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Home , Frederick Law Olmsted, William Seward Webb

A and Garden in : Olmsted and the Webbs at

Alan Emmet

With the Adirondacks as a backdrop across , the W. S. Webbs, with guidance from Frederick Law Olmsted, entirely transformed their property to accord with their own vision. Owing to a continuity of ownership and planning, the of the Webbs has lasted now for over a century.

Anyone who walks through the woods in New ness with , oldest England can hardly miss the stone fences. son and chief heir of "Commodore" Cornelius Lichen-covered, often half-buried in pine Vanderbrlt.22 needles, they thread their way up hill and down, Dr. Webb travelled to Vermont in 1880 to now and then meeting each other at odd sharp look at the Rutland railroad with an eye to angles. These fences are such an obvious sign of annexing it to the Vanderbilt empire. Although a drastically altered land use that you begin to he did not favor acquisition of the railroad, wonder how the land once looked. And then you he liked what he saw of Burlington and marvel at the sheer strength and determination the Champlain Valley. He also liked the of the region’s first farmers. Vanderbilts. In 1881, Seward Webb married Lila The terrain at Shelburne Farms is different. Vanderbilt, the next-youngest of William Here, beside Lake Champlain in northern Ver- Henry’s eight children. Not long after his mar- mont, you could walk through a thousand acres riage, Dr. Webb was named president of the of woods and pastureland without encountering Wagner Palace Car Company, suppliers of sleep- even a remnant of the typical old stone fences. ing cars to the Vanderbilt-controlled The landscape is idyllically pastoral, with Central Railroad. Brown Swiss cows browsing in verdant rolling For a wedding present, Lila’s father gave her meadows. This bucolic setting, unique now in a house on at 54th Street, just a the rapidly developing periphery of Burlington, block from his own mansion and those of other Vermont’s largest city, has long been an family members. Their Fifth Avenue house was anomaly. The truth is that Shelburne Farms was to be the Webbs’ primary residence for thirty deliberately made to look different from the years. As the location for their requisite country surrounding countryside. The boundary walls house, they promptly settled upon the remote of the old agricultural order were removed, and unfashionable part of Vermont that had stone by stone, in the 1880s, and the terrain was appealed to Dr. Webb. reshaped on a new and grand scale. On the shores of Lake Champlain at Burlington, the Webbs built a rustic summer William Seward Webb (1851-1926) had grown cottage called Oakledge.3 This was all very well up in , where his father was the for a young couple, but the Webbs had some- "pugnacious" editor of a New York paper.’ thing grander in mind. Scouting out the area, Seward Webb studied medicine in Europe and at Seward Webb decided the most desirable land Columbia. He practiced for only three or four lay along the lake in Shelburne. The farms there years before turning to finance on , may have been worn out, but the topography where he established his own brokerage house. and the scenery were special. The shoreline was Before long he became involved in railroad busi- irregular, with rocky promontories and curving 13

