dustrialization. Corner notes aged sites can be made The author, Robin Karson, scape of patches, and matrix. or privately supported can appreciated learning about that most current urban socially useful, aesthetically focuses on seven well-docu- Despite her efforts at clarifi- threaten those purposes. Brickworks in Toronto, less a development tries to include evocative, ecologically sound, mented estates and eight cation I am confused by her The entire collection park than a social enterprise open space in its planning, and economical to maintain influential landscape archi- use of the word matrix in exposes the deep ambiva- that will model sustainability but he only tacitly admits as Sustainable Parks. – Galen tects. Through their work a multiple senses. In one place lence that designers struggle through the fusion of art and that this so-called demand Cranz wide-angle image of the matrix refers to a chart-like with in their desire to be education. Another example for parks is more a question period clearly emerges. tool for analyzing how one theoretically advanced of this kind of fusion occurs of supply, stemming from A Genius for Place: The title of the book ref- set of variables interacts (meaning process-oriented in “Not a Cornfield,” an the vast inventory of aban- American Landscapes of the erences two pivotal historic with another; elsewhere the and opposed to thinking abandoned railway yard doned industrial sites. Country Place Era signposts of landscape archi- reference to “green matrix” of parks as landscape form), along the Los Angeles River Globally, the United States By Robin Karson tecture: Norman Newton’s denotes a Web site (www. while at the same time in California. In his essay has not abandoned industri- Library of American term Country Place Era and greenmatrix.net) that teaches retaining aesthetic control “Large Parks: A Designer’s alization but rather allowed Landscape History with the Alexander Pope’s genius loci, sustainable design by means of their projects. Julia Perspective,” George it to move to other countries. University of Massachusetts the particular inherent char- of the above approach; final- Czerniak’s concluding essay Hargreaves evaluates the Similarly, Meyer, who Press, 2007 acter of the site, or what ly, it is employed as a syn- on “Legibility and Resilience” long-term aesthetic values, speaks of disturbed sites as Olmsted termed “local cir- onym for context. I have a offers a social justification social uses, and ecological consciousness-raising in In the years cumstances.” preference for this last for authority over a park’s sustainability of seven regard to consumption, does between the It is the the- meaning of matrix as a gen- image. If landscape design- important parks around the not go far enough. Former World’s sis of this erative and womblike ers forsake this prerogative, world: London’s Hyde Park, industrial sites express our Columbian study of the ground, a way of referring to their parks may turn out Paris’s Bois de Boulogne, San shifted economy, requiring Exposition in Country Place the ecological forces that to be illegibile to the public Francisco’s Golden Gate other places and peoples to Chicago in Era that the influence a site and its that will use and, impor- Park, Sydney’s Centennial bear the ecological and 1893 and the success of the designers. Matrix in this tantly, pay for them. Parklands, Amsterdam’s Bos, health costs of industrializa- end of the best estate sense stands in opposition to In addition to grappling Parc du Sausset outside tion. Landfills as symbols of Great Depres- designs the design aesthetics of “de- with theoretical themes, Paris, and Landschaftspark obsolete technologies are so sion in 1939, derived from constructivism,” which is these essays offer practical Duisburg Nord in Germany. only in a particular location. the amassing the ability of intent on “de-composing” a information about particular Like Corner, Hargreaves Resource extraction and of vast for- the landscape form into its component parks, comparative analyses, wants to retain the original manufacturing are still going tunes led to architect to parts. and diagrams and maps of compositional intentions on, and at faster rates than the creation of identify the Harvard University’s John ecological change. For exam- of the designer rather than ever, in other parts of the elaborate estates in affluent genius loci and exploit it to Beardsley’s “Conflict and ple, Julia Czerniak’s intro- assume that the process world. Global environmental enclaves around the country. great advantage. Erosion: The Contemporary ductory essay contains a improvement depends on A Genius for Place: American A fortuitous convergence Public Life of Large Parks,” helpful scale comparison of developed nations sharing of factors in the Country thirty large parks. I only wish the fiscal responsibility for Place Era created the perfect that the book designer had the modulation of pollution climate for landscape archi- been willing to devote a little stemming from industrial tecture writ large. Unprece- more of the page to a read- dented personal fortunes

16 were made in a dizzying landscape by Carol Betsch. nomenon occurs that is one departure from the conven- project. Drawing from her that Choate had asked Steele boom of industrialization, This thoughtful addition of the most interesting reve- tional historiography of in-depth knowledge of land- to design for access to her but at the same time the anchors the disparate sites lations of the book: The best landscape architecture, scape architect Warren H. cutting gardens. first symptoms of environ- and stories to the present. It of these landscapes benefited which relies heavily, if not Manning, about whom she Another surprise is the mental and social costs were also provides a remarkable from, perhaps depended exclusively, on historical has previously written in The social and professional acknowledged. A growing testament to the uncommon upon, the felicitous alchemy documentation, so rarely do Muses of Gwinn, she gives a genealogy of the seemingly nostalgia for the pastoral life, survival of the great land- of the collaboration between more than traces of