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Home , Arboretum, Boston Public Garden, Charles Downing Lay, Guy Lowell, Henry Vincent Hubbard, Henry Winthrop Sargent

The Arnold and the Early Years of Education in America

Phyllis Andersen

It was now gay with carriages in lilac time, and the attendance of students was frequently noted. Every spring and fall, John G. Jack could be seen leading a coterie of teachers and the horticultur- ally inclined from to plant. At times in between, Benjamin M.Watson’s horticultural students from the Bussey Institution, or scholars of landscape from Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School or the Institute for Technology, were observed, notebook in hand, pacing up and down the shrub collection rows or scrutinizing a label on the trunk of a healthy specimen . -A scene described by Ida Hay in her 1995 history of the , Science in the Pleasure Ground n July 1, 2002, the thirty-four-year-old Radcliffe t Seminars Program in and Landscape became the Arnold Arboretum’s first formal program in landscape design. However, in the years between the Arboretum’s found- ing in 1872 and the death in 1927 of its first director, , the Arboretum was at the cen- ter of efforts to transform the practice of landscape gar- dening into the profession of landscape . The Arnold Arboretum’s initial involvement in the education of landscape was spurred by the interests of Sargent himself. To most people outside the Harvard community (and to many within it), Sargent was the Arboretum: it was his perspective, his personal-

Holm Lea, the estate of Charles Sargent, m 1900, looking across the and Sargent’s edge plantmgs to the main . 4 A

ity, and his research interests that defined the In 1932 , a landscape institution. Sargent brought to his position an and longtime faculty member in unshakable commitment to the picturesque Harvard’s Department of Landscape Architec- landscape sensibility as espoused by William ture (and, in 1901, the program’s first graduate), Gilpin, Uvedale Price, and Andrew Jackson reflected on the early years of his profession: Downing. Like his colleague Frederick Law In 1880 ... was Olmsted, Sargent was contemptuous of exces- beginning to take its as sive horticultural display, controlled formal rightful place one of in Amenca, recalling its traditional status of honor patterning, and showy floriferousness. His com- m Italy, , and , and its mitment had been formed by European travel, still more ancient role in China and Japan. by his reading of Downing and others, and by his Olmsted and Vaux, drawing inspiration from admiration for the country estates of his cousins the legacies of Michaelangelo, LeNotre, Repton, Henry Winthrop Sargent and H. H. Hunnewell. and Pnnce Puckler, had departed from the horti- During his early years at the Arboretum, cultural taste lingering in the works of Andrew Sargent transformed Holm Lea, his own 150- Jackson Downing, and had given m the Central acre estate in Brookline, Massachusetts, into , , and , , a one of the most admired country places in great public object-lesson in the differentiation America. He experimented freely at Holm Lea, of the landscape art from on the one hand and from architecture on the as creating a landscape of open pastoral views other, well as from the basic and science framed by groves of native , drifts of wild- contributory of .’ flowers, a bucolic pond with cattle grazing at its edges. In the words of landscape historian The Apprenticeship Period of Landscape Cynthia Zaitzevsky, Sargent was "the last in the great tradition of gentlemen landscape - By 1883 had moved ers, at least in this region." Holm Lea, with all his home and office from New York to its apparently effortless scenery and its refer- in order to deal more ences to the pastoral, was no less manmade than Brookline, Massachusetts, with the formal displays in ’s Public Garden. efficiently his firm’s many projects in the Boston area. The Olmsted office became By the 1880s, a growing market in both pub- quickly the for a of lic park and estate design was pointing to a training ground generation landscape that included Charles Warren need for training more American landscape Eliot, and the Olmsted Frederick designers. The success of and Pros- Manning, sons, Jr. pect Park in New York had been publicized by and John Charles. In 1895, near the end of his career and with many articles and illustrations in popular maga- professional weakening health, Olmsted on zines, and planners in other had begun to concentrated making his office a recognize the need for to provide outdoor disciplined training ground. "We are gradually activities and a healthy environment for their preparing a grand professional post-graduate he wrote to son own growing urban populations. At the same school here," his Frederick Jr. In time, designers like Frederick Law Olmsted, the absence of academic programs in landscape , and Horace Cleveland, writing architecture, a period of apprenticeship, com- in hterary magazines and journals of public bined with travel and supervised reading, was affairs, were articulating a role for landscape the only way to enter the profession. Working designers in the public sphere. As a group they without pay or for a nominal stipend, appren- felt a need to assert their special knowledge tices trained with senior designers while provid- of land planning, planting schemes, and their ing a substantial service to the firm by taking on advocacy for both scenery and recreation. They the time-consuming tasks of surveying, draft- felt they had to differentiate themselves ing, and various kinds of fieldwork. Sargent from the architects, civil engineers, and horti- encouraged young men who wanted a career in culturists against whom they were competing landscape architecture to ~oin the Olmsted firm for public contracts. for the educational expenence. Two of his neph- 5