Steamer off Shelburne Pomt, oil by Charles Lewis Hyde. This mldcentury painting illustrates the mew that Olmsted admired m 1845. The typical agranan Vermont landscape m the foreground later became part of William S Webb’s Shelburne Farms and was subjected to a grand zeordenng. bays. From any point along that stretch of shore, farm buildings added little if any value; Webb one had the extraordinary view of the blue was interested only in land.~ Still he continued Adirondack mountains, rising tier on tier, on to buy. Eventually he owned almost 4,000 con- the far side of the lake. From Lone Tree Hill in tiguous acres. Shelburne, three hundred feet above the water, the view to the west was even more impressive. Dr. Webb intended all along to reshape the sepa- Webb began negotiating in 1885 to buy up rate farms he was buying into one great unified parcels of land in Shelburne. In December of whole. His first move was to hire an architect to that year, his father-in-law William Henry design a suitable house and major farm build- Vanderbilt died, having doubled the fortune that ings. His choice of R. H. Robertson was a happy his father, Cornelius, had bequeathed to him a one for both men. Robertson was known to mere eight years earlier.4 Lila’s inheritance was Webb as a designer of railroad stations and as only a small fraction of her father’s $200-million architect of the Gothic Revival Church of Saint estate, but added to Seward Webb’s own rapidly James in . He worked for Webb for growing fortune, the couple’s means seemed years. With Webb as his patron, Robertson’s limitless. The Webbs could have almost any- major work was done at Shelburne. thing they wanted. Dr. Webb enlarged the scope One of Dr. Webb’s first directives to of his plans for Shelburne and accelerated the Robertson was to ask Frederick Law Olmsted, pace of his land purchases. Through an agent, he then ’s preeminent landscape archi- negotiated with local farmers, many of them tect, to come as soon as possible to Shelburne to impoverished, but not all of whom were pleased confer in regard to the "landscape department."’7 to learn that they had granted sales options to In his June 1886 letter to Olmsted conveying the same mysterious buyer.’ By 1891, Webb had Webb’s mvitation, Robertson wrote that he had purchased all or portions of twenty-nine farms, been retained to design "a most important covering 2,800 acres. The prices Webb paid Country house, stock barns-stables etc." for varied widely, but the average was less than the 1,700 acres that Webb had by that time $150 per acre over a six-year period. Existing purchased along the lake. To make sure that 14

tice had taken him all over the coun- try. He continued to design public for cities, including , , and Washington, DC. He advised on campus plans, ranging from to . He collaborated with prominent archi- tects such as H. H. Richardson on designs for private estates. At about the same time that he took on Dr. Webb as a client, he was working for other members of the extended in Newport, Lenox, and Bar Harbor. Biltmore, by far his largest undertaking for a private client, was still ahead. Olmsted’s connection with the Vanderbilts had even included laying out the grounds for the family mausoleum on . 10 Staten Island, as it happened, had Prelimmary Study for Part of Plan for Laymg Out the Shelburne Farms been the site of Olmsted’s first contact Estate for Dr. W. S. Webb, by F. L. and J. C. Olmsted, 1887. The lake with the Vanderbilts. In 1848, aged shore is at the lower edge of this plan; the house, shown at the center, twenty-six and unsure of his life work, with its "home and "home stables" on Lone Tree grounds" top of Hill, Olmsted had attempted to run a farm was to to The actually built close the lake, contrary Olmsted’s advice. bought for him by his father. He lasted plan mdlcates Olmsted’s division of the estate mto separate areas of two on Staten Island but farm, park, and forest. only years did get to know a neighboring farmer, Olmsted realized the significance of the project, William Henry Vanderbilt (the father, much Robertson wrote that "if justice is done to the later, of Lila Webb)." Vanderbilt was exactly situation and conditions it will without doubt the same age as Olmsted. He had been rusti- be one of the most important and beautiful cated to farming by his father, Cornelius, who country places in America and in view of this at the time considered him "an improvident " fact I hope you can undertake the problem." dolt."’z Dolt or not, Vanderbilt’s farm, unlike Olmsted wrote to Dr. Webb immediately, Olmsted’s, was quite prosperous. arranging to make an inspection trip to Throughout his career as a landscape archi- Shelburne the very next week, adding that his tect, one of Olmsted’s primary goals was to charge for a preliminary visit would be $100 and improve the environment of the burgeoning traveling expenses.8 Within a month after his cities where more and more people spent their first visit, Olmsted had formulated the basis for lives. At the same time, he perceived the impor- his proposal, which, as he outlined it to his col- tance of planning to preserve wilderness areas league, Charles Eliot, was to be "a perfectly and places of particular natural beauty. Olmsted simple park, or pasture-field, a mile long on the worked to protect Yosemite and , lake, half a mile deep, the house looking down places he deemed to be national treasures, the over it."9 birthright of all Americans. His work for rich Olmsted was at the peak of his career when private clients was just as firmly grounded in he agreed to advise Dr. Webb. Ten years earlier, his belief in the necessity for conserving natural having completed his work on the New York resources. City parks, he had moved his office to Wherever he worked, Olmsted was keenly Brookline, . Since then, his prac- aware of the character and scenery of the locale. 155