the orig- particularly fine description small world of landscape as well as admiration for vil- scape legacies of the Country the client and landscape inal designs endure. of the design of Gwinn, with architects, artists, writers, las and châteaux seen on Place Era and, by implica- architect. Not insignificantly, these a detailed but fluid portrait publishers, critics, and European travels, inspired a tion, points to the urgency of There is an enormous are all well-documented of the collaboration between patrons. Mariana Griswold fabulously wealthy class to preserving others. This, amount of information – an sites, for which deep stores Manning, the architect Van Rensselaer, the critic create personal paradises of as part of the preservation almost indigestible number of archival materials have Charles Platt, and William and writer on architecture unprecedented scale and of the entire heritage of of names, sites, and histories survived. Much of the color Gwinn Mather, the client. and landscape, was a friend limitless budget. This hap- American landscape design, within histories within of the book – the biogra- The correspondence between of Beatrix Farrand’s family pened at the moment when is a primary mission of histories. At times, the book phies of the clients and the Edsel Ford and Jens Jensen, and perhaps one of her early the profession of landscape the Library of American bogs down in distracting landscape architects, the his- for another example, reveals mentors. Rose Standish architecture fully emerged, Landscape History, founded tangential detail. Ultimately, tories of their collaborations, Ford as an active, even intru- Nichols, garden designer credentialed and legitimized, by the author, which co-pub- however, what emerges is a the evolution of their sive, client. Ford’s insistent and critic, was sculptor and produced many of its lished this book with the carefully articulated portrait designs, even their successes preference for open space Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ greatest talents. University of Massachusetts of American estate land- and disappointments – could and lawns made Jensen’s niece. Landscape architects Expanding on the scope Press. scapes, those who built only have been constructed design for the Fords’ Grosse Fletcher Steele and Helen of her earlier books, includ- In an unconventional for- them, and how they were from a trove of correspon- Pointe site quite unlike Bullard both worked for ing one devoted to the mat, the book is organized in designed. Departing from dence, office records, manu- his other work. Exploring Manning, as did Dan Kiley, landscape architect Fletcher three chronological sections, the manageable scope scripts, clients’ archives, and Dumbarton Oaks with one of the masters of early Steele and another to the within which are a total of and resultant narrative tone ephemera. This rich variety Karson, we learn that there modern landscape design. garden design of the estate eight biographies of land- of her earlier books on the and depth of documentation, were many conflicts of taste Manning himself had of Gwinn, Karson addresses scape architects and detailed same period, this ambitious going far beyond that offered between Mildred Bliss and worked in the office of the wider phenomenon histories of seven of their study reads as a reference by limited conventional landscape designer Beatrix Frederick Law Olmsted, the of the Country Place Era. exemplary estate designs. work with many layers records, has resulted in a Farrand throughout their father of landscape architec- Beautifully produced and The latter contain substan- of material, much of it reve- complex, nuanced study. long collaboration, but in the ture in America. Dozens generously illustrated, the tial profiles of the clients latory and surprising. The client profiles in the end Farrand thanked her more such connections are current book is a dense and their milieu, an essential In an introduction, the landscape essays add a valu- client for “many hours of revealed through the book. yet accessible study of one of thread in the fabric of the author reveals that a deter- able dimension often lacking common work and common The segue from the pro- the most colorful moments story. The Vanderbilts, the mining factor in the choice in other accounts of the delight.” At Naumkeag, fession’s almost exclusive in American landscape archi- Du Ponts, the Sieberlings, of the seven sites she dis- design process in landscape Mabel Choate and Fletcher employment on lavish pri- tectural history. Augmenting and the Fords were all col- cusses was the requirement architecture. As this was Steele were friends and col- vate estates to landscapes the more than 350 vintage laborators as well as clients. that a significant amount a particularly collaborative laborators for thirty years. A serving the general public photographs, drawings, and Involved, opinionated, and of the original landscape be generation of ambitious charming 1938 photograph was not as abrupt as might plans are beautiful contem- well informed, they were not intact in order for it to be clients and designers, the shows them together, paint- be presumed. Indeed, the porary photographs of each only enormously wealthy but observed at first-hand and profiles are a compelling ing the famous Blue Steps Country Place Era and the also enlightened participants photographed. This is a part of the story. Making Progressive Era were over- in the design of their estates. especially skillful use of the lapping. Many of the clients Indeed, throughout the correspondence between shared with their landscape seven estate histories, a sur- clients and designers, Karson architects an emerging con- prisingly consistent phe- illuminates the process sciousness of the reform behind the evolution of each