ews, Codman (1864- 1893) and his younger brother Philip (1867-1896), joined Olmsted and Com- pany after a rigorous tour of dur- ing which their itinerary was closely supervised by their uncle. Sargent also guided the early training in landscape design of Beatrix Jones (Farrand) (1872-1959). In the early 1890s-a time when few opportunities for formal education were available to women-Ms. Jones became a private student of Sargent, using the Arnold Arboretum as a laboratory for studying horticulture and design.

It seems almost funny to look back on the haphazard way in which we forerunners of the army of women landscape architects got our education. My own work was started at the suggestion of Professor Charles Sprague Sargent of the Arnold Ar- boretum who, knowing my great interest in , suggested that I begin studying them with the idea of later practicing land- scape architecture or, as we called it then, landscape gardening. The whole scheme seemed to me so wild that it took some time to appreciate Professor Sargent’s ear- A 1903/04 cartoon the the Olmsted nestness. Thanks, however, to his kind- from scrapbooks of office of Brothers The Olmsted office contmued to be a trammg ground for ness and the hospitality of his family, I students even the the program m several months at the Arbo- after founding of landscape spent working architecture at Harvard. retum under his enthusiastic direction and with the benefit of his cmticism. -Letter from to Clarence Garden and : A Journal of Horticulture, Fowler, a trustee of the Cambridge School of Landscape Art and 1888-1897 Architecture and Architecture, n.dz Landscape Sargent did not set up an academic curriculum at the Arboretum, but he did found Garden and Male practitioners, too, were growing weary Forest in 1888. While it was not technically an of and for to "haphazard" training looking ways official publication of the Arnold Arboretum, it elevate their profession to an academic disci- was perceived as such by the general public and an of pline. Jacob Weidenmann, early partner by the Harvard administration. Subtitled "A with his own office in Olmsted, then , Journal of Horticulture, Landscape Art and For- believed that should fill the void: Sargent estry," it offered the then (and now) unique per- spective that the three fields were inextricably If a learned and scientific man like Sargent linked. Sargent listed himself as wishes, he would succeed in estabhshmg a Pub- "conductor," but the editor was William an lic Institute for Landscape gardening and by Stiles, experi- enced New York with a inter- chance Landscape Architecture would soon have journalist strong in to give way to real qualified talents. est public park design. -Letter from Jacob Weidenmann to John The magazme became the voice of the emerg- Charles Olmsted, December 14, 18873 ing profession. Articles by leading landscape 6