This, to him, was what the word "landscape" manded the best of everything. He employed meant. He realized that this concern set him Olmsted because Olmsted was unquestionably apart from others m his field. Most designers, he the foremost m the country. observed, were unfortunately attuned only to Olmsted, in turn, was impressed by the breadth elements, incidents, and features, rather than of Webb’s vision, the grand scope of his scheme, the landscape itself. This he held to be the direct and, doubtless, the apparently unlimited extent result of their training as gardeners. "A training of Webb’s resources for carrying out an idea. which is innocently assumed to be a training in When he first embarked on the project for Webb, landscape gardening is a training in fact away Olmsted, like Robertson, was convinced that, from it.""I when completed, the design of Shelburne Farms At a time when there were no academic "would be the most interesting and publicly programs in landscape design and planning, valuable private work of the time on the Ameri- Olmsted’s own education had depended on his can continent."ls remarkable powers of observation. Even as a One of Olmsted’s proposals for Shelburne young man, he had been keenly aware of scen- farms, the one that he most ardently promoted, ery and well able to describe what he saw. In was that the estate include an of all an 1845 letter to his father, he had by chance the trees and shrubs native to Vermont. The described the actual setting of what, forty years arboretum was to accord with the guidelines later, was to become Shelburne Farms. Explor- established by Harvard professor Charles ing that part of Vermont on a horse, he had Sprague Sargent in planning the Arnold Arbore- observed the marginal state of the region’s agri- tum. To stock this "Arboretum Vermontii," culture. He rode past burnt stumps, patches of Olmsted urged Webb to take advantage of the mullein, and so little grass that "I should thmk distinguished nursery of Pringle and Horsford, the poor sheep would find it hard work enough located just six miles south of Shelburne.’6 to live, without troubling themselves with After discussing the idea with his superinten- growing wool." South of Burlington, standing dent, Arthur Taylor, who would be responsible probably on Lone Tree Hill, the highest point at for planting and care, Webb agreed to proceed Shelburne Farms, Olmsted encountered one of with the arboretum." the finest views he had ever seen. He admired As envisioned by Olmsted, the arboretum Lake Champlam with its bays and islands, but was to follow the curving roadways he had laid the "chief charm" was the mountain backdrop out, being set back from the road on both sides. across the lake. Such a scheme meant that the arboretum would be an and visible of Shelburne I never saw mountams rise more beautifully one integral very part above another the larger ones seemmg to cluster Farms, which was exactly Olmsted’s intent. He round and protect the smaller, nor did the sum- placed orders with nurseries all across the coun- mer veil of haze ever sit on them more sweetly. try for species that Pringle and Horsford were Back of all rose some magnificent thunderheads unable to supply in sufficient quantity. Thou- and they rose fast too, compellmg me at 5 sands of trees and shrubs were planted under o’clock to take refuge and toast and eggs in a Taylor’s supervision, beginning in 1887. For the little road-side inn.’4 sake of economy, a vast number were grown to The setting was certainly no less impressive planting-out size in an extensive nursery estab- in 1886, when Olmsted responded to Dr. Webb’s lished on the Shelburne property. summons. As was his custom, Olmsted had recom- mended native and hardy plants, based on his Relations between Webb and Olmsted were analysis of the site. His plant lists included unfailingly polite, but not entirely harmonious. most of the northeastern native trees: ashes, Both were men of strong character, with firmly basswood, birches, , hickories, oaks, and held convictions. Despite disagreements, how- willows, as well as the American chestnut and ever, their respect for each other never wavered. the American .’H Balsam fir, hemlock, and Dr. Webb, the client, always sought and de- various native pines were ordered in quantity. 166