17 agenda of the Progressives, City Trees: A Historical The human desire to Focusing on Western thereafter cosmopolitanism ancient city walls obsolete, including the need for civic Geography from the domesticate the forest and Europe and its overseas and travel resulted in a con- on the continent bulwarks planning and the provision Renaissance through the reverence trees goes back at colonies, Lawrence investi- vergence of ideas. gave way to boulevards of housing and parks for Nineteenth Century least as far as the Book of gates how social and political Lawrence attributes the enhancing the popularity of the working classes. For By Henry W. Lawrence Revelation (22:2), which men- values influenced the cre- origins of European think- carriage promenading and example, Frank Sieberling, University of Virginia Press tions “the tree of life” whose ation of places in the urban ing about the appropriate café dining outdoors. The Manning’s client and the in association with the leaves “were for the healing landscape for trees and how design of the urban land- adjacent properties became founder of Goodyear Rubber Center for American Places, of the nations.” Henry people used such spaces over scape to Italian Renaissance centers of fashionable and Tire Company, was 2006 Lawrence argues that the time. Drawing on images, gardens and their axial orga- neighborhoods. London, in inspired during the building trees that were planted in written accounts, local histo- nization of space. Although contrast, pioneered the of his country house, Stan The block of private gar- ries, and scholarly studies, gardens at this time were construction of residential Hywet, to address the dearth State Street in dens and he traces the introduction of aristocratic preserves squares, an urban paradigm of housing opportunities for Lancaster, sacred spaces trees in cities from the enclosed by walls, in cities that continued to shape his Akron factory workers. Pennsylvania, in antiquity in middle of the sixteenth to princes, dukes, and munici- patterns of development for He asked Manning to help where I live is the Mediter- the turn of the twentieth palities created piazze and more than two hundred design Goodyear Heights. lined with ranean basin century. The approach is that the first straight streets since years. The creation of tree- With the changing eco- sycamore trees had important of a cultural geographer, Roman times, many of which lined walks and the opening nomic realities in America three-quarters religious, and Lawrence brings to the would later be planted with of some of London’s royal following the Great of a century social, and task a skillful understanding trees. As travel increased and parks to the public were Depression and the Second old. Planted symbolic func- of place as well as years of the geometrical character of other important innovations. World War, the civic sphere, shortly after a tions, but their experience visiting the cities the Italian garden spread Lawrence’s third chapter not the lavish personal farm was devel- use in urban he describes. In addition, he throughout Europe, so did compares French and British estate, was to be the next oped into rows public places has collected much of the new recreational activities traditions in urban planning frontier for the profession of of duplexes and streets is visual material that enriches such as lawn bowling and an and landscape design in the landscape architecture. As if and single- an early mod- the book. early form of croquet, which eighteenth century. French in anticipation of the transi- family homes on the north- ern phenomenon. Lawrence Over the course of eight led to the need for special- formalism remained the tion of their beautiful homes west edge of the city in the attempts to explain how chapters Lawrence pays par- ized green spaces. dominant mode of design on and gardens to public stew- mid-1920s, these majestic the tree-lined streets, bosky ticular attention to three During the sixteenth cen- the continent, and French ardship, many proprietors of trees create a cathedral-like squares, and large urban themes: aesthetics, by which tury tree-shaded walks were tastes in recreation, especial- Country Place Era estates effect when fully leaved. At parks we accept today as a he means not simply tradi- created atop fortifications, as ly promenading, continued were active proponents of the same time, their roots given – what he calls the tions in landscape design in Lucca, where there is still to influence urban design the creation of municipal play havoc with sewer drains, green city – became a symbol but also the social uses of a pleasant promenade, and improvements elsewhere in and state parks and partici- they shed their bark every of urban civilization by the public spaces; power, or in the Netherlands, which Europe. Hallmarks of this pants in the City Beautiful other year, and as I write end of the nineteenth centu- access to and control of pub- maintains venerable tradi- style of embellissement and regional planning move- they are dropping moun- ry. Ranging broadly across lic spaces; and national tion of planting trees along included both a new urban ments. Karson’s magisterial tains of leaves that will space and time to delineate tradition. He points out that canals. By the seventeenth infrastructure and a new aes- book shows the magnitude require hours of raking. changing attitudes toward until the second quarter of century, wide avenues lined thetic ideal based upon of the Country Era landscape These practical considera- trees, public and semi-public the nineteenth century there with double rows of trees the use of architecture and heritage and confirms tions, however, are a small spaces, and their roles in were obvious national differ- emanating from a patte d’oie, landscape design to dignify its importance as a major price to pay for the canopy urban form and culture, he ences in the use of trees, but as at Versailles, became an the public realm. Outdoor chapter in the history of that graces the streetscape. pays attention to trees as a important design precedent dining in cafés adjacent to American landscape design. symbol of respectability and for the introduction of trees – Leslie Rose Close social power and to their in cities, first in Paris and absence as a reflection of then in other European capi- powerlessness. tals. Furthermore, as new military technology made