architects (Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles tures and laboratory work in , supple- Eliot, H. W. S. Cleveland, George Kessler, Frank mented by study of plants and garden-work at the Botanic Garden. The second a Waugh) began to define the field for an Ameri- year includes course in Horticulture at the can audience as well as offer new strategies for Bussey Institution, land and preservation. Garden and consisting of lectures, with study and practice in the and in the field and garden. In Forest also published carefully crafted essays on the third and fourth years will be given succes- landscape gardening by the art critic Marianna sive courses on Plants in Relation to Landscape Van later in her book Art Rensselaer, gathered Planting, conducted mainly at the Bussey Insti- Out of Doors (1893). It made recommendations tution and the Arnold Arboretum. for readings on landscape gardening, described -Announcement of the Programme of educational opportunities, and discussed the Courses in Landscape Architecture, Lawrence need for quahfied practitioners. As landscape Scientific School, March 1900.5 architect and historian Ethan Carr has written, A was instituted "In an era before a professional organization or one-year graduate program academic instruction existed in the field of land- in 1906 with previous courses in both horticul- ture, and recommended for scape architecture, Garden and Forest took on botany, admittance. the Arnold Arboretum was aspects of both."4 Agam, to be a venue for plant courses. The Arnold Arboretum and Landscape From the beginning, the Arboretum’s collec- Architecture Studies at Harvard tion was of significant pedagogical value to stu- dents. The full spectrum of Amencan species By the early 1890s, many people were urgmg would eventually form the backbone of the col- that Harvard a architecture develop landscape lection, but the Arboretum focused first on a notion President program, supported by assembling plants native to New England. Since Charles W. Eliot and the Nathaniel by geologist students in the early years of the Harvard the dean of Harvard’s Shaler, very popular program were drawn primarily from the New Lawrence Scientific School. Since at that time it England region, where they often began their was the of the that only department University practice, their plant study at the Arboretum was offered advanced instruction in the and physical immediately useful to them after graduation. natural the Lawrence Scientific School sciences, The Bussey Institution was also well posi- was the home for such a and m logical program, tioned to serve as a resource for the new landscape 1900 Harvard launched the first degree-granting program. The Bussey was Harvard’s experiment program in landscape architecture in the Umted in scientific and husbandry from in States that school. Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. 1871 to 1908 when it was converted to a was named its first director; his appointment graduate school in applied biology. Describing honored the of Frederick Law Olmsted legacy its mission as "not educating farmers’ sons Sr. and set a for precedent practitioner/academic in a knowledge of their fathers’ trade ... but ... faculty appointments that is still followed by recognizing the high and difficult character of architecture across the landscape programs husbandry," it had been the only Harvard pro- The country. University aligned the landscape gram offering training in horticulture to land- architecture with the estab- program newly scape architects before the design program was lished in an program architecture, indicating established. It was unique at Harvard for allow- expectation of a close collaborative relationship ing women to attend classes from time to time; between the fields, a collaboration that drew on Benjamin Watson, who taught horticultural science, engineering, and . classes at the Bussey, was particularly support- The Arnold Arboretum and its allied mstitu- ive of women students: tion in -the Bussey Institution- Mr. Watson would also like to receive women in played integral roles in the new program. his course on Trees and Shrubs, or in the course on Particular attention will be given to the study of general Horticulture. He says that he has one good plants both as individuals and as elements of woman student in Landscape Gardening, and that . In the first year will be given lec- another woman has applied for the course in gen- 7

gram]. Horticultural and botanical studies in the laboratory and the field will extend through three years, and ample opportunities will be offered not only to learn the habits of trees, shrubs and plants but also to study landscape gardening effects in the park of the Arboretum ... We are fortunate in being able to estabhsh a connection to the Arbo- retum, which Mr. Sargent’s publications have made known throughout the world as a great hor- ticultural station.’

The Arboretum’s courses for MIT were taught not by Sargent, who demurred at both formal teaching and lecturing, but by John George Jack (1861-1949), a Quebec native who had joined the Arboretum in 1886 to handle plant records. Because he showed a talent for working with the public, Sargent soon entrusted him with full responsibility for both public and academic education. Jack’s lectures and field walks were always well attended and he was eventually given the of Lecturer. Unlike Harvard in the early years of its pro- gram, MIT admitted several women. The land- scape architect Martha Brookes Hutcheson said of her MIT education:

I saw at once that the curriculum did not give John George Jack mstructmg students at the Arnold nearly enough time to what must be known of Arboretum. the "plant world," the riches in material and easy study obtamable in the nearby Arnold Arbo- eral Horticulture. Watson is in favor of giving retum were too great to be but half known so, women the same that he men. opportunities gives during three summers, I made exhaustive notes -Letter from Harvard President Charles W. there for my card catalog. Eliot to Professor Frank Storer, October 18, 1898~ -"Three Women in Landscape Architecture"g The MIT Program in Landscape Architecture Marian C. Coffin also valued her experience The Arnold Arboretum had a direct link to the at the Arnold Arboretum as an MIT student: program in architecture at the Massa- landscape At that time the course at "Tech" was chusetts Institute of (MIT), which given Technology termed "Landscape Architecture" and was an in 1900 and ended in 1908: it was devel- began option in the architectural course and under the who was married to oped by Guy Lowell, guidance of Guy Lowell ... The last year we Charles Sargent’s daughter Henrietta. The MIT diverged into purely landscape problems, while program, one of two options offered to architec- during the entire four years, we had engineering ture students, was open to both undergraduates problems and attendant mathematics of our own, and graduates until around 1904 and to gradu- as well as at least two days a week for study in the ates only from then until 1908, when the pro- Arnold Arboretum and for various trips about gram was discontmued. The importance of the Boston to see fine examples of landscape design ... To the in we were Arboretum’s role in the program was clearly splendid training design given, to the three of such hard work as I outlined in the program description: years fancy few of the schools now insist upon, as well as to A very thorough course m Horticulture at the the patience and enthusiasm of Prof. Jack who Arnold Arboretum which is under the direction of guided our steps through an intensive training in Mr. Charles S. Sargent [will be part of the pro- plant material, I feel more than gratefuly 8