Olmsted expected Pringle and Horsford to col- Olmsted lost his enthusiasm for Shelburne lect many shrub species by the hundred from Farms when he realized that Webb did not share the wild: alders, swamp azalea, blueberry, but- his belief in the educational and scientific tonbush, elderberry, pussy willows, black and importance to the public of the work they might red raspberries, wild roses, viburnums, witch have accomplished there together. After the hazel, and others. He also ordered native vines, summer of 1888, Olmsted’s sons and associates including bittersweet, clematis, and wild grape. attended to the work at Shelburne. The senior Olmsted asked for wildflowers, such as twin- Olmsted, meanwhile, was becoming deeply flower (Linnea borealis) and trailing arbutus involved with an even larger private project, and (Epigaea repens). The plants ordered for a much more sympathetic patron. At Biltmore Shelburne Farms were certainly far different in the North Carolina mountains, George from the typical ornamentals with which gar- W. Vanderbilt, Lila Webb’s brother, granted deners and estate managers were decorating Olmsted the trust and the latitude that he had most other country places at the time. not received from the Webbs. Olmsted’s ultimate aim seemed to be to repro- duce the plant diversity that the region might Much of Olmsted’s preliminary plan was imple- as were his articulated have supported a century or two earlier, before mented, carefully prin- of and the of the land was cleared for farming. The only alien ciples design separation conflicting uses. Olmsted divided the into three plants he ordered were western evergreens property areas: "Ist and lands in from P. Douglass & Sons: Colorado spruce Tillage pasture rotation; (Picea pungens) and Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga 2nd Park or permanent pasture lands; 3rd Forest menziesii). Arboretum Vermontii."2’ He insisted that cattle should be from the home the Webb’s ideas for planting began to diverge kept grounds, main and the but without the con- from Olmsted’s as soon as he fully undertood roads, forest, tinual nuisance of To this Olmsted what Olmsted was proposing. Webb wanted to gates. end, the use of sunk fences with include ornamental varieties; the greenery proposed retaining the unobtrusive ha-has of the indigenous to Vermont seemed too stark for walls, like English to confine the livestock. the Shelburne Farms he envisioned. He began to landscape school, near the were to be request tender and exotic species, such as rhodo- Fences, particularly house, as as Even the main dendrons, weeping willows, tea roses, and garde- inconspicuous possible. entrance to the estate could be nias. Olmsted pointed out that these would not gates generally left under Olmsted’s The survive at Shelburne and would be entirely out open, plan. existing and roads were to be of character with the landscape.]9 He refused to "straight graceless" involve himself with the growing of tropical changed in course and character to suit the terrain and the lush farmland which flowers under glass, if that were Webb’s desire. through would run. A great deal of planting was done according to they Olmsted’s recommendation, but the Vermont The new trees and shrubs were to be set back from the with here and there a Arboretum was never completed. This may roads, grouping forward in an random have been Olmsted’s greatest frustration at brought apparently way. Shelburne. He had believed strongly that "Fine specimen trees of the old spontaneous Shelburne Farms, although privately owned, growth are to be preserved," Olmsted wrote.22 of trees and the were to would have a public purpose. As he wrote when Groups undergrowth look as natural as he submitted his preliminary plan to Webb in possible. July, 1887, Olmsted emphasized to Webb the importance of a definite before I have satisfied exammation having plan proceeding. myself by personal Ongoing land purchases made this difficult, if of the feasibility of such an arrangement and that not In 1889 after five a beautiful, interesting, instructive and pubhcly impossible. purchasing farms to the south of his important arboretum can be so obtamed, the pasture original tract, present natural woods formmg an appropnate Webb finally agreed to plant the hilly northern and harmonious background for it and addmg part of the estate in trees, as Olmsted had rec- directly to its scientific value.z° ommended all along.23 177

with recent A stretch of one of the new roads, here passmg between old-growth forest trees mterspersed plantmg. Photo by T. E. Marr, ca. 1900. 188

The Webbs’ house at Shelburne Farms, designed by R. H. Robertson, photo by T. E. Marr, Boston, ca 1900. The rooms on this western side face Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountams.