18 boulevards framed by allées took up the practice of In addition, both cities although long-standing class cities, established models neighborhoods. Moreover of trees became a distinctive planting trees in front of experienced a significant tensions and issues of access that would be adopted else- the contestation over the feature in Paris. England, by houses, while the municipal- increase in the planting of remained. New Yorkers where. The European urban- uses of public space did not contrast, developed a very ity planted trees along street trees, although this adopted the British tradition ist tradition exemplified by end at the dawn of the twen- different urban aesthetic that Broadway and other major remained the work of indi- of private residential Paris, Vienna, and London, tieth century. In The Creative embraced the idea of “rus in streets as well as in public viduals rather than the squares, notably in the devel- which consisted of public Destruction of Manhattan urbe,” the country within the places such as the Bowling municipality. In 1806 New opment of St. John’s Square parks, elegant tree-lined (1999), historian Max Page city. In London the royal Green. The cemetery at York City recommended that and Gramercy Park. At the boulevards framed by neo- demonstrates that in suc- parks were increasingly fre- Trinity Church was also residents plant trees in front same time, the city corpora- classical apartment buildings ceeding decades, as develop- quented by the public, resi- shaded and proved to be an of their dwellings, and four tion undertook improve- and expensive shops, and mental pressures increased, dential squares proliferated, attractive place to prome- years later officials enacted ments to Union Square, landscaped settings for even existing street trees and private gardens were nade. Philadelphia apparent- an ordinance establishing Tompkins Park, and other important public institu- were at risk and Manhattan created between individual ly had no tradition of street fines for damage to trees. In public places. In both tions, became common in faced the possibility of dwellings and the street. trees during these years. New Haven, Connecticut, England and America the cities as distant as South Asia becoming a city whose only Lawrence next takes read- Indeed, the Philadelphia James Hillhouse underwrote rising middle class embraced and South America. At this trees were in public parks ers from Europe to its over- Contributionship, a mutual an extensive tree-planting the leafy domestic landscape time municipal governments and squares. In recent years seas colonies. Colonial towns insurance company, refused program, and President as a hallmark of status. assumed greater control over cities have become more and cities, while influenced to insure houses with nearby Thomas Jefferson had Chapter Seven examines the urban landscape, build- conscious of the importance by Western planning ideas, trees. However, following Lombardy poplars planted the second half of the nine- ing infrastructure, installing of trees on both environ- did not servilely copy the American Revolution, the along Pennsylvania Avenue teenth century and the first sidewalks and curbs, and mental and recreational European urban forms. The newly formed Mutual in Washington, D.C. years of the twentieth. This taking responsibility for the grounds. In New York City, Spanish Law of the Indies Assurance Company under- In the years between 1820 era was marked by the tran- planting and maintenance for example, as part of its mandated a gridded town wrote properties with and the middle of the nine- sition from the preindustrial of trees. This was also a time sustainability program plan with a central plaza. proximate trees and took as teenth century, international to the industrial city and a of significant suburban Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Although the plaza remained its emblem a small tree travel and the wide diffusion shift from aesthetic to prac- development, as well as the administration has pledged mostly treeless, several larger cast in lead. of publications eroded the tical concerns, including creation of large metropoli- to plant a million trees. communities had shaded Chapter Five examines national differences that had public health issues, new tan parks on relatively cheap In 1947 the New Yorker alamedas, and beginning in the last two decades of the previously characterized transportation technologies, undeveloped land on the writer E. B. White captured the eighteenth century, tree- eighteenth century and the how trees were planted in infrastructure development, periphery of the built areas our affinity for street trees in lined boulevards. The first two decades of the nine- cities. In France Comte and the maintenance of of rapidly growing cities. By one of his most famous European section of Calcutta teenth, a period when, as de Rambuteau commenced social order. During these the dawn of the twentieth essays, “The Second Tree had more parks and trees Lawrence points out, street- an ambitious tree-planting years tree planting, once century a cosmopolitan from the Corner.” White’s than contemporaneous cities tree policy in America program in the public spaces largely restricted to the met- urban culture had reshaped fictional protagonist, Trexler, in Britain, and street trees changed from proscriptive to of Paris. Elsewhere in ropolitan fringe, spread the appearance of cities makes a series of visits to a were planted throughout prescriptive. Philadelphia Europe parks continued to throughout other parts of throughout the world. therapist, who repeatedly Dutch South Africa. North and New York undertook be built on land vacated cities. Napoleon III’s master But if tree-lined boule- asked his patient, “What do America, settled by peoples improvements to city squares by dismantled perimeter for- planner, Baron Eugène vards and avenues adorned you want?” After one particu- from different Western at this time. An early-nine- tifications; the Ringstrausse, Haussmann working with new residential spaces in larly frustrating session, nations, had a predictable teenth-century redrawing of Vienna’s mid-nineteenth- Alphonse Alphand in Paris, cities and their expanding Trexler emerges from the diversity of approaches to Thomas Holme’s 1683 plat century ring boulevard, was and Frederick Law Olmsted suburbs, the triumph of doctor’s office and walks tree planting. The Boston indicates trees in each of the the most prominent exam- with Calvert Vaux in New the green city was not as west toward Madison Avenue Common, originally a pas- five squares in William ple. In England the tradition York and other American complete or as enduring as as the sun is setting over the ture, quickly evolved into a Penn’s green country town. of building residential Lawrence suggests. Trees parklike space with a prome- squares continued, but was were rarely planted in com- nade. In New York citizens supplemented by the con- mercial and industrial areas struction of leafy suburbs or in crowded immigrant and large urban parks,