Ida Hay chose this contemporary mew of the Arnold Arboretum for the cover of her book, Science in the Pleasure Ground. It bears a stnkmg similamty to a mew of the Ramble in Central Park prmted m Garden and Forest (1888). 9

Reminiscing about his Arboretum teaching lection less relevant to those studying plants responsibilities later in life, John Jack speculated from an ecosystem perspective. Unhke museum that MIT dropped the landscape architecture collections of paintings, sculpture, or artifacts option in 1908 because MIT was working closely the Arboretum’s living collections cannot be with Harvard to avoid duplication of small, spe- realigned or portions stored until their unique cialty programs. Since Harvard’s program was value is rediscovered by new generations of well financed and thriving, it seemed prudent scholars and students. The Arboretum’s collec- for MIT to end their involvement in the field. tions of native trees and shrubs in many stages With Harvard’s program closed to women of maturity, its display of rare species from all until the early 1940s, some regretted the closing over the temperate world, and its high curatorial of MIT’s program, which removed the only standards for individual specimens remain a option for women in the region. Two indepen- unique international resource for plant study. dent schools of landscape design in the Boston Many have called the Arboretum’s landscape area filled the gap. The Cambridge School of one of the best-preserved examples of the work Architecture and Landscape Architecture was of Frederick Law Olmsted. It is now the respon- founded in 1916 and based in Harvard Square. sibility of faculty and staff to interpret all of Under its director, Henry Atherton Frost, a these resources for a new generation of students. member of Harvard’s Department of Landscape Architecture, the School offered women a Endnotes shadow version of the Harvard curriculum. Two recent publications explore the history of landscape The Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architec- architecture at Harvard m great detail Anthony Alofsm. The Struggle for Modernism: ture was founded Judith Low, a by Motley Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and City descendant of and based at Benjamin Bussey, Planning at Harvard (New York W.W Norton), 2002. her country home in Groton, Massachusetts. Melame Simo The Coalescing of Different Forces and The program emphasized residential design and Ideas A History of Landscape Architecture at offered intensive study of plant form, planting Harvard, 1900-1999 (Cambridge : design, and horticultural skills. Students at both Graduate School of Design), 2000. schools used the Arboretum extensively to 1 Henry Vincent Hubbard. "Landscape Architecture." In Years Boston: A Memonal Volume Issued study woody plants both as mdividual species Fifty of in Commemoration of the Tercentenary of 1930 and in a design context. (Boston, 1978/, p. 347 z Charles Sargent’s death in 1927 coincided with Clarence T. Fowler. "Three Women m Landscape Architecture." Alumnae Bulletm of the a shift in the landscape architecture curriculum Cambridge School of Domestic and Landscape Architecture at Harvard to embrace town and the planning (April 1932) 4(2): 7. rebuilding of cities. Plant studies continued to 3 Jacob Weidenmann to John Charles Olmsted 14 be part of the curriculum but their value dimin- December 1887. Manuscript Collection, Library of ished as the scale of projects increased and the Congress sites studied were no longer regional. Students 4 Ethan Carr "Garden and Forest and’Landscape Art"’ came from many parts of the country with a (2000). Arnoldia 60~3/: 5. 5 growing contingent of international students, Lawrence Scientific School Announcement of a many leaving the region upon graduation. The Four Years’ Programme of Courses m Landscape Arboretum continued to be a resource for the Architecture (March 1900), 4. ~ program with field walks and courses taught by Charles W Eliot to Frank Storer 18 October 1898 both Arboretum staff and Harvard faculty but, Archives of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard enhanced University. ironically, despite public transporta- ~ tion and the six-mile dis- Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Class of 1894 improved roadways, Decennial Catalogue (June 1904), 35. tance between and Plain Cambridge Jamaica 8 Fowler. "Three Women in Landscape Architecture," 9. seemed, at times, an insurmountable barrier. 9 Ibid., 11. More significantly, the taxonomic arrange- ment of the Arboretum, which places plant native families together disregarding growing Phyllis Andersen is fellow for studies conditions and plant associations, made the col- in the of the Arnold Arboretum. 10 .