The English parks that Olmsted had so garden was laid out in geometrically patterned admired on his first trip abroad as a young man beds, reportedly modelled after the garden at in 1850 were the chief source of his inspiration Hampton Court.z4 The beds were planted each throughout his long career. The design prin- year with massed annuals that had been raised ciples on which he based his public and private m the estate’s greenhouses. By 1911, Lila Webb work came from his interpretation of English was taking more interest in the garden. She was landscape styles. The idyllic pastoral landscape dissatisfied with what she had. Apparently, she of Shelburne Farms is typically Olmstedian. herself planned the Italianate garden on which The mam road rolls through broad meadowland, work began in 1912.25 The new garden ran the then up a gentle rise into a stretch of deep entire length of the house, between it and the woods. Upon emerging again into the open, one lake. Long, low brick walls divided the gentle glimpses at a distance the lake, or, at another declivity into shallow terraces. At one end of point, the great house. Then the road bends the upper level, a pergola curved around an oval away, and the distant vision is hidden once basin. On the lowest terrace, between the arms again. The views that seem so accidental were of a balustraded double stairway, was a lily pool. arranged with care. Transitions from forest to The garden ended at a parapet, bowed out above pasture to lawn and flower garden are smooth the cliff at the lake’s edge. Each season, tubbed and gradual. There is a sense of fitness and bay trees were put out along the balustrade. The inevitability about this landscape. scene looked for all the world like Isola Bella at Lake Maggiore or like the Italian-inspired Webb devoted much attention to agriculture garden of 1850 at Bantry House in Ireland that at Shelburne Farms, using the latest scientific overlooked a bay of the sea, with mountains all techniques, which he hoped would set an ex- around. In northern Vermont such a garden was ample for Vermont farmers. Close to the manor definitely unusual. house, the Webbs had an ornamental flower gar- A garden of this style and magnitude was not den. There is no indication that the Olmsted uncommon, however, on the estates of the rich office was involved in its design. The earliest in pre-World War I America, when formality 19

was fashionable and European prototypes were valued. The Webbs, on their frequent trips abroad, had statuary and a sun- dial shipped home. allegedly brought them an antique fountain sculpture from Italy.26 The Webbs had a mason who worked full-time to maintain the walls and stone- work while a troop of gardeners managed the flower beds. There were peony beds, a rose garden, and deep perennial borders backed by majestic spires of delphiniums that echoed the shades of blue in the mountains across the lake. From the flower garden, steps descended to a lily pool and a curved parapet Lila Webb amassed a compre- overlookmg Lake Champlam Bay trees in Italian pots were set out each hensive garden library as her summer along the balustrade Photo by A. A. McAllister, 1916, SFF~ interest grew. Her 1847 copy of (Samuel B.) / Parsons on the Rose is inscribed "Lila from Seward, 1912." She had English books, already classics, by John Sedding and Gertrude Jekyll, as well as the recent works of Helena Rutherfurd Ely, Louise Beebe Wilder, and Mrs. Francis King, among others. Her books included at least three on Ital- ian gardens, those by Charles Platt, Edith Wharton, and George S. Elgood. A tiny 1914 diary by Lila Webb reads as if it were intended to be a calendar of practical hints to other gar- deners. If she had filled it with authoritative "dos and don’ts" for each month or week of the year, her book could have fol- The Webb family m the flower garden, ca. 1916. Dr. and Mrs. Webb flank their the row. The was a the lowed a time-honored tradi- grandchildren m front delphinium display feature of perennial borders. In the background is a curved Photo A tion : "Plant Sweet Peas as soon long, pergola by A McAlhster. as the frost is out of the ground." Unfortunately, Lila Webb’s literary cator of the insidious onset of neglect, all the efforts petered out not long after the frost would potted bay trees along the parapet were killed have been out of the Shelburne ground that year. by an early frost.z’ The glory days were over. Shelburne Farms had been built up very quickly. Seward Webb died at Shelburne Farms in 1926. In typically American fashion, it flourished as The following year, by act of God or as an indi- long as did its creator. Its decline was precipi- 20