19 Hudson River and the Pali- projects on their behalf. He pursued architectural and his family’s pleas to Baumann . . . Pupil of ing flawed work that had sades. At that moment he is Under these difficult circum- studies at the University of return to Winterthur. He Loudon.” Weidenmann’s del- been introduced to the forty- entranced by a small tree stances, Favretti does an Karlsruhe but also expanded remained in Europe until icately rendered presentation acre site. He drained the “saturated with the evening, admirable job, relying on his his interest in painting late 1856 and then moved drawing shows Hill Park swampy land and laid out an each gilt-edged leaf perfectly own substantial expertise as and sketching, frequenting back to New York, this time House overlooking a lawn extensive road system, drunk with excellence and a landscape architect to ana- ateliers in Zurich where his acquiring a fiancée on the dotted with specimen trees employing his wide-ranging delicacy.” That small tree lyze several projects in which considerable artistic talents crossing. On landing, he and an oval pond. The site skills as draftsman, site provides the answer to the Weidenmann almost certain- were encouraged. In 1850 opened a landscape garden- plan features amoeboid planner, engineer, and horti- therapist’s question: “I want ly played a strong role. In all Weidenmann enrolled in ing practice on Suffolk Street forms throughout, very culturist. Favretti cites the second tree from the these commissions, a course at the Zurich in Manhattan. Favretti iden- much in the manner of the influence of the English corner,” Trexler thinks to Weidenmann adhered to the Botanical Garden, an event tifies J. C. Loudon and A. J. Loudon’s gardenesque Picturesque style in the himself, “just as it stands.” notion that nature should that signaled the dawn Downing as the prime approach. More distinctly planting scheme. Old pho- – David Schuyler guide design and that land- of a new interest: landscape influences on Weidenmann’s American was the landscape tographs also suggest the scape planning should be gardening. early work, observing that program, which afforded res- strong influence of Olmsted Jacob Weidenmann: Pioneer based on careful analysis of That year, the restless books by them formed the idents access to extensive and Vaux’s new Central Park. Landscape Architect the site. young man left his home- nucleus of his library. He parkland, woodland, and The work on the Hartford By Rudy J. Favretti Jacob Weidenmann land, traveling first to Paris, also points to Downing’s views to the sea. park was followed by a com- Wesleyan University Press, (sometimes anglicized to then London, then the magazine, The Horticulturist, Favretti traces Weiden- mission for a rural cemetery, 2007 “Weidenman”) was born United States, becoming ill as a source of design ideas mann’s important Hartford, Cedar Hill, on 268 acres in 1829 in Winterthur, and almost dying on the voy- and a link to an important Connecticut, work – his three miles outside the city – Rudy Favretti’s Switzerland, age across the Atlantic. He network of practitioners, next professional foray – to land described as “charming- fine new biog- the son of a regained his strength explor- particularly the Alsatian hor- a connection through the ly diversified with vale, lawn, raphy of the government ing the countryside of north- ticulturist Eugene Achilles German-born landscape gar- forest, picturesque rocks, Swiss-born customs ern Manhattan but was soon Baumann, who employed dener Adolph Strauch, stately shade trees, running landscape gar- officer and a lured west by the California Weidenmann for unspecified hypothesizing that the men and pond water . . . altogeth- dener Jacob keen busi- gold rush. Weidenmann work on the new suburban had met in Europe. The link er remarkably adapted Weidenmann nesswoman. found little success in the development of Llewellyn may have been Jonathan to beautification.” Weiden- (1829–1893) Intelligent, American West and took off Park in West Orange, New Sands Niles, a resident of mann’s major challenge penetrates the inquisitive, again almost immediately, Jersey. Baumann turned to Cincinnati, who likely knew would be to establish an “fuzzy scrim” and mischie- this time to Panama to work Weidenmann again to draw Strauch, who was friendly entrance through a swampy that has vous, Jacob as an assistant engineer on the plans for Locust Wood, with members of the newly section, which he accom- obscured this was a good new railroad construction an estate for Robert Minturn formed Hartford park com- plished by creating a series practitioner student with across the Isthmus. He in Hastings, New York. mission. However, Favretti of five lakes. Weidenmann’s since his an early quickly discovered that the Weidenmann’s most sub- also notes an 1858 news item design employed Strauch’s death in 1893. With plans, interest in art and architec- work was fraught with con- stantial early work was Hill recommending that Olmsted still-revolutionary concept of drawings, and correspon- ture. Even before enrolling siderable risk of contracting Park Estate on Staten Island, be hired to design the city the “lawn plan,” which dence relating to in college, he worked for malaria, and with the help of a seventeen-lot development park. Years later, John emphasized the importance Weidenmann’s work lacking, an architect friend of his local tribesmen, he managed on about one hundred