Stanley W. Abbott: Visionary Planner of the Blue Ridge Parkway

Magnolia grandiflora The Laurel Tree of Carolina Publication of the Southern Garden Catesby’s NaturalM History, 1743 agnoliaHistory Society Vol. XXVI No. 2 Spring 2013 Stanley W. Abbott: Visionary Planner of the Blue Ridge Parkway By Gale Roberts (daughter of Stanley Abbott), Williamsburg, Virginia In 2010, the Blue Ridge Parkway celebrated its 75th anniversary. This 470-mile scenic highway, passing through twenty-nine counties in Virginia and North Carolina, is now enjoyed by seventeen million recreational visitors annually. Since 1946, the Blue Ridge Parkway has been the most visited site in the entire National Park system and is often called “America’s Favorite Drive.” Photo: National Park Service Park National Photo: On September 11, 1935, when actual construction The Parkway was designed to reveal landscapes as motorists began, the dream of the Blue Ridge Parkway, which arose rounded gentle curves. during the Great Depression, was far from becoming a reality. It was during this period of momentous historical the automobile had gripped the country. Americans were events that Stanley Abbott embarked upon his career. experiencing a national park movement and becoming In December 1933, at the age of twenty-five and just aware of the trend in preservation of our great landscapes. three years out of Cornell University, Abbott was hired In June 1933, the National Industrial Recovery Act by the Department of the Interior to be the first resident authorized the Public Works Administrator to prepare a landscape architect of the proposed “scenic highway.” program to construct, repair, and improve public highways Franklin D. Roosevelt had just been elected president in and parkways. Without this act, the Blue Ridge Parkway a landslide victory, bringing in the era of the New Deal. project would have been unfeasible, and the highway may The idea of linking the Shenandoah and Great Smoky never have been built at all. The initial appropriation of Mountains National Parks –“Park to Park” would bring (continued on page 3) desperately needed relief to the Southern Appalachians. In Design with Culture Ian Firth wrote: “An enormous undertaking, the Blue Ridge Parkway was the product of Inside this Issue many people’s efforts: in the Roosevelt administration, in Congress, in the governments of Virginia and North Pg. 5 SGHS Annual Meeting in Lynchburg Review Carolina, and in the many federal and state agencies Pg. 9 Members in the News involved.” 1 He further stated: “At a length of hundreds of miles, the Blue Ridge Parkway was by far more ambitious Pg. 9 Two Worthy Certificate of Merit Recipients in scale than any of its predecessors. Indeed, it was the Pg. 10 "Feeding the American South: Heritage longest road ever planned as a single unit up to that time Gardening and Farming" in America. Moreover, it was distant from all major cities, Pg. 11 "Preserving Our Coastal Garden History" and it was to pass through the most mountainous terrain east of the Mississippi.”2 Simultaneously, a love affair with CALENDAR Please visit the SGHS Web site, www. Landscape History Conference, “Masters of southerngardenhistory.org, for a complete and more Modern Landscape Design,” Indianapolis, IN. detailed calendar with the latest updates and links to Prominent scholars from across the country will individual Web sites. gather at the Indianapolis Museum of Art to introduce their recent work on modern landscape July 27, 2013. “Restoring Beatrix Farrand’s architects, including Thomas Church, James Rose, Gardens,” a seminar organized by The Beatrix Robert Royston, and A. E. Bye. The conference also Farrand Society, Bar Harbor, ME. Speakers include will launch the eponymous new LALH book series: Gail Griffin (Dumbarton Oaks); Rebecca Trafton Each of the conference speakers is the author of a (Dumbarton Oaks Park); Carole Plenty (Abby forthcoming monograph exploring the career, major Aldrich Rockefeller Garden); Kate Kerin (Bellefield); works, and legacy of a modern master. Visit: http:// Sue Sturtevant (Hill-Stead); and others. Co- lalh.org sponsored by the Garden Conservancy. Visit: www. beatrixfarrandsociety.org October 4-5, 2013. “The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century,” symposium at September 6-7, 2013. 7th Annual Heritage Harvest Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collec- Festival at Monticello. Educational, family- tion. This two-day symposium will bring together an friendly event, held in the gardens of Monticello, international body of scholars working on botanical celebrating Jefferson’s gardening legacy and featuring investigations and publications within the context of heirloom fruits and vegetables, organic gardening, imperial expansion in the long eighteenth century. and seed-saving; sponsored by the Thomas Jefferson The period saw widespread exploration, a tremen- Foundation and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. dous increase in the traffic in botanical specimens, Visit: www.heritageharvestfestival.com significant taxonomic innovations, and horticultural experimentation. These