Landscape Architect/Landscape Architecture: A Short History of the Terms

The terms used to describe the process and profession of designing the landscape can be confus- ing. In the late nineteenth century the Anglo-American term landscape gardening evolved into the professional and academic discipline of landscape architecture and took on precise profes- sional and legal boundaries. Landscape design is a designation that continues to transcend disci- plinary and professional boundaries and captures the essence of the process. Contrary to popular opinion, Frederick Law Olmsted did not invent the term landscape archi- tecture nor was he particularly partial to it when it was used by the architect , his partner in the design of Central Park. I am all the time bothered with the miserable nomenclature of L.A. Landscape is not a good word, Architecture is not; the combination is not-Gardening is worse ... The art is not gardening nor is it architecture. What I am doing here in Cahfornia, especially is neither. It is sylvan art, fine art in distinction from Horticulture, Agriculture, or sylvan useful art ... If you are bound to estabhsh this new art, you don’t want an old name for it. And for clearness, for convenience, for distinctness, you do need half a dozen technical words at least. -Frederick Law Olmsted to Calvert Vaux, I August 1865 Olmsted did adopt its use near the end of his professional career as he found no better term to describe his work. <

With reference to your undertaking there is less room for choice than may be supposed among ’ the landscape or landscape architects of the country (I have come to prefer the latter ’; ~ term, tho’ I much objected to it when it was first given to me. I prefer it because it helps to estabhsh the important idea of the distinction of my profession from that of gardening, as that of architecture from building-the distinction of an art of design. -Fredenck Law Olmsted to the Board of Parks Commissioners, Rochester, New York, 1888

The use of the term landscape architecture can be traced back at least to early nineteenth- century literature.

1828 Gilbert Laing Meason. The Landscape Architecture of the Great Paintings of Italy (London). One of the first uses of the term by the Scottish writer, a friend of Sir Walter Scott. However, Meason was referring to the appropriateness of buildings in the landscape not the landscape itself: the Roman villa, towers and turrets, picturesque country . 1840 , editor. The Landscape Gardening and Landscape Architecture of the Late Humphry Repton (London/. This was Loudon’s title for his compilation of the writings of Repton; again, Loudon was referring to buildings in the landscape. Landscape architecture was Loudon’s term, not Repton’s. 1841 . A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (Lon- don). In Section IX, "Landscape or Rural Architecture," Downing writes that "architectural beauty must be considered cojointly with the beauty of the landscape or situation ... the harmo- nious union of buildings and scenery." But like Loudon, Downing was referring to building style and landscape compatibility. 11I

1858

Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux use the term in Central Park documents.

1863 The title is used for the first time by the Board of Central Park Commis- sioners in .

1873 Horace William Shaler Cleveland. Landscape Architecture as Applied to the Wants of the West (Chicago):

Landscape Gardening, or more properly Landscape Architecture, is the art of arranging land so as to adapt to it most conveniently, economically and gracefully, to any of the vaned wants of civilization ... The term "landscape architecture" is ob~ectionable, as being only figuratively expressive of the art it is used to designate. I make use of it, under protest, as the readiest means of making myself understood, in the absence of a more appropriate term. If the art is ever developed to the extent I believe to be within its legitimate limits, it will achieve for itself a name worthy of its position. 1899 The American Society of Landscape Architects is formed at a meeting in New York. It was orga- nized to include only professional landscape architects as full members and to exclude nursery- men, contractors, builders, and others engaged in commercial work. The group did allow those calling themselves landscape gardeners, such as Beatrix Farrand, to join. 1910 Landscape Architecture magazme is founded by three graduates of Harvard’s landscape architec- ture program, Robert Wheelright, Charles Downing Lay, and Henry Vincent Hubbard.

1916 Liberty Hyde Bailey attempts to clarify the continuing confusion in terminology in his Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture, Vol. IV.

The art that and makes is known mostly by the name landscape architec- ture, although there is now a tendency to call it by other names. Landscape gardening is the older term; but this is considered not to be broad enough or bold enough to suggest the large elements of design that form an underlying part of the art. 2003 American Society of Landscape Architects website (www.asla.org) offers this definition of land- scape architecture:

Landscape architecture is the art and science of analysis, planning, design, management, pres- ervation and rehabilitation of the land. The scope of the profession includes site planning, , environmental restoration, town or , park and recreation - ning, , and historic preservation. PA