acres, Charles Olmsted claimed of a comprehensive pictorial the practitioner has been parents in Geneva. Jacob to escape to Peru. There the first parcel of which that his stepfather recom- composition. overshadowed by two better- then attended the Akademie Weidenmann found work on had already been laid out in mended Weidenmann for While maintaining his known contemporaries, der Bildenden Künste in an extensive country estate, the “English style” by “Ed. the job, perhaps having position as superintendent Frederick Law Olmsted and Munich, where he studied La Molina, recording the refused it himself. of Cedar Hill, Weidenmann William Le Baron Jenney, under a renowned muralist. landscape and buildings in Weidenman became both of whom employed exquisite pencil sketches. superintendent of Hartford’s Weidenmann to carry out Weidenmann’s South City (later Bushnell) Park in (and, in some cases, design) American adventure was cut 1860 and set about correct- short by his brother’s death

20 laid out Hartford’s South him to resign. He turned somed. His drawings record of the grounds of the Capitol few details of them survive. sions – for example, the Green and the Hartford to his colleague Olmsted superb architectural details Building in Des Moines, Weidenmann’s largest job statement that Weidenmann Retreat for the Insane, ini- for help, which came in and increasingly imaginative Iowa. That successful project from these last years was in could be considered “the tially designed by Olmsted the form of an invitation to site plans, and his planting led to others in the region, Iowa, the completion of the father of our present system and Vaux. He also undertook assist on development of compositions were now requiring frequent travel Grand Stair Plaza of the State of educating landscape estate designs for a number Prospect Park in Brooklyn. more complex. He began to between Iowa and New York Capitol, a project to which architects” – are not support- of wealthy individuals, work Weidenmann was soon given employ the plant masses City. When Weidenmann he applied his architectural, ed by strong evidence. that extended into other responsibilities for other associated with Olmsted’s heard about Mount Hope, a rendering, and planning Further, the decision to Connecticut towns. In these projects by Olmsted and version of the Picturesque new cemetery planned for skills with elegance and forego numbered endnotes designs, Weidenmann’s Vaux, whose firm, Favretti rather than Loudon’s horti- Chicago, he applied for the panache. His drawings of the and to abbreviate source plant palette featured a wide notes, had a steady flow of culturally oriented garde- job of planning and superin- plaza reflect a familiarity material in a multi-sectioned range of species, includ- work during these years. nesque method with its tending it – against the with recent developments in bibliography has resulted in ing many conifers and Lom- After Olmsted and Vaux widely spaced single speci- advice of his old friend Beaux-Arts design, a striking a system that is almost bardy poplars, a lingering dissolved their arrangement mens. Olmsted. contrast with the Downing- impossible to use. One last influence of Loudon’s garde- in 1872, Weidenmann contin- During these years, The Mount Hope venture inspired approach that guid- editorial complaint: a nesque style. ued to work for Olmsted in a Weidenmann assisted was a fiasco. After a corrupt ed his early work. During comprehensive client list Although he continued as flexible alliance that gave Olmsted on several public and power-hungry cemetery his last years, Weidenmann would have been a welcome superintendent of Cedar Hill Olmsted considerable leeway projects, including the board fired Weidenmann, he embarked on two substantial addition for a book of this Cemetery, Weidenmann’s in requesting a range of ser- grounds for the United again sought help from projects in Hartford (a new importance; perhaps this career as a landscape garden- vices from Weidenmann – States Capitol Building in Olmsted who wrote on his subdivision and park could be corrected in future er appeared to stall after the from drawing plans to full Washington, D.C. and the behalf to William Le Baron for Colonel Albert Pope), but editions. Hartford park was complet- design responsibilities and Quartermaster Depot in Jenney, whom Olmsted knew these were left unfinished This beautifully designed ed. Probably as a way to find implementation – for which Jeffersonville, Indiana. He well through their mutual after he developed kidney book represents a consider- new clients, he began writing Weidenmann would be com- also worked on the Schuylkill work at Riverside, the com- disease. He died in February able investment on the part a book. In the examples he pensated proportionally. The Arsenal in Philadelphia, the muter subdivision north of 1893 at the age of sixty-three, of the Cedar Hill Cemetery presented in Beautifying association relieved Olmsted Hot Springs Reservation in Chicago. Jenney, in turn, leaving behind a legacy of Foundation, which pub- Country Homes he relied pri- from some of the demands Arkansas, and Congress Park hired Weidenmann for work three books and a substantial lished it in cooperation with marily on his own projects, of private estate work, free- in Saratoga Springs, New at Mackinac Island and for body of built work. Wesleyan University Press. a decision that happily ing up his time for the York. Weidenmann helped new developments at Favretti ably tells his story We are indebted to the foun- preserved traces of some for travel necessary to complete draft plans for Montreal’s Chicago’s Union Park. Wei- in jargon-free prose. His dation and to Rudy Favretti posterity. The handsome a number of far-flung Mount Royal Park, Niagara denmann was also commis- complex and considered for tackling the subject of book was a critical success, public projects, which he Square in Buffalo, and the sioned to design a master analyses of projects are well Weidenmann’s career and for but unfortunately it was considered his most impor- campus of Johns Hopkins plan for Northwestern illustrated with color plans persevering in the initiative never reprinted owing to the tant duties. University in Baltimore. University in Evanston, taken primarily from over many years. Sustained expense of the brilliantly With the informal part- During these years, he also where, as Favretti points out, Weidenmann’s Beautifying work on a project of this colored lithographs that nership in place, Olmsted’s secured his own commis- he took care to preserve Country Homes and with scope is extraordinarily chal- illustrate it. business boomed – surely sions, including several groves of large oaks. historical and contemporary lenging, but it is through Following the publication the fine quality of Weiden- along the Hudson River, in Weidenmann moved his photographs. He provides such depth of commitment of his book, Weidenmann mann’s plans and drawings Brooklyn, and in New Jersey. family back east in 1888, tak- useful background informa- that the field of American left abruptly for Switzerland, was a strong asset – and Building on his success ing an apartment in Brook- tion and also discusses landscape history is expand- remaining there about Weidenmann’s abilities blos- in the East, Weidenmann lyn near Prospect Park. planning, planting, and con- ing and maturing today. a year. He returned to Hart- decided to expand the reach He found new commissions struction in considerable – Robin Karson ford in 1871 to find a new of his practice into the in the New York area, but detail. The book’s organiza- board of cemetery and park Midwest. In 1884 he won the tion is clear and thoughtful. trustees. Their unanticipated competition for the design There are a few bones to animosity toward him forced pick, however. Some conclu-

21 Awards Calendar

2008 David R. Coffin Thaisa Way 2008 John Brinkerhoff Julie Czerniak and Italian gardener’s notebook Society of Architectural Publication Grant Unbounded Practices: Jackson Book Prize George Hargreaves and a scholarly study, tran- Historians The Foundation for Women, Landscape The Foundation for Large Parks scription, and translation of 2008 Annual Meeting Landscape Studies is proud Architecture, and Early Landscape Studies is proud Princeton Architectural this valuable historical April 23-27, 2008 to announce the winners of Twentieth Century Design to announce the winners of Press, 2007 record. Ada Segre’s accompa- Cincinnati, Ohio the 2008 David R. Coffin Publisher: University of the 2008 John Brinkerhoff nying study of the notebook Contact: www.sah.org In the eight essays that make Publication Grant, which is Virginia Press Jackson Book Prize for is a groundbreaking example Note: There will be a session up Large Parks, leading given for the purpose of recently published books of garden archaeology. on Friday, April 25, at 2:00 This book-in-progress scholars and practitioners research and publication of that have made significant on “Science and Changing describes landscape design engage in depth the topic of a book that advances schol- contributions to the study Jack Williams Ideas in Landscape Architec- in the United States starting large urban parks as complex arship in the field of garden and understanding of garden East 40 Degrees: An ture.” in 1893, the year of the cultural spaces, where issues history and landscape history and landscape Interpretive Atlas Chicago World’s Fair and the of landscape discourse, eco- studies. studies. University of Virginia Press, The Landscape publication of Marianna Van logical challenges, social his- 2006 of Gloucestershire Renssalaer’s book, Art out tory, urban relations, and Dorothée Imbert Ethan Carr Society for Landscape of Doors. place-making are writ large. Between Garden and City: Mission 66: Modernism and The title of this work refers Studies (in association From historic parks such as Landscape Modernism and the National Park Dilemma to the longitudinal orienta- with the University of New York’s Central Park and Jean Canneel-Claes Library of American tion of the Appalacian Gloucestershire) Paris’s Bois de Boulogne to Publisher: University of Landscape History with the Mountain chain as it travers- Spring Field Meeting 2008 contemporary projects such Pittsburgh Press University of Massachusetts es fifteen states from May 10-11, 2008 as Toronto’s Downsview Press, 2007 Alabama to Maine. Within Gloucestershire, England This book-in-progress Park, Staten Island’s Fresh this less populous part of Contact: chronicles the work and life To a significant degree, the Kills, and California’s Orange America are many historic www.landscapestudies.com of Belgian landscape national park system and the County Great Park, Large small towns. Beginning his architect Jean Canneel-Claes National Park Service as we Parks highlights the com- record with the continental Designing the Parks: (1909-1989), a somewhat know them today are prod- plexities and special consid- collisions that shaped each A Two-Part Conference overlooked but significant ucts of the Mission 66 era. erations that go into town’s history more than 300 National Park Service, figure for the early period of Ethan Carr’s book examines designing these massive and million years ago, Williams The Cultural Landscape European modernism. the significance of the culturally significant works. allows us to “see the tenuous Foundation, University of Mission 66 program and web of connections between Virginia, Golden Gate explores the influence Ada Segre ourselves and the natural National Parks Conservancy, of mid-century modernism The Gardens at San Lorenzo processes that shape this and the George Wright on landscape design and in Piacenza, 1656-1665 earth.” Society park planning. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2006 Part 1: The History of Park Planning and Design This two-volume set May 20-22, 2008 includes a photographic Charlottesville, Virginia reproduction of an anony- mous seventeenth-century

22 Contributors Galen Cranz, Ph.D., Professor Landscape Architects, and tieth-century and contempo- Errata of Architecture at the Univer- a recipient of the Bradford rary landscape architecture. sity of California at Berkeley, Williams Medal and a A critic and theorist, Meyer’s is an environmental sociolo- Graham Foundation Grant. most recent writings include Part 2: The Present and Ethan Carr, Ph.D., is a land- gist, park historian, land- From 1994 to 2002 he served “Uncertain Parks: Disturbed The caption for the photo- Future of Park Planning and scape historian and preserva- scape theorist, and designer. as editor of Landscape Sites, Citizens, and a Risk graph on Page 3 of the Design tionist specializing in Among her recent publica- Journal. Society” in Large Parks previous issue of Site/Lines December 9-11, 2008 the public landscapes of tions are articles in Places (Princeton Architectural (Volume III / Number I) San Francisco, California the United States. He is and Landscape Journal about Robin Karson is the founder Press, 2007) and “Site reads “Lower East Side play- Contact: the author of Wilderness by sustainability in park design. and executive director of Citations” in Site Matters ground attendant watching www.designingtheparks.com Design (University of the Library of American (Routledge, 2005). children digging, January, Nebraska Press, 1998) and Julie Ann Grimm covers city Landscape History, a not-for- 1941.” It should read “Play- Transforming with Water Mission 66: Modernism and government as a reporter profit organization that pro- David Schuyler, Ph.D., is ground attendant watching International Federation of the National Park Dilemma with The Santa Fe New duces books and exhibitions Arthur and Katherine children digging in Hines Landscape Architects (IFLA) (Library of American Mexican, a daily newspaper. about American landscape Shadek Professor of the (formerly St. Augustine) Park, 45th World Congress Landscape History with the She has a journalism degree history. Her most recent Humanities and a professor Bronx, New York, c. 1940.” June 30-July 3, 2008 University of Massachusetts from the University of book is A Genius for Place: of American Studies at The caption for the pho- Apeldoorn, The Netherlands Press, 2007). Carr formerly Missouri-Columbia and American Landscapes of the Franklin & Marshall College, tograph on page 5 of the Contact: www.ifla2008.com served as the New York City worked for the Associated Country Place Era (Library of where he has taught previous issue of Site/Lines park historian and as a Press in Albuquerque, New American Landscape History since 1979. He is the author (Volume III / Number I) Vauxhall Revisited: National Park Service land- Mexico, before joining the with the University of of A City Transformed: reads “Robert Moses at the Pleasure Gardens and Their scape architect. He is cur- New Mexican in 2003. In Massachusetts Press, 2007). Redevelopment, Race, and dedication of the Great Publics, 1660-1880 rently an associate professor 2007 she was awarded the She is also the author of Suburbanization in Lancaster, Lawn, July 6, 1934.” It should Paul Mellon Centre for at the University of Virginia top prize in the National Fletcher Steele, Landscape Pennsylvania, 1940–1980 read “Robert Moses with Studies in British Art School of Architecture and Federation of Press Women’s Architect (Library of American (Penn State University Press, Governor Thomas E. Dewey July 15-16, 2008 is editing the eighth volume annual communications Landscape History, 2003), 2002), Apostle of Taste: Andrew in the front row, Great London, England of The Papers of Frederick Law contest. The Muses of Gwinn (Saga- Jackson Downing 1815-1852 Lawn event for the New York An interdisciplinary Olmsted. press/Abrams, 1996), and (The Johns Hopkins Community Trust, July 6, conference accompanied by Kenneth I. Helphand, Ph.D., is co-editor of Pioneers of University Press, 1996) and 1943. a concert. Leslie Rose Close is a land- a professor of Landscape American Landscape Design The New Urban Landscape: Contact: scape historian. A founder of Architecture at the University (McGraw-Hill, 2000). The Redefinition of City Form Corrections courtesy of www.paul-mellon- the Catalog of Landscape of Oregon. His recent works in Nineteenth-Century America Jonathan Kuhn, Director, Art centre.ac.uk/contact.html Records in the United States, include Dreaming Gardens: Elizabeth Meyer, FASLA, is a (The Johns Hopkins and Antiquities, City of New now housed at the New York Landscape Architecture & the landscape architect and a University Press, 1986). He York/Parks and Recreation. Botanical Garden, she was Making of Modern Israel member of the faculty of the also co-edited From Garden director of the Program in (Center for American Places Department of Architecture City to Green City: The Legacy American Landscape History in association with the + Landscape Architecture of Ebenezer Howard (The at Wave Hill between 1980 University of Virginia Press, at the University of Virginia Johns Hopkins University and 1988. She is currently 2002) and Defiant Gardens: School of Architecture. Press, 2002), and was the co- working on a guide to New Making Gardens in Wartime Formerly chair of the depart- editor of three volumes of York City historic land- (Trinity University Press, ment and Graduate Program The Papers of Frederick Law scapes. 2006). He is a Fellow of the Director, she teaches design Olmsted, the most recent of American Society of Land- studios and courses on the which is The Years of Olmsted, scape Architects, a Senior theory and practice of twen- Vaux & Company, 1865-1874 Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks, (The Johns Hopkins an Honorary Member University Press, 1992). of the Israel Association of

23 Foundation e ok Y10024 NY York, New West 81st Street 7

Volume iii, Number ii for Spring 2008 LandscapeStudies Publisher: Foundation for Landscape Studies Board of Directors: Dominique Browning Jay E. Cantor Kenneth I. Helphand Robin Karson Nancy Newcomb Therese O’Malley John A. Pinto Reuben M. Rainey Frederic Rich, Chairman Elizabeth Barlow Rogers Margaret Sullivan

Editor: Elizabeth Barlow Rogers Assistant Editor: Margaret Sullivan Copy-editor: Margaret Oppenheimer Design: Skeggs Design Contributors: Ethan Carr Leslie Rose Close Galen Cranz Julie Ann Grimm Kenneth I. Helphand Robin Karson Elizabeth K. Meyer David Schuyler

For more information about the Foundation for Landscape Studies, visit www.foundationforlandscape studies.org, or contact [email protected].