developments will be revis- September 26-28, 2013. “To Everything a ited from a comparative perspective that will include Season,” 19th Conference on Restoring Southern Europe, the Ottoman Empire, Africa, Asia, and the Gardens and Landscapes, Winston-Salem, NC; Americas.The symposium will coincide with the fifti- biennial conference, at Old Salem Museum & eth anniversary of the Rare Book Room at Dumbar- Gardens and Reynolda House Museum of American ton Oaks, and will feature an exhibit of botanical Art; co-sponsored by SGHS, explores historic works from our collections. BotanySymposium@ methods and resources in cultivating, preserving, doaks.org visit: http://www.doaks.org/news/botany- and preparing heritage foods and livestock in the of-empire American South. Visit: www.oldsalem.org or Sally nd Gant: [email protected]; (336) 721-7361. February 28-March 2, 2014. 32 Annual Meeting of the Southern Garden History Society in September 28-29, 2013. Library of American Savannah, GA. For details see article on page 11. 2 Magnolia • Spring 2013 Vol. XXVI, No. 2 Stanley W. Abbott: Visionary Planner……(continued from page 1) four million dollars to fund Public Works in the Blue was a fortuitous opportunity for his early career and would Ridge attracted a large pool of local relief-funded laborers define his future. eager to work. In addition, many highly trained and out- Due to Clarke’s experience with Westchester parkways, of-work engineers and landscape architects were hoping to he and engineer Jay Downer were engaged by the National be hired for this project. Park Service (NPS) to advise on the “scenic” parkway Professor Harley Jolley wrote in down South. It was at this time that 1987: “…it is extremely difficult today to Clarke recommended his young employee properly appreciate the awesome mission Facts about the Blue Stanley Abbott also be hired by the NPS given to those who pioneered the location, Ridge Parkway to act as Clarke’s “man on the spot” in design, and landscaping of some five Virginia. The eager young Stan Abbott hundred miles of the nation’s first rural • 470 miles long showed up for work at the Department national highway—along a route where of the Interior in Washington, DC • 190 miles of foot magnificent, heavily forested mile-high right before Christmas of 1933 and was trails mountains had been gashed by erosion, or officially hired to start the design challenge 3 exploited for commercial development.” • 14 visitor centers of the era—a parkway in the Southern To Stanley W. Abbott, the man who was Appalachians! to administer development of this piece • 281 overlooks Living in Salem and newly married, of “managed American countryside,” Stanley often recalled how “the first offices the Parkway location posed a creative • 91 historic build- were our dining room and the dining challenge. As Stan Abbott would later ings table was the drafting board. It was three recall, “I can’t imagine a more creative job • 169 bridges or four months before we could arrange than locating that Blue Ridge Parkway office space in downtown Roanoke.” because you worked with a ten league • 26 tunnels After a few months on the project, canvas and a brush of a comet’s tail.” 4 the United States Secretary of the Interior Stanley William Abbott was born Harold Ickes had a dispute with Clarke in Yonkers, New York on March 13, 1908 to Edward and Downer over their fees, resulting in there resignation and Eva Abbott. After attending public schools, he from the parkway project. Abbott was left to direct, and entered Cornell University in Ithaca and earned a B.A. greatly influence, the design of the Blue Ridge Parkway. in Landscape Architecture in 1930. Since the late 1920s He remarked later that he felt fortunate that NPS, Cornell’s Landscape Architecture program, founded in preoccupied with new and greatly enlarged responsibilities, 1904, was drawing on the resources of both agriculture left him to do his job. Abbott’s design team included and architecture, with a heavy dose of engineering. It (continued on page 4) was a rigorous five- year program. Abbott managed to build a strong academic record, while rowing on the Cornell crew, of which he was the captain in 1929. Not long after graduation, Abbott was hired by the Superintendent of Construction for the Westchester County Parks Commission, Gilmore Clarke, a renowned landscape Photo Family architect. For Abbott Stanley W. Abbott, shortly after Photo Family this was “a plum job.” As his 1930 graduation from Cornell Stanley W. Abbott in the Roanoke, Virginia, offices of the Blue it would turn out, this University. Ridge Parkway in the 1930s. Vol. XXVI, No. 2 Magnolia • Spring 2013 3 Stanley W. Abbott: Visionary Planner……(continued from page 3) landscape architect Edward Abbuehl, who became Abbott’s Abbott returned briefly to the Roanoke office; however, right-hand man early in the planning stages. William M. because construction funding was slashed during the war, Austin, resident engineer, was Abbott’s counterpart in the progress slowed, and he was reassigned by the Department Roanoke office.

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