14 tous-to a point. The survival and rebirth of Ibid., 64-65. Shelburne Farms could be a case study in pres- 15 Frederick Law Olmsted to William Seward Webb, 111 ervation. Dr. Webb’s descendants have shown as April 1888, Olmsted Papers. much determination, and as much devotion to Shelburne Farms, as their progenitor. 16 Frederick Law Olmsted to William Seward Webb, 177 March 1887, Reel Al:68, Olmsted Papers. Endnotes 17 William Seward Webb to Frederick Law Olmsted, 26 1 March 1887, Olmsted Papers. Seward Webb Dead m Vermont," New York Times, 30 Oct. 1926. 18 The Olmsted firm placed orders with Pnngle & Horsford and nine other nurseries in the of 2 The Vanderbilt spring Wayne Andrews, Legend (NY: 1887. See Olmsted and "List of Trees and Harcourt Brace, 1941 147. Papers Shrubs Proposed to be ordered for Dr. W. S. Webb," 22 Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic 3 The House at Shelburne Farms April 1887, Joe Sherman, MA. (Middlebury, VT: Paul S. Enksson, 1986), 9-11. Site, Brookline, 19 F. L. Olmsted & C. Olmsted to William Seward 4 John Tebbel, The Inhentors: A Study of Amenca’s’s J. Webb, 24 Jan. 1889, Reel A3:140; Frederick Law Great Fortunes and What Happened to Them (NY: G. Olmsted to William Seward 7 March P. Putnam’s Sons, 1962), 30. Webb, 1888, Reel A2:249, Olmsted Papers. S Sherman, The House at Shelburne Farms, 16. 2o Frederick Law Olmsted to William Seward Webb, 122 Reel Olmsted 6 Land records of the Town of Shelburne; William C. July 1887, Al:887, Papers. ed., Shelburne Farms. The History of an Lrpke, zi Fredenck Law Olmsted to William Seward 122 Estate VT: Robert Hull Webb, Agncultural (Burlington, Olmsted Fleming Museum, University of Vermont, 1974/, 16. July 1887, Papers. 22 Ibid. 7 R. H. Robertson to Frederick Law Olmsted, 17 June 1886, Job File 1031, Box B-74, Frederick Law Olmsted 23 William Seward Webb to Frederick Law 20 Papers, Manuscript Drvrsron, Library of Congress. Olmsted, Feb. 1889, Olmsted Papers. 8 Frederick Law Olmsted to William Seward 188 Webb, 24 "Shelburne 44 June 1886, Olmsted Papers. Wiecek, Farms," 25 Susan "Gardens of a Gilded 9 Frederick Law Olmsted to Charles 20 Cady Hayward, Age," Eliot, July 1886, Vermont 6. quoted by Joan Wiecek, "Shelburne Farms," Master’s Life 42 (Summer 1988/: of Architecture, Degree Project, Dept. Landscape zb Isabell H. "The Garden of Mrs. W. Seward Umversity of Massachusetts, 1984, 21. Hardie, Webb," Country Life m Amenca 32 (Oct. 1917):62- "The Garden at Shelburne Arts and 1o Albert Fredenck Law Olmsted and the 63 ; Farms," Fein, Decoration 11 Amemcan Envmonmental TradW on (NY: Braziller, (June 1919):66-67. 1972), 166-69. z~ Sherman, The House at Shelburne Farms, 76. 11 Laura Wood Roper, FLO’ A Biography of Fredenck Law Olmsted (Baltimore: Johns Hopkms University Press, 1973), 55-66. This article is excerpted from the chapter on Shelburne Farms m Alan Emmet’s So Fme a Prospect. Historic New 12 Andrews, Vanderbilt Legend, 25. England Gardens, newly published by the University Press of New England. Her article on the Boott family’s 13 Quoted m Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., & Theodora garden m Boston, a subject she returned to in her new Kimball, Fredenck Law Olmsted, Landscape book, appeared in Arnoldia 47(4). The author is a Architect, 1822-1903 (NY: G P. Putnam’s Sons, consultant m garden history as well as a writer. Her book 1922), 128. is reviewed on